Myra Kathleen Hughes

Myra Kathleen Hughes’s family had a house in Wexford. Her father Sir Frederick Hughes of Rosslare Fort and Barntown House was High Sheriff of Wexford in 1889 – 90. She attended Westminster School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where she was taught by Frank Short and Constance Pott. An ardent follower of the Etching Revival, her works reveal a discerning approach to the plate. Hughes established a considerable reputation in England as an original printmaker exhibiting her work in London, Liverpool and Dublin. She also featured in the pages of The Studio art periodical. While Hughes’s work as printmaker was recognised early on, both in England and to a lesser extent in Ireland, her influence was perhaps not as wide-ranging as it may have been due to her death at the young age of thirty-nine, in 1918. Her family, through a friend Mary C. Hamilton, donated 7 of Myra Hughes’s prints to the British Museum after her death.