Beatrice Elvery

Who was Beatrice Elvery?

Beatrice Moss Elvery was an Irish stained-glass artist and painter.

She was the second daughter of a Dublin businessman whose family had originated from Spain where they were silk merchants. Her family owned the original Elverys Sports store in Wicklow Street, Dublin. She attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where William Orpen taught painting and later used Beatrice as a model. Of his pupil, Orpen wrote that she had "many gifts, much temperament and great ability. Her only fault was that the transmission of her thoughts from her brain to paper or canvas, clay or stained glass became so easy to her that all was said in a few hours. Nothing on earth could make her go on and try to improve on her first translation of her thought." She remained a friend and correspondent of Orpen until shortly before his death in 1931.

When Sarah Purser founded her studio An Túr Gloine in 1903, she invited Beatrice Elvery to be one of the designers and her first commission of six windows was installed in the Convent of Mercy, Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh in 1905.

Beatrice married Charles Campbell, 2nd Baron Glenavy in 1912 and they settled in London, returning to Ireland at the end of the war when she then concentrated on painting. She had three children Patrick, Bridget and Michael. Bridget was killed by a fire bomb in the Blitz.