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Kathleen Marescaux (1868-1944)
Giant Poppies
Currently not on view
- Year
- Unknown
- Size
- Framed size: 72.5 x 54cm; Framed size: 89.5 x 70
- Medium
- Watercolour and charcoal
- Provenance
- Gifted by the Artist, 1943
Kathleen Marescaux was a painter of portraits, botanical subjects and rural landscapes. Born at Raheenduff House near Horetown, Co. Wexford, Kathleen Louisa Rose was the second daughter of Major-General James B. Dennis, Royal Artillery, of Newtown House, Co. Kilkenny. She studied art abroad, first in Bruges, Belgium, in 1888, the following year in Heidelburg and Dusseldorf, and in Florence in 1890.
In 1893, from Rathmore, Naas, she exhibited for the first time at the Royal Hibernian Academy, two portraits, one of the late Meade C. Dennis of Co. Wicklow. Her marriage to Lieut. (afterwards Vice-Admiral. CB, CMG) Gerald Marescaux took place in 1894. The Dublin Sketching Club showed her work from 1911. The following year portraits of her husband and father were hung at the RHA.
In 1912 she first exhibited with the Water Colour Society of Ireland, and was a regular contributor up until the year of her death, contributing more than eighty works. In 1913 she showed Winter Solitude, The Cherwell, Oxford and Weymouth Marshes, Dorset. She also painted in Brittany.
In the last twenty years of her life many of her WCSI exhibits were flower pieces. In 1929 she exhibited a work with the Fine Art Society, London, and also showed one picture with the Royal Academy, in 1936. In the 1930s she showed several times at the Ulster Academy of Arts but only twice at the RHA. At the 1938 Ulster Academy, from Inchiholohan Kilkenny, she exhibited two flowerpieces and Dutch Wall Vase. Exhibitions were held at Waterford in 1940 and, a month before her death, at the Goodwin Galleries, Limerick, 1944.
