Constance Markievicz — revolutionary, politician, and the first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament — died in 1927. Power made this portrait bust five years after her death, working from photographs and from the recollections of those who had known her. The result captures something of the particular intensity that contemporaries associated with her: a face that looks as though it is about to speak.
Markievicz had been a central figure of the 1916 Rising, sentenced to death (commuted) as one of its commanders, and later the first woman to hold a cabinet position in Ireland. Power’s decision to render her without the softening conventions often applied to female subjects in the period was characteristic of his approach — the same directness he brought to his portraits of Collins, Griffith, and Brugha.
Significance: One of the finest portrait busts of a key figure of the Irish revolution, made five years after her death from photographic reference and living memory.
Held in the National Museum of Ireland.