Sheelyn Browne: ‘Loss of Westport House was like somebody cut off my oxygen’

It is no surprise that Sheelyn Browne returned to her artistic practice of printmaking with woodcuts and linocuts after her family's historic home, Westport House, was sold in 2017. This early form of illustration was popular when her famous forebear, the 16th-century pirate queen Grace O'Malley/Granuaile, ruled the seas off the west coast. It proved to be a perfect form of therapy as she came to terms with the dramatic end of her family's 400-year ownership of this majestic house, with its rolling lawns, balustraded terraces, man-made leisure lake, weirs and dancing river.

Designed by famous architects Richard Cassells, James Wyatt and Thomas Ivory, the 18th-century house was built on the foundations of one of the pirate queen's castles. There have been many architectural modifications and alterations over the centuries since.

The landmark house was sold in 2017, after the family encountered some financial difficulties, and was acquired by the Hughes family, who own a hotel adjacent to the estate, Hotel Westport, as well as the global Portwest workwear company. The Hughes family have now embarked upon a €5 million initial restoration and conservation project, in preparation for an overall investment of €75 million.

Although Browne, her partner Maeve and their two daughters, Grace (20) and Eve (18), have lived in a split-level house that snuggles into the woods at the quay end of the estate since 2003, she is grateful that, five years on, her life is no longer immersed in the complex economic demands of her weighty legacy.

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“The loss of the house and estate for me in my mid-50s was like somebody cut off the supply of oxygen to my body; they cut my arms and legs off too. I was so lucky I have such a strong and supportive partner and love that our lives are so simple now but, obviously, that took time,” says Browne, over coffee in her kitchen.

A love of art had started early for the eldest daughter of the late Jeremy Browne Altamont, the 11th marquess of Sligo, and his wife, Jennifer. Armed from an early age with her Brownie camera, she wandered the sylvan byways of her family's gardens and grounds capturing the shape and forms, flora and fauna of its nooks and crannies. The strictures of two different boarding schools may have impeded her love of the outdoors, but the influences of the many paintings that filled the halls and galleries of Westport House also encouraged a love of such German expressionists as Heckel, Kirchner and Nolde, as well as 18th-century Japanese woodcut artists.

“I suppose I grew up surrounded by all these old art forms in Westport House,” she says.

While she really wanted to study fine art, her father felt she'd never make any money from it and so, instead, she pursued a design degree at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin in 1987. It ensured she could contribute to the family business during the busy tourism season, when thousands of visitors descended on the house and the many attractions in the grounds.

“I produced cards, and designed and hand-painted all our signage. It was all hands on deck from the time my grandparents and father decided to open the house [to the public] in 1960,” she explains.

Many of the great houses of Ireland had already been boarded up or fallen into serious disrepair by then.

Colourful, and a larger-than-life character, Jeremy's determination to ensure the future of his home left him wrestling with llamas when they had a zoo, to bringing a giant pink rabbit on the train to Dublin for one of his regular appearances on RTÉ shows.

When Browne was born in 1963, the family was ensconced in a flat in the south wing of the house, with her mother spending the summers in the cafe in the basement making drop scones for visitors.

Four sisters followed: Karen (1964), Luckie (1969), Clare (1974) and Allanah (1980), which culminated in a move to Rusheen House, one of the many properties on the estate once used for its workers and their families. Ultimately, the fact that there was no male heir led Jeremy to put a private member's Bill through the Oireachtas in 1993, thus ensuring his daughters' inheritance and, in many ways, confirming his feminism.

Unsurprisingly, his famous forebear Grace O’Malley provides a muse for many of Browne’s prints: from her interpretation of the dramatic meeting between Grace and Queen Elizabeth in 1593, entitled “Téte-a-Téte”, to the pirate queen onboard one of her galleys after giving birth at sea to her son Tibóid na Long in 1567.

Notwithstanding the historic feminist credentials of this family, the colourful lives of the male heirs has dominated the documented cross-generational narrative.

However, the discovery of the letters of the second marchioness of Sligo, Lady Hester Catherine Browne, by historian Prof Christine Kinealy in Quinnipiac University would lead to an important exhibition launched by the then US ambassador to Ireland, Kevin O'Malley, in 2015.

Browne was involved in the setting up of a dedicated room in the house for this significant correspondence. The letters were written by the then widowed Lady Hester in the mid-1840s, and show great empathy and practicality during the worst privations experienced by the large tenantry during the Great Famine.

“The trouble about the house was it was always about the men. I wish I’d had more time to delve into the stories of the women but it was great that I was involved in this important exhibition. All the focus had been on her husband, the second marquess, Howe Peter Browne, who was famed for his colourful lifestyle – he hung out with Lord Byron and Napoleon Bonaparte – but was also known for the abolition of slavery on his estates in Jamaica,” Browne continues.

Like Granuaile, Hester was not afraid to take to the high seas and she accompanied him with some of their 14 children on many of his far-flung voyages.

Despite being the 14th great-granddaughter of Granuaile and living on the edge of Clew Bay, Browne will not dip a toe in the sea unless the temperature is above 40 degrees. You wouldn’t think that, though, from a series of prints depicting the pandemic craze for sea-swimming.

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in the freezing cold water here in the west. It is way too cold, but my sister Clare kept sending pictures of the daily swimmers at the Point. I wanted to do more figurative work and it hit a nerve, with so many people escaping and being able to meet through the restrictions by jumping into the freezing ocean.”

She stresses that her art is increasingly moving away from the house and her past.

“I had to grieve for the place first and that took some time. My art is free of my past now. I not only had a strong sense of duty about what I was born into but I was passionate about it too. That doesn’t mean to say I didn’t lose a stone before I’d have to stand up, suited and booted, and talk to ambassadors and various dignitaries,” she laughs.

That doesn’t mean her historic home, out there through the trees and across the lake from where we sit at the island in her kitchen, doesn’t inhabit her imagination. A recent print evokes its feminine spirit with its pink hues and intimation of gentle dilapidation. Her gallery and studio is adjacent to their home, and has a huge selection of her original woodcut and linocut art, as well as giclée prints and cards.

[ sheelynbrowne.com ]