Bust of Constance Markievicz

a real hero

This 1954 bronze bust by Seamus Murphy, (which replaced an earlier work which was inexplicably damaged), is a suitably powerful piece of sculpture of a remarkable woman.
Born into a privileged background within a stones throw of Buckingham Palace in London & brought up on her aristocratic families estate in Sligo, on the face of it she was never likely to become a heroine of Irish revolutionary republicans!
She was Countess Markievicz because of marriage to a Ukrainian aristocrat. They were to settle in Dublin, where as a landscape painter she mixed in influential literary & cultural circles which introduced her to leading members of the Gaelic League, where she was to meet republicans with whom she felt at one mind with.
Although viewed with suspicion by some because of her English heritage she was undaunted, & spurred into action against what she saw as the injustice of British rule, joining the then new Sinn Féin in 1905. All this while trying her hand at acting with actress & fellow activist Maud Gonne at the newly founded Abbey Theatre!
She then went on to campaign for womens suffrage, (some say needling Winston Churchill to defeat in a by-​election), before founding an organization: Fianna Éireann which trained teenagers to be ‘warriors of Ireland’. Eventually she was inspired to join the Irish Citizen Army by James Connolly.
On Easter Monday 1916 when Dublin erupted into all out war, she was right in the thick of it, as Major & co-​commander taking over the nearby Royal College of Surgeons building, and digging in here at St Stephen’s Green, holding out for six days, before eventual surrender to an English officer who was a relative of hers!
Her gender helped commute a death sentence to a prison sentence much to her annoyance. «Why can’t your lot just shoot me?“she’s said to have roared!
She was released the following year and then detained again for a further short spell for helping young men oppose WW1 conscription. In the 1918 general election representing Sinn Féin she was to become the first ever female member of the British parliament, a seat in principle she refused to take up.
Having played an active part in the eventual formation of the new Irish republic, (Dáil Éireann), she opposed the Anglo-​Irish Treaty, fought the Republican cause in the Civil War, & spent more time behind bars on hunger strikes before her eventual return to the political mainstream having joined Fianna Fáil.
She died of tuberculosis, (contacted some say through her work with Dublin’s poor), aged 59 in 1927.
This is much more striking than the newer full length statue of Constance on Tara St. The appropriate setting helps of course, but also because it is just her larger than life & rather appealing head. It captures what I imagine of the Markievicz forcefulness.
It’s sited on the south side of the central garden area, and is well worth a trip, to anyway rather fabulous St Stephen’s Green, just to see.