Life & Formation
May Power — recorded at birth as Mary Elizabeth Power — was born on 11 September 1903 at 4 Goldsmith Street, Dublin, the daughter of Albert George Power RHA and Agnes (née Kelly). She was one of eight children, and grew up at 18 Geraldine Street, Phibsborough, where her father established his stone carving business on Berkeley Road in the early 1910s.
Along with several of her brothers, May was taught the basics of modelling and carving directly by her father, and attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. This placed her at the heart of Irish artistic life during one of its most significant periods. According to her father's 1945 obituary, May was one of four of Albert and Agnes's children who became sculptors — alongside her brothers Albert Jr., Oliver, and at least one other brother.
The Muse of Patrick Tuohy
Wikipedia ↗ · Dictionary of Irish Biography ↗
While attending the DMSA, May Power modelled for the painter Patrick Tuohy (1894–1930) — one of the most gifted Irish painters of his generation, known for his portraits of James Joyce's family and his deeply observed studies of Irish life. The two were contemporaries at the school, and May sat for Tuohy more than any other model, becoming the central figure in his early artistic development.
The best-known result of these sittings was The Little Seamstress (1914), a watercolour portrait of May for which Tuohy won the Royal Dublin Society's Taylor Award in 1915 — praised by contemporary critics for its depiction of personality and character, and regarded as part of a broader shift toward a more psychologically searching style in Irish portraiture. Tuohy painted May a second time many years later, in oil — seated, three-quarter length, in a green coat and beret, holding a walking stick — shown at the top of this page. That later portrait went on to set Tuohy's record auction price at Christie's London in 2007.
The Little Seamstress watercolour and 1915 Taylor Award are confirmed by the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography. The later oil portrait and its 2007 Christie's sale are corroborated independently by Christie's own lot record, Artnet, Irish Arts Review, and MutualArt — though the exact hammer price has not yet been confirmed directly from a Christie's source and should be checked before being stated as fact.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography gives May's birth year as 1904, one year later than the 1903 date used throughout this page (sourced from family birth records). This discrepancy is noted here pending further verification.
May also modelled for her father, sitting for his bronze statuette of Queen Tailte — the legendary Irish queen associated with the Tailteann Games. That her own face was used for this ancient Irish figure speaks to the intimate overlap of family and professional life in the Power studio.
Career as a Sculptor
May Power went on to work as a sculptor in her own right — one of relatively few women working professionally as sculptors in Ireland during this period. No surviving or attributed works of hers have yet been identified for this archive; if a specific piece, exhibition record, or commission comes to light, it will be added here and to the works catalogue. She died in 1993.
Genealogy on this page reconstructed from primary records: birth and marriage certificates and the 1945 obituaries of Albert George Power RHA held in the family archive.