Brief Biography-Sarah Cecilia Harrison was from County Down. When Sarah was ten, the family moved to London after her father’s death, where she studied at the Slade School of Art for seven years until 1885. Then, in 1889, Sarah moved to Dublin and established herself as a portraitist. After a short spell painting in Brittany, France, she returned to Dublin and exhibited in the Royal Hibernian Academy annually.
She was actively involved in politics and was elected the first-ever female city councillor in Dublin. One of her issues was to help Hugh Lane, the patron of the arts, to establish a gallery of modern art in Dublin that opened in 1908. The present-day Hugh Lane Gallery opened in 1933. Sarah was engaged to Hugh Lane, and they were to get married on his return from America; however, he died tragically on the Lusitania in 1915.