This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Bridget Hourican. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 16 May 1870, Ireland
Died: 23 March 1959
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Lydia Mary Coffey
Lilla Mary Vanston (1870–1959), sculptor, was born Lydia Mary Coffey on 16 May 1870, one of two daughters of the Rev. John T. Coffey (d. 1898), rector of Mogorban, Fethard, Co. Tipperary, and his wife, Lizzie Moulson (d. 1920), daughter of the Rev. George Nesbitt. She was educated at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and, as Lydia Coffey, exhibited a medallion at the 1898 RHA. Within a few years she had married a solicitor, John S. Vanston; she showed one work under her married name at the RHA in 1903. In 1907 and 1911 she showed at the Oireachtas art exhibition, where a bronze statuette was priced at £10. Between 1904 and 1921 she showed ten works at the RHA, mostly portraits and statuettes. A 1904 portrait was of the Gaelic League activist, Thomas O’Neill Russell; Vanston was a member of the League and travelled regularly to the Gaeltacht in Achill, Co. Mayo. Her aim was to use art for patriotic purposes; she was associated with the Irish Art Companions, which was set up in 1904 to revive Irish art, and specifically to create an alternative to imported ecclesiastical statues. The group had a mill at 27–28 Clare St., Dublin, where they made their own plaster and cast mostly ecclesiastical statues, which they bronzed and tinted. A plaque cast made by Vanston for the Companions in 1907 was shown at the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland exhibition in 1910. Entitled ‘The lament of Banba’ or ‘Erin mourns for her dead heroes’, it was called by the Irish Times ‘one of the most beautiful decorative designs we have seen here for some time . . . it shows wonderful grace and freedom’ (11 Nov. 1910). Vanston was also active in the United Arts Club and suggested that it should subscribe to the German art magazine, Jugend, which supported young artists. This was approved by Jack Yeats.
In 1925, by then widowed, she went to Paris, where her daughter was studying, and she exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. Over the next two decades she spent time in Paris but was back in Dublin at the outbreak of the second world war, being reputedly by then a Buddhist. She lived at 13 Herbert St. until her death at the Royal City of Dublin Hospital on 23 March 1959.