This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Lawrence William White. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 4 November 1877, Ireland
Died: 26 February 1924
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
Whitty, Sophia St John (1877–1924), woodcarver, teacher, and cooperativist, was born 4 November 1877 at 69 Upper Leeson St., Dublin, daughter of Richard Lawrence Whitty, gentleman, of that address, and his wife Jane Alicia, second daughter of Hugh Palliser Hickman (1805–83), landowner, of Fenloe house, Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare. Her first cousin was stained-glass and mosaic artist Catherine Amelia O’Brien. Her father, an active freemason, was assistant secretary of the Dublin Masonic orphan schools (1876–82), and worshipful master of grand master’s lodge (1882). During the 1880s the Whittys resided at ‘Hillcot’, Whitechurch, Rathfarnham, near the Dublin mountains; Sophia spent holidays in the Hickman family home by Fenloe lake. She studied woodcarving at South Kensington School of Art, England. While continuing her studies at Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, she opened (c.1902) a small studio at 43 Sackville St., where with her sister Dorothy she gave lessons in woodcarving and other crafts. In 1902 she joined Kathleen A. Scott in teaching a woodcarving class in the parochial hall of Christ Church, Bray, Co. Wicklow, which had begun in 1887 as a class for the church choirboys. After studying figure carving in Bruges, Belgium, and visiting art sites and schools of carving in Italy and Austria (summer 1903), she was appointed teacher of woodcarving at the newly opened Bray technical school, one of the first in the country, into which her established carving class was incorporated (1904). To Whitty’s design, assisted by Scott, the class executed the carved walnut woodwork of Christ Church, where two fine neo-Gothic pieces of 1904 include figures by Whitty’s own hand: angels of prayer and praise on the prayer desk, and St Patrick on the lectern. Crafting both church and domestic furniture, Whitty and her students exhibited at various venues; her Gothic triptych with crucifix (1904) attracted considerable praise. She contributed leatherwork to the comprehensive Irish crafts display at the 1904 St Louis world’s fair. The abundance of orders received by the carving class – including numerous commissions from protestant churches throughout Ireland – led to formation (1905) of a cooperative society, the Bray Art Furniture Industry, attached to the technical school, with Whitty as manager, designer, and instructor. Grant-aided by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, the industry soon employed twelve full-time and up to fifty part-time workers, and opened a shop on Bray’s Main St. (1907). Apprentices received thorough training in every aspect of woodworking craft, with emphasis on the highest standards of material, design, and execution. The industry spearheaded an important, though short-lived, revival of woodcarving in Ireland, associated with the contemporary arts-and-crafts movement.
Whitty closed her Dublin studio in 1906, and in 1909 moved from her home at 70 Pembroke Rd to ‘Old Bawn’, Old Connaught, Bray, where she resided with her mother for the rest of her life. Named to the council of the newly reconstituted Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland (1909), she was among thirteen professional artists enrolled under the society’s auspices in the Guild of Irish Art-Workers. A drastic decline in orders and cancellation of several outstanding commissions, occasioned by the outbreak of the first world war, resulted in immediate closure of the Bray industry (1914). Whitty served (1914/15–21) as organising secretary of the United Irishwomen (forerunner of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association), a cooperative society with offices in Lincoln Place, Dublin, involved in initiatives among women, especially in rural areas, in such fields as domestic arts and economy, family health, and development of productive industries. With the work of the organisation foundering amid the political troubles, she resigned her post (1921). Thereafter she wrote nature essays for several Dublin newspapers, touring Co. Dublin and Co. Wicklow in search of material, alone by bicycle or accompanied by her mother in their Peugeot car. After a brief illness and surgery, Whitty died suddenly of heart failure in Drumcondra hospital, Whitworth Rd, Dublin, on 26 February 1924; she never married. The organ case in Christ Church, Bray (1924), was carved in her memory by several former Bray woodworkers latterly employed in Dublin. A posthumous collection of her nature essays, The flaming wheel (1924), includes a biographical foreword by Scott. An undated monograph, Sea paradises of the Irish imrama, represents her late interest in Irish language and literature.