18 Facts About Fanny Currey

Frances Wilmot "Fanny" Currey was an Irish horticulturalist and watercolour painter.

Fanny Currey went on to become a daffodil cultivator at Warren Gardens, Lismore later in life.

Frances Wilmot Fanny Currey was born at Lismore Castle, County Waterford on 30 May 1848.

Fanny Currey was the daughter of Anna and Francis Edmund Currey.

Fanny Currey's father was employed as a land agent to the dukes of Devonshire, and was an early, accomplished photographer.

Fanny Currey's cousin the writer and artist Edith Blake was a close friend of Currey, and from a young age was a frequent visitor to Newtown Anner House, County Tipperary.

Fanny Currey was one of the original members of the Irish Amateur Drawing Society, Ireland's earliest sketching club, founded in Lismore in 1870.

Fanny Currey was an active member of the group, involved in all of their activities, and was involved in the hanging of the 1878 exhibition at the Athenaeum, Cork.

Fanny Currey debuted at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1877, and was a regular exhibitor until 1896, with most of her work featuring flower studies and landscapes.

Fanny Currey had a successful career exhibiting in England, showing her work at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, and the Society of Women Artists, she became an appointed member of the latter in 1886.

Fanny Currey's work was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, Grosvenor Gallery, and New Gallery, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the Manchester City Art Gallery.

Fanny Currey was owner of the Warren nursery and gardens in Lismore, which specialised in daffodils.

Fanny Currey was elected a member of the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland in 1901.

Around 1900, Fanny Currey collected two colour forms of wood anemone, Lismore Blue and Lismore Pink, which are still cultivated today.

Fanny Currey noted that blue forms of wood anemone always grew in close proximity to water, and was the recorder of the only Yellow Bartsia found in County Waterford.

Fanny Currey was a supporter of Women's suffrage, was the organist in Lismore cathedral, and was a keen fisher, shooter, woodworker, sculptor, and made mosaics.

Fanny Currey wrote a fairy tale Prince Ritto or The four-leaved shamrock, published in 1877, with illustrations by Helen Sophia O'Hara, who lived with her from 1898.

Fanny Currey died at her home, the Mall House, Lismore, on 30 March 1917.