16 Facts About Helen Hooker

Helen Huntington Hooker or Helen Hooker O'Malley Roelefs was an American sculptor and portrait painter who spent a considerable part of her career in Ireland.

Helen Huntington Hooker was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, United States on 1 January 1905.

Helen Hooker was the third of four daughters of chemical engineer and business man Elon Huntington Hooker, and Blanche Ferry, the daughter of Dexter M Ferry.

Helen Hooker was artistic from an early age, making her first sculpture, of a rabbit, aged six.

Helen Hooker was well travelled, studying wood carving in Germany, sculpture and dance in Greece, theatre design in Moscow, and painting in Leningrad, where she learned from the Russian avant-garde painter Pavel Filonov.

Helen Hooker bought an additional 30 acres in 1942, which the family worked as a farm.

Helen Hooker continued to be a generous patron of the arts in Ireland.

Helen Hooker donated a collection of 434 photographic prints to the National Library of Ireland.

Helen Hooker established the O'Malley collection of paintings by other artists in collaboration with the Irish American Cultural Institution.

Helen Hooker exhibited her first work in Ireland in 1943, Island woman, at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and A portrait of Mrs Kiernan at the Royal Hibernian Academy.

Helen Hooker showed seven more pieces at the Living Art exhibitions between 1944 and 1948.

Helen Hooker built a studio at Burrishoole in December 1943, but bought and moved into a house at 15 Whitebeam Avenue, Clonskeagh, Dublin in autumn 1944.

Helen Hooker held her first solo show in St Stephen's Green Gallery in 1950, which featured busts of Liam O'Flaherty and Denis Johnston.

Helen Hooker is not so successful when she attempts to simplify or formalise which, admittedly, she does rarely.

Helen Hooker exhibited a portrait of Patrick Carey with the RHA in 1974, but she generally exhibited more in the States than in Ireland.

Helen Hooker married Richard Roelefs in 1956, and settled in Connecticut.