Imogen Stuart believed that the secret to a long life was having a leisurely breakfast. She enjoyed hers sitting on a balcony just off her upstairs bedroom, in a conservatory nearly the full height of her house. It worked: Stuart, a sculptor whose works can be seen in churches and public spaces all over Ireland, died aged 96 just over 1½ years ago.
Born in Berlin, the German artist met her future husband, Maud Gonne’s grandson and fellow sculptor Ian Stuart, while training in Bavaria. They moved to Ireland in 1949, living first in Laragh, Co Wicklow, and later in Sandycove, Co Dublin.
She moved there in 1966, first to a house on the seafront and from the early 1970s to a house around the corner, on Sandycove Avenue West. Now number 28 Sandycove Avenue West, a 128sq m (1,378sq ft) 1870s house on the corner of Sandycove Avenue West and Rocks Yard Lane, is for sale through Crawford’s, seeking €1.575 million.
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The two-bedroom house, filled with paintings, photographs and maquettes for some of Stuart’s larger works, was clearly a welcoming and much-loved home. Her daughters Aisling and Aoibheann and granddaughter Naomi reminisce about happy days at number 28.
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Aisling, Imogen’s youngest of three daughters, remembers playing on the rocks by Scotsman’s Bay just down the road, putting up Max Ernst and Che Guevara posters in her bedroom as a teenager.
Naomi remembers her excitement when Oma (granny) would bring her up to the balcony, from where you could espy the ferry sailing out of Dún Laoghaire harbour.
Stuart had a strict routine they say: “She would get up, prepare lunch and go to her studio at 10.30am and stay all day.” Originally the coach house of her house on Otranto Place on Sandycove seafront, the studio is a short walk down Rocks Yard Lane: it’s not for sale and her family now plans to turn it into a museum and gallery in her memory.
Number 28 would benefit from some updating, but the family hopes that new owners will somehow keep the spirit of the house as they do so. The house has gas-fired central heating and as a protected structure, is Ber exempt.
The salmon-pink exterior of number 28 is hidden behind a tall beech hedge. The main room in the house, on the right side of a front hall divided by an arch, is a livingroom that stretches from the front to the back of the house, where French doors open on to small, very pretty garden. The room is bright, with a large double-glazed sash bay window at the front and a large skylight in the pitched roof at the far end.
Bookshelves line one wall opposite a wide fireplace with a timber surround and inset copper hood: a striking life-size Mexican statue of a woman hangs over it.
There’s art everywhere: an intricately carved lampstand near the fireplace is one of Stuart’s earliest works, made in Germany; and a Noah’s-ark tortoise sits on a table nearby. On another table are pictures that include those of her parents – father Bruno E Werner, a leading newspaper arts editor and writer, and mother Katharina – and sculptor Otto Hitzberger, Stuart’s professor in Munich, where she met her husband. Elsewhere, there’s a maquette of her large statue of Pope John Paul II that’s in Maynooth.
Stuart’s study/sittingroom is off the left of the front hall, with the same very tall bay window as in the livingroom; pictures here include one of Stuart’s mother-in-law Iseult Gonne. A downstairs bedroom behind it on the left of the hall includes a picture of a circus painted when she was under 10.
The 1970s kitchen/diningroom at the back of the house has pine units and a tiled splashback and there’s a utility room and a shower room off it.
It opens directly into the conservatory that wraps around one corner at the back of the house, stretching from the floor to the top of the house. Steep stairs from the hall lead up to a double-bedroom that opens directly on to the balcony at the top of the conservatory. Stuart had a small fridge and kettle here for her breakfast and also, Naomi remembers, a basket that she’d let down on a rope to ground level into which she’d put the food for her breakfast. A bathroom and separate toilet, both with striking blue tiles, are on the landing beside the bedroom. Doors over the stairs open into an attic.
The back garden, sheltered by a high stone wall from Rocks Yard Lane, is a patio filled with pots of flowers and trees: a ginkgo tree was planted here in memory of her daughter Siobhan, who died in a car crash in 1988. In another corner is a mimosa tree and a tree peony, which flowers in February. A wire-covered pond has a goldfish in it.
Since Covid, parking has been an issue in Sandycove: Stuart used to park her car on Rocks Yard Lane, a private laneway with a surprising number of houses. A small shed at the back of number 28 could, with planning permission, be turned into a parking space, suggests selling agent Nick Crawford.
The front garden has more tall trees and a bench designed by Stuart.
Stuart remained active right up to her death in March 2024, spending most of her days in her studio further down Rocks Yard Lane. But she will be forever remembered in Sandycove, a familiar figure even in her 90s strolling around the neighbourhood with her walker.
Her last major design, unveiled in May 2022, is a granite standing stone, Stele, with representations of King Laoghaire and St Patrick on two sides carved by Ciaran Byrne, that stands on a hillock in the little park in Sandycove at the bottom of Sandycove Avenue West.
