second woman to sit on the Board of Governors and Guardians, National Gallery of Ireland, 1914–1943. She was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1890; the first female Associate Member in 1923 and the first female Member in 1924. In 1924, she initiated the movement for the launching of the Friends of the National Collection of Ireland. Portraiture She worked mostly as a portraitist. Through her talent and energy, and owing to her friendship with the Gore-Booths, she was very successful in obtaining commissions, famously commenting "I went through the British aristocracy like the measles." When the Viceroy of Ireland commissioned her to portray his children in 1888 his choice reflected her position as the country's foremost portraitist. In 1977, Bruce Arnold noted "some of her finest and most sensitive work was not strictly portraiture, for example, An Irish Idyll in the Ulster Museum, and Le Petit Déjeuner (in the National Gallery of Ireland)." Glass (An Túr Gloine) Sarah Purser financed An Túr Gloine (The Tower of Glass), a stained glass cooperative, at 24 Upper Pembroke and ran it from its inauguration in 1903 until her retirement in 1940. Michael Healy (1873-1941) was the first of a number of distinguished recruits, such as Catherine O'Brien (1882-1963), Evie Hone (1894-1955), Wilhelmina Geddes (1887-1955), Beatrice Elvery (1881-1970) and Ethel Rhind (c.1879 -1952). Purser was determined the stained glass workshop should adhere to true Arts and Crafts philosophy: 'Each window is the work of one artist who makes the sketch and cartoon and selects and paints every morsel of glass him or herself'. Purser did not produce many items of stained glass herself. Most of the stained glass works were painted by other members of the cooperative, presumably under her direction. Two early works, 1904, were St. Ita for St. Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea and The Good Shepard for St. Columba's College, Dublin. Her last stained glass work is thought to be The Good Shepard and the Good Samaritan, 1926, for the Church of Ireland at Killucan, Co. Westmeath. Legacy Purser is commemorated by a plaque on Harcourt Terrace. The Post issued a commemorative stamp for her as part of a series on "Pioneering Women" in 2020. Various portraits painted by Purser are held in the National Gallery of Ireland. Archives relating to Sarah Purser are housed in the Centre for the Study of Irish Art, National Gallery of Ireland.