 They were married in St George's, a Church of Ireland church on the north side of the city.Grace was the second youngest in a family of 12 children and grew up in the fashionable suburb of Rathmines in Dublin.The boys were baptised as Catholics and the girls as Protestant, but effectively the children were all raised as Protestants – the girls attended Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace, and the boys attended the High School in Harcourt St.

At the age of 16, Gifford went to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where she studied under the Irish artist William Orpen.