Grace Gifford was born in Dublin on the 4th March 1888. She was the second youngest of 12 children born to Frederick Gifford, a Catholic, and Isabella Julia Burton, a protestant. Grace and her sisters attended Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace.
At age 16, Grace went to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, where she studied under the artist William Orpen; he considers her one of is most talented pupils. Her skill in drawing caricature is discovered and developed. In 1907 she attends the Fine Art Course at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
She returned to Dublin 1908 but struggles to earn a living as a caricaturist, publishing her cartoons in The Shanachie, Irish Life, the Irish Review to name but a few. She nearly emigrates but reconsiders.
She attended the opening of the new bilingual school Scoil Éanna in Ranelagh and there she met Joseph Mary Plunkett for the first time. He is a friend of her brother-in-law, Thomas MacDonagh, who is married to her sister Muriel. In fact, both sisters, Nellie and Muriel, were also avid nationalists as well as converts to Catholicism.
Plunkett would later go on to edit the Irish Review mentioned earlier. MacDonagh and Plunkett were strong friends and both were leaders in the 1916 Rising.
Gifford becomes interested in the Catholic faith which leads to a deepening relationship between herself and Plunkett. He proposes to her in 1915 and she begins formal instruction in Catholic doctrine. She is received into the Church in April 1916. The couple planned to marry on Easter Sunday in a double wedding with Plunketts sister and her fiancé.
After the Rising, Thomas Mac Donagh is shot alongside Mac Piarais and Thomas Clarke by firing squad on 3rd May.
She hears that Plunkett is to be shot the following day and purchases a ring and with the help of a priest persuades the military authorities to allow them to marry. Fr Eugene McCarthy of St James’ Church in St James’ Street officiated at the wedding in Kilmainham Gaol just before midnight on May 3rd, 1916, a few hours before he was executed.
Heartbroken but determined to create the Republic which she and Joseph had fought for, Grace returned to her art, inking political cartoons in favour of Sinn Féin policies; she is elected to the SF executive in 1917. During the Civil War, she was arrested with many others and interned in Kilmainham Gaol for 3 months. She painted pictures on the walls there (one of these reproduced below) before her release in May 1923.
Having taken the Anti-treaty side in the Civil war, Grace was ostracised and had difficulty finding work. Things improved for her financially when in 1932 she received a civil pension from de Valera’s Fianna Fáil government.
She died suddenly on 13 December 1955 in Portobello, Dublin; St. Kevin’s in Harrington Street had her funeral mass and she was buried with full military honours close to the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
A reproduction of the illustration Grace Gifford Plunkett drew on the wall in Kilmainham Gaol in 1923