Anna Frances Levins
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Anna Frances Levins (March 21, 1876 – July 15, 1941) was an Irish American photographer, publisher, author, painter and activist whose works appeared in publications including The New York Times,[1] Vogue[2] and The Boston Globe.[3] She was lauded as “a pioneer woman photographer and a leader in Irish cultural pursuits.”[4] Her portrait sitters included Pope Pius X,[5] William Henry O’Connell, Eamon de Valera, Elisabeth Marbury[6] and John McCormack.[7] The Levins Press, a company she founded and ran in New York and Dublin, published illustrated books about Irish history, literature, culture and independence battles by authors including her husband, Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde (1862-1935), an Irish baronet. She turned part of her Manhattan office into “a gallery of Irish heroes,” exhibiting her photos and paintings of Irish leaders and martyrs, including Kevin Barry, who were executed after the 1916 Easter Rising.[8]
Levins was one of six surviving children of the builder Peter Levins (1815-September 26, 1894) and Nanno Hale (March 25, 1836 – May 13, 1929), Irish immigrants who settled on the Lower East Side and then the Bronx. Peter's brother Thomas C. Levins was an early pastor at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral whose library became a foundational core of Georgetown University's library.[9] Anna Frances and her sisters Clare, Elizabeth (a clerk for the Board of Education), and Julia (a schoolteacher) long lived with their widowed mother Nanno. Anna Frances attended St. Brigid's school on the Lower East Side, where she studied portrait painting. By the early 1900s she had apprenticed with photographer George G. Rockwood and then traveled in Europe, taking photographs of celebrated figures including Edward VII.[10] By 1909 she was deemed “one of the few women to have a real success of photography in all its phases.”[11]
From 1909 until her marriage in 1924, she maintained a studio and gallery in midtown Manhattan. Her longtime address was 5 East 35th Street, where she used Irish turf as fireplace fuel and welcomed anyone interested in Irish culture, industry, history and independence campaigns.[12] Her office was also the headquarters of the Levins Press. She hosted lectures and concerts at her office and at the Waldorf-Astoria for a group she founded, the American Daughters of Ireland, and for the Gaelic League. Performers, authors, politicians and religious leaders gathered at her office and posed for her paintings and photos. Known as “the Irish-American Image-Maker,[13]” she developed “the reputation of having photographed more celebrities than any other woman in the business.”[10] She had her clothing made from Irish textiles and urged Americans to support Irish independence, battling against “the whole machinery of English tyranny.”[14] She served as the American Irish Historical Society's official photographer and its executive council's only woman.[15] She traveled to photograph in Newfoundland and remote parts of Ireland, and on the lecture circuit for her work she was known as “the most Irish travelled woman in the world."[16]
On September 15, 1924, she married the baronet. Participants in the ceremony included Thomas Joseph Shahan, John W. Goff and Patrick Hayes.[17] She and Sir Thomas had homes in County Wexford and in Dublin, where the Levins Press published her husband's writings on art, history and hunting. The couple made regular trips to Rome (where he served as a papal chamberlain) and Canada, where they fished and hunted.[18] They donated objects and artworks to American and European institutions, including the American Irish Historical Society, the Vatican Library and National Museum of Ireland.[8] Her stepchildren unsuccessfully battled her in court for control over Sir Thomas's estate.[19] Levins died on July 15, 1941, while visiting friends in upstate New York. Her funeral drew hundreds of people. She is buried in the Levins family plot at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. An obituary in The New York Times described her as “long prominent in church and Irish-American circles.”[20]
