Ann Wilson examines Kitty O’Brien’s Crossing the Bar, a composition in stained glass that functions as a metaphor for hope
There are many memorials and memorial windows in St Multose Church in Kinsale in Co Cork, but Crossing the Bar (1933) by Kitty (Catherine) O’Brien particularly draws the eye. It is a stained-glass window whose rich colours burn through the relative gloom of its location, a north-facing wall in the north transept. Two inscriptions on the bottom of the window show that it was dedicated to brothers Edward (Crump) Dorman, killed in action at Gallipoli in 1915, and (Thomas) Stephen (Lewis) Dorman, who died when his ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland in 1917. Edward was thirty when he died; Stephen was thirty-four.
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