This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 31 December 1925, Ireland
Died: 9 March 1993
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Beatrice Salkeld
Behan, Beatrice (1925–93), artist and memoirist, was born 31 December 1925 at Mount St., Dublin, eldest daughter of the artist Cecil ffrench Salkeld, ARHA, and Irma Salkeld (née Taesler), a domestic economy instructress from Berlin. She was a grandaughter of the poet Blanaid Salkeld. Reared in the family home in Morehampton Rd, Dublin, she also spent much of her youth in Glencree, Co. Wicklow. Educated at the Loreto Convent, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, she went on to study art at the National College of Art, where, having completed her first year, she gave up her daytime studies on the advice of her mother and found work as a temporary clerk at the board of works while continuing her degree by night. After finishing at the college she was engaged as a botanical assistant in the National Museum of Ireland, where she worked from 1949 to 1955. This period was interrupted by further artistic study in Florence, Siena, and Milan in 1950. She exhibited at the RHA from 1948 to 1950, and had her work shown at the Oireachtas Exhibition (1957, 1958), the Irish Living Art Exhibition (1959), in New York (1969, 1970) and at the Irish pavilion at the World Fair in 1972. She also assisted her father in executing his murals in Davy Byrne’s public house in Dublin, which she subsequently maintained.
It was through Salkeld, a pivotal figure in the Dublin artistic community, that she was first introduced to her future husband Brendan Behan while she was still a schoolgirl. They met again many years later and after a brief relationship were married in February 1955; their only daughter was born in 1963 shortly before his death. She later adopted a son. In the early period of their marriage she supplemented their income through her work as a horticultural illustrator for the Irish Times. Though based in Dublin, she led an increasingly nomadic life with Behan, spending prolonged periods of time in London, Paris, and New York. She was consistently tolerant of her husband’s drinking and uproarious behaviour, regarding him as a ‘great, loveable genius’ (Behan, 89). She was also content to live in his shadow; referring to their 1960 visit to the US, she wrote: ‘I soon realised I was to play a minor role in this American carnival; it was a role I was accustomed to in other countries, so I did not complain No one could accuse me of trying to compete with my husband, he alone was news whether drunk or sober’ (Behan, 15).
She provided the illustrations for her husband’s Hold your hour and have another (1963), worked with Alan Simpson on the revision of his unfinished play ‘Richard’s cork leg’, and in 1973 published her memoirs, My life with Brendan. After his death she paid off the many debts he accumulated over the years, setting the upstairs of her home in flats. She was found dead at her home in Anglesea Rd, Ballsbridge, Dublin, 9 March 1993.