Kelly, Frances Josephine (1908–2002), artist, was born 14 February 1908 in Drogheda, Co. Louth, daughter of James Kelly, master mariner, and Marion Kelly (née Shields). She studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and was a star pupil, exhibiting frequently in the RHA from the age of 21. Throughout her career she concentrated almost exclusively on portraits and still lifes. In 1932 she became the first recipient of the Henry Higgins travelling scholarship, which enabled her to go to Paris and study with the cubist painter Léopold Survage (1879–1968). Cubism had little perceptible influence on her style. Returning to Dublin in 1933, she held her first solo exhibition in Daniel Egan's Gallery, St Stephen's Green, in November 1934; the Irish Times (12, 22 Nov. 1934) was so lavish in its praise for her ‘delicate, subtle observation’ and exquisite and effortless touch that it prompted criticism in the letters page for overstating the talent of a young, unproved artist. Throughout her short career Kelly received excellent reviews, with most critics commending her freshness and delicacy; the Irish Times critic, Arthur Power (qv), found her work joyful and in happy contrast to the sombreness of other Irish artists.
She married (1935) Frederick H. Boland (qv), civil servant in the Department of External Affairs, and later ambassador. The couple moved in Dublin's artistic, diplomatic, and political circles, and Kelly's commissions included George Furlong (qv), Joseph Hone (qv), Frank O'Connor (qv), Michael Scott (qv), and Seán T. O'Kelly (qv) and his wife. As well as showing annually in the RHA, she had solo exhibitions in the Dawson Gallery and the Dublin Painters Gallery during the 1940s, and also contributed to the Oireachtas and Living Art exhibitions. Collaboration with Nano Reid (qv) resulted in a series of wall frescoes depicting Irish labour, which were commissioned for the Four Provinces building in Harcourt St. (since demolished). Other commissions included a mural for Tullamore Hospital – ‘The legend of St Colum Cille’ – and a pietà for Clongowes Wood College. She worked well on large surfaces. Kelly's works tend to be restrained and harmonious, executed in pale pastel tones, with a predominance of greys, but offset by sudden bright colour. S. B. Kennedy, who compared her to the French artist, Marie Laurentin, has commended her ‘lively brushwork, [and] strong feeling for light, air and space’ (Kennedy, 58).
After her husband's appointment as ambassador to London in 1950, she concentrated on her role as ambassador's wife. Her informal but effective approach is encapsulated by her advice to a younger wife: ‘Don't talk shop with [diplomats], they hear enough of it. Tell them dirty stories and make them laugh.’ However, between duties as wife and mother to five children, her career as artist suffered. Her last exhibited works were two Connemara landscapes in the Living Art exhibition of 1954. The NGI purchased her portraits of O'Kelly and Furlong in the 1980s, and she featured in an exhibition of Irish women artists held in the NGI and the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1987, but her career was truncated. She died 25 August 2002 in Dublin, aged 94. The poet Eavan Boland is her daughter.