Praeger, Sophia Rosamond (1867–1954), sculptor, illustrator, author, and poet, was born 15 April 1867 at Woodburn House, Holywood, Co. Down, the only daughter and the third of the six children of Willem Emilius Praeger, a linen merchant who had emigrated to Belfast from The Hague in Holland, and his wife, Maria, the daughter of a local merchant, Robert Patterson (qv). Rosamond was educated privately at home and, following her father's death in 1881, at Sullivan School in Holywood. In 1886 she entered Belfast Government School of Art, where she won several prizes for drawing, and enlisted as a member of the Ramblers' Sketching Club, which had evolved from art classes organised by John Vinycomb (qv) and Thomas Crane (brother of Walter Crane) at the firm of Marcus Ward (qv). Visits to London from 1884 resulted in her enrolment in October 1888 at the Slade School of Art, where she won several prizes and a scholarship. Under the influence of her friend and mentor the English artist Ellen Mary Rope, and her principal teacher at the Slade, Alphonse Legros, she became one of the leading Irish contributors to the New Sculpture movement.
Praeger left London in June 1892 and after a short time in Paris returned to Holywood. Between 1893 and 1895 she was a member of the Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club, whose excursions cultivated her interests in botany, antiquity, and folklore. In 1896 she illustrated two children's books for Marcus Ward & Co., although she had begun working as a magazine illustrator some years earlier, and in the same year wrote and illustrated her first book, A visit to Babyland. During the next two decades she wrote and illustrated some twenty-five children's books. Her style synthesised the influence of Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott with the naturalist, antiquarian, and folk influences of her Ulster circle. As well as books she also completed illustrations for the Irish Homestead and Gaelic League pageants and designs for the Irish Women's Suffrage Federation. In 1894 she rented a studio in Donegall Square West, Belfast, then a year later moved to Waring Street. She then relocated her studio outside Belfast to Ballinderry, to a former hall of the Plymouth Brethren. In 1914 she transferred her studio to Holywood, where she lived with her mother, first to High Street and then to Hibernia Street.
Praeger's work as a sculptor falls into four categories: architectural decoration (for churches, schools, hospitals, and private houses) principally for a network of patrons in the presbyterian community; memorials, among them those to S. A. Stewart (qv), Thomas Andrews (qv) (engineer of the Titanic), and Edward Carson (qv), as well as five first world war memorials; portraiture, including several busts of her distinguished brother Robert Lloyd Praeger (qv); and small-scale domestic sculpture in either statuette or bas-relief form, sometimes brightly coloured. She also produced medals, toys, fountains, and garden sculpture. Her undisputed masterpieces are the Inglis memorial at the city cemetery, Belfast (1905), the allegorical figures of Art, Literature, and Science on the façade of the Carnegie Library in Belfast (1908), and Finola, at the Causeway School, Bushmills (1912). She was often assisted in her work by the architects Young & MacKenzie, the monumental mason James E. Winter, and later the English sculptor Morris Harding, as in the case of the decoration of St Anne's cathedral, Belfast.
Praeger played a significant role in the late Victorian and early twentieth-century Irish art world. She first exhibited at the Belfast Ramblers’ Sketching Club in 1888 and contributed at least ten pieces up to 1895. From 1896 to 1929 she contributed almost annually to the Belfast Art Society, serving as a committee member in 1901 and acting as vice-president in 1902, 1903, and 1906. She showed at the Royal Academy, London, between 1891 and 1922, at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, between 1901 and 1911, and once at the Paris Salon, in 1910. In addition she held two important joint exhibitions, in 1924 with Wilhelmina Geddes (qv) and in 1930 with Hans Iten. In 1931 she was one of the founder members of the Ulster Academy of Arts, where she exhibited until 1949. At the Royal Hibernian Academy she made fifty-three contributions (1899–1944) and was made an honorary academician (1927). Other honours included an MA (1938) from QUB and an MBE (1939).
As well as being a member of the Guild of Irish Art Workers, Praeger showed with the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland four times between 1895 and 1921, and from 1895 she showed at the exhibitions of the Irish Decorative Art Association in Portrush. She served as president of the Ulster Academy of Arts (1941–3) and was appointed to the council for entertainment, music and the arts advisory committee (1943). During the 1940s she often lectured to the students at Belfast School of Art, encouraging their appreciation of sculptural traditions, especially the classics. She was also a benefactor of the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and the National Trust. In 1947 she published a collection of poems, Old fashioned verses and sketches, and in 1950–51 showed three pieces at the newly formed Royal Ulster Academy.
By 1953, although still sculpting and writing, Praeger relinquished her studio and moved to Rock Cottage at Craigavad, Cultra, Co. Down, with her brother Robert. She died 17 April 1954 and was buried in the family grave at Holywood, whose elegant headstone depicting Hope and Memory she had earlier designed.