Geraldine O'Brien was born in Limerick in 1922 into a distinguished artistic family. Her mother Cicely O'Brien was a well known artist and her cousin was the renowned Dermod O'Brien, president of the Royal Hibernian Academy. Other relations included Kitty Wilmer O'Brien RHA, who was president of the Watercolour Society of Ireland, Rose Brigid Ganly RHA and Kitty Clausen, daughter of Sir George Clausen RA. Geraldine herself is a great great-grand-daughter of William Smith O'Brien, leader of the Yopung Irelanders' Rebellion of 1848, who at the time was sentenced to death, but later transported to Van Dieman's Land. Geraldine showed her talent while still at school in Dublin, twice winning prizes wuh the Royal Drawing Society, London. In 1939, aged 17, she went to study for a year with the Dublin born plein air artist Stanhope Alexander Forbes in Cornwall, where she was allowed to wash his brushes which she regarded as a great privelege. Her progress must have been rapid because in the folllowing year, 1940, she exhibited at the RHA and regularly until the 1990's. In 1948 Geraldine married David Hely-Hutchinson, and they settlerd in her family home at Parteen, Co.Limerick. She has always had a great love of her garden, both as a gardener and a flower painter and it is as a flower painter that she has made her name. These delightful floral studies were composed of primroses, daffodils and any manner of garden flower that caught her and and were picked, arranged and painted in her studio which she always referred to playfully as "the piggery"