In Old Irish couple Reynell expressed the quiet dignity of the couple she encountered on her travels in Ireland and suggested their resilience against all odds. In 1915 Reynell’s friend Rose McPherson (Margaret Preston) wrote about the poverty in Ireland: ‘It is almost inconceivable … A family of nine in the ordinary course of events, and the father never hopes to earn more than seven shillings a week, how they feed them I don’t know’. (quoted in Butler, 1987).