The Sunday Times

Eileen Gray, an unsung heroine of Irish design, is finally coming home. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret — or Le Corbusier, to use the name he later took and by which he is generally known — was arguably the greatest architect of the 20th century; and he was obsessed and haunted by E-1027, the seaside villa Eileen Gray built at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in the south of France in 1929. Over the decades he sought to possess Gray's "maison en bord de mer" in a multitude of ways. It may have been the last thing he saw before dying of a heart attack while swimming off the rocks beneath E-1027 in 1965. After he died, the footpath serving the area was designated Promenade Le Corbusier. In time, as Gray's reputation faded, some would even credit him with the design of her villa. In 1907, Gray — the only Irish person wholly immersed in the pioneering work of the modern movement — moved to Paris, taking an apartment at 21 rue Bonaparte, which she maintained until her death on October 31, 1976, at the age of 98. The furniture from her Paris apartment forms the centrepiece of the Eileen Gray exhibition at the National Museum, Collins Barracks, which opens to the public on Friday.