MARITIME PAINTINGS OF CORK, 1700-2000

by Peter Murray

ISBN 978 0948037 221     240 pages (hardhback)    24x30cm    137 illus    artists index  

Long-famed for its safe anchorages and aesthetic beauty, Cork Harbour, the largest western port of Europe, has for many years been a favourite subject of artists. This sumptuous large-format book, published to coincide with the exhibition organised by the Crawford Art Gallery and the Port of Cork, tells the story of the harbour and the River Lee from the 17th century to the present. Over 80 paintings by 31 artists are reproduced as full-page colour plates, along with engravings, maps and additional documentary material.

The earliest representations of the harbour relate to military campaigns: Pacata Hibernia includes an engraving of fortifications at Haulbowline at the beginning of the 17th century, while one of the earliest views of that same island, painted by William van der Hagen in 1738, shows it surrounded by shipping. Peter Monamy’s paintings of sailing vessels of the Cork Water Club, founded in 1720, are fascinating records of the birth of yachting as a sport. A century later, the Atkinson family of marine painters, who lived in Cobh, produced many views of naval, transport and emigrant ships in the harbour. Artists Robert Lowe Stopford and John Bosanquet also recorded social and industrial developments in the 19th century, including the building of steamships in Cork, and the development of dockyards, quays, railways and fortifications. The working life of the present-day harbour, with its ferries, trawlers and tankers, forms the subject matter of Mark Hathaway’s watercolours, while Kenneth King has depicted most, if not all, of the ships of the Irish Naval Service.

Each colour plate is accompanied by a detailed explanatory text by Peter Murray, while a chronological history of the harbour, by the same author, provides additional background information.

EXTRACT

"This book includes representations, in paintings, drawings and prints, of the maritime traffic of Cork Harbour over the past two and a half centuries. Although a brief period when compared with the six millennia or so that ships have plied the waters off the southern Irish coast, during this time the steady growth of trans-Atlantic traffic transformed Ireland from a country on the outer fringes of the known continent into an important link between the Old World and the New.
         Internationally, Cork is well known as a trans-Atlantic liner terminal, and sometimes remembered also for its share of maritime tragedies: it was the last port of call for the liner Titanic, and the final resting place of the torpedoed Lusitania. The maritime paintings of Cork can be read in two ways. On one level, these images of fine ships cresting the waves are a splendid evocation of the era of steam and sail, full of the romance of travel and adventure. On another level they tell a more prosaic story, of tonnages, taxation and capacities. Sailing ships are creations of great beauty, but they are also instruments of state policy. The streams of colourful flags fluttering from masts identify vessels in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping. Noble men-of-war, impeccably turned out and riding at anchor, are also weapons of great destructive power.
           The ships depicted in this book, along with their cargoes and passengers, transformed the harbour, by turns, into a place both exotic and prosaic. They also defined Cork’s position in the development of a modern global economy. Virtually none of the ships has survived, making these paintings all the more valuable as a record of an important part of Ireland’s social, industrial and political heritage.

— from the introduction by Peter Murray