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WHIPPING THE HERRING — Survival and Celebration in Ninetenth-Century Irish Art

WHIPPING THE HERRING — Survival and Celebration in Ninetenth-Century Irish Art

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ed. Peter Murray

essays by Julian Campbell, Tom Dunne, Claudia Kinmonth, Peter Murray

ISBN 978 0948037 313      264 pages (hardback)    22.5x24.5cm    204 illus    index  


Whipping the Herring
provides a fascinating visual record of everyday life in the towns, villages and countryside of Ireland two centuries ago. Featuring four superb, insightful essays, there are numerous images of fairs and festivals, pubs and pilgrimages, marriages and wakes. There is a particular emphasis on the lives of ordinary people, struggling to make do – and often enjoying life – on very limited means. There are scenes, too, of relative prosperity, for Ireland had periods of economic growth in the nineteenth century. Seventy key works are featured, each of which is accompanied by an individual text on the work and its artist.


EXTRACTS

"The Classical and Neo-Classical casts may have had a salutary effect on students at the School of Art, but there is also a strong tendency towards Realism evident in Cork art throughout the nineteenth century. A port city, its wealth based on mercantile attributes of measurement and quantification, like Belfast, Limerick and Waterford, Cork was well placed to become the regional centre for a Realist art movement. Although the houses of the merchants and bishops in the eighteenth century were embellished with Rococo plasterwork, by the early nineteenth century there was less taste for the fanciful; instead paintings describing people and the world in down-to-earth terms became valued. Nathaniel Grogan’s and Daniel MacDonald’s best paintings show street traders mixing cheerfully with wealthy merchants. Davis might have added to his list of émigré Irish artists William Turner de Lond, who depicted similar cheerful social confusion in Ennis and Limerick.
          By contrast, in Dublin, with its Castle ‘court’, a refined landscape and pastel portrait tradition at the Drawing Schools, and a nervous anxiety at the Academy to live up to its royal charter, patronage tended to follow a diluted English taste. There was an aspiration towards grandeur and the heroic, while the Academy laid down strict definitions on what artists might paint. Middle-class art collectors opted frequently for coy and sentimental scenes. On the other hand, the regional port cities, broadly speaking, lacked a substantial middle-class audience and this inhibited the growth of an art market based on qualities of sentimental appeal. The fact that the majority of artists in Whipping the Herring are from Munster perhaps reflects a more laissez-faire cultural approach in a city that cared less for titles and status than making money supplying the world with firkins of beef and salted butter. Like Belfast, Cork’s status as a port city created an atmosphere less conducive to sentimental art than Dublin, which preferred an escapist art that glossed over social problems. The Realism that flourished in Munster saw artists such as Robert Lowe Stopford, James Mahoney and James Brenan producing works of reportage and social commentary. Later in the nineteenth century, when the west of Ireland became popular as a destination for artists, artists tended to portray its heroic or picturesque qualities. Theirs remained essentially an outsider’s view. In Cork, a small self-contained city, the artists were insiders, casting a quizzical and occasionally satiric eye over those they knew well."

— from the essay by Peter Murray

"Irish interior scenes of the early nineteenth century derive from contrasting traditions – classic Dutch interiors of the seventeenth century, the genre subjects of William Mulready and David Wilkie, and the pretty cottage scenes popular in the Victorian period. In England, the novelist George Eliot criticised the ‘softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people’s hardships picturesque’. However, paintings by Brownlow hauntingly echo the peasant interiors of the Le Nain brothers in seventeenth-century France. In the second half of the century, French Realist painters such as François Bonvin and Leon Lhermitte, and Josef Israels in Holland, introduced greater naturalism and pathos into the interior genre. Honoré Daumier’s wash painting La Soupe (1852, Louvre) shows a ragged working-class family ravenously eating their soup at the kitchen table while the mother breastfeeds her baby, while Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters (1885, van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) shows a Dutch peasant family crowding around the small table in their dingy cabin.
          Irish artists never reached this degree of social realism. Yet Aloysius O’Kelly’s Connemara interiors are striking in their tangible realism and the cleanliness of the cottages and their inhabitants. There are several unexpected features in representations of some west of Ireland interiors which contradict the stereotype of cramped two-roomed cabins often described by writers. The first is the spaciousness of rooms, with lofty ceilings, in paintings by Burton and O’Kelly. Moreover, in comparison with Wilkie’s untidy and ambiguous caverns, O’Kelly’s interiors have a well-swept, cared-for quality. The hearth, being a central feature in some pictures, brings a warmth and homeliness to a sparse scene. Also, in comparison with the cottage interiors of James Brenan in county Cork, and similar subjects by Continental artists, where the table is placed in the centre of the room, the kitchen table (if present at all) is placed against the wall in some west of Ireland pictures. This may have been to allow more space in a small room for storytelling, music or weaving, or for sitting around the hearth. Or the table may have been pushed back to allow the artist to include more details of the room."

— from the essay by Julian Campbell

 

CONTENTS

Foreword  John O’Donoghue TD    7

Realism versus Romanticism in framing National Identity  Peter Murray    10-23

The representation of everyday life in Irish Painting of the 19th Century: the European context  Julian Campbell    233

Rural Life through Artists’ Eyes: an interdisciplinary approach  Claudia Kinmonth    34-45

The Dark Side of the Irish Landscape: depictions of the rural poor, 1760-1850 Tom Dunne    46-61

COLOUR PLATES
Thematic Listing of Works   62-67
1 – Festivals, Fairs and Pilgrimages    68-81
2 – Social Occasions    82-121
3 – Famine and Emigration, Rents and Evictions   122-137
4 – Education and Improvement   138-147
5 – Funerals and Weddings   148-163

6 – Working Life   164-227

Representations of Ireland in the Illustrated London News  Peter Murray    230-257
Bibliography / Artists Index and List of Illustrations / Index of Artists    263-264 _____

COLOUR PLATES (in order of appearance)

all 70 key works are accompanied by an individual text on the work and its artist

1 – Festivals, Fairs and Pilgrimages

Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807), Whipping the Herring Out of Town, c.1800
James Beale (1798-1879), Skellig Night on the South Mall, Cork, 1845
Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), Snap-Apple Night, n.d.
Maria Spilsbury Taylor (1776-1820), Pattern at Glendalough, c.1816
Daniel MacDonald (1821-1853), Sidhe Gaoithe / The Fairy Blast, c.1841

George Petrie (1790-1866), The Last Circuit of Pilgrims at Clonmacnoise, c.1828

 2 – Social Occasions

William Brocas (1794-1868) [attrib.] Donnybrook Fair, n.d.

Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807) The Potato Market, c.1800
Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807), An Irish Fair, c.1780
Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807), The Dry Bridge at Blarney, c.1790
James Mahoney (1810-1879), The Stone Bridge at Blarney, 1850
William Turner de Lond (fl.c.1820-26), Market Scene, Ennis, county Clare, 1820
William Henry Turner (fl.1850-87), Horse Fair, 1862
John George Mulvany (1766-1838), Figures Outside an Inn, nr Carlingford Lough, 1826
Daniel MacDonald (1821-1853), Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne, 1847
Daniel MacDonald (1821-1853), Cork Characters, 1843
Richard Thomas Moynan (1856-1906), A Travelling Show, 1892
Charles Henry Cook (c.1830-c.1906), St Patrick’s Day, 1867
after Erskine Nicol (1825-1904), Outward Bound (Dublin), c.1852
Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807), The Interior of an Inn, n.d.
Samuel Watson (1818-c.1867), The Irish Jig, 1845
William S Brunton (fl.1854-71, d.1878), Christmas Morning in an Irish Country Shop Keeper’s – giving the customary present, 1854
Erskine Nicol (1825-1904), A Shebeen at Donnybrook, 1851
Jack B Yeats (1871-1957), The Dancer (Rosses Point, Sligo), 1921 
Jack B Yeats (1871-1957), The Country Shop, 1912  

3 – Famine and Emigration, Rents and Evictions

Daniel MacDonald (1821-1853), The Discovery of the Potato Blight in Ireland, c.1847
GMW Atkinson (1806-1884), Emigrants at Cork, c.1840, c.1840
Robert Richard Scanlon (fl.1832-1876), Emigrants Awaiting Embarkation, West Cork, 1852
Charles Henry Cook (c.1830-c.1906), Awaiting the Emigrant Ship, 1867
David Frederick Markham (1800-1853), Collecting the Rent at Manor Hamilton, c.1847
Alfred Concanen (1835-1886), The Rent Collector, c.1870
Daniel MacDonald (1821-1853) [attrib.], The Eviction, c.1850 

Henry Jones Thaddeus (1859-1929), An Irish Eviction, county Galway, Ireland, 1889

 

4 – Education and Improvement

Anonymous (‘Schools Sketchbook’), Ballinaboy School near the Monastry 19th Augt 1850, 1850 
Nathaniel Grogan (1740-1807), The Bantry Pact (or The Bantry Bard), c.1783 
John Boyne (c.1750-1810),  The County Chronicle,1809 
Howard Helmick (1845-1907), News of the Land League, 1891

James Brenan (1837-1907), News from America, 1875

 

5 – Funerals and Weddings

Aloysius O’Kelly (1853-c.1941), Mass in a Connemara Cabin, 1883
Daniel MacDonald (1821-1853), Returning from an Irish Funeral, 1842
NA Woods (n.d.), An Irish Wake, c.1819
Frederick William Burton (1816-1900), The Aran Fisherman’s Drowned Child, n.d.
Howard Helmick (1845-1907), Bringing Home the Bride, 1883
William Magrath (1838-1918), Paddy’s Honeymoon, 1879
William Magrath (1838-1918), Ah Rory, be aisey, don’t tease me no more, c.1865
James Brenan (1837-1907), Words of Counsel, 1876

 

6 – Working Life

William Hincks (fl.1773-1797), ‘Spinning, Reeling with the Clock Reel and Boiling the Yarn’, 1783
Cornelius Varley (1781-1873), Woman Spinning in a Doorway, c.1808
George Washington Brownlow (1835-1876), A Spinning Lesson, 1874
James Brenan (1837-1907), Interior, with Woman Spinning – study from nature, south of Ireland, c.1876
James Brenan (1837-1907), Patchwork, c.1892
James Brenan (1837-1907), A Committee of Inspection (weaving, county Cork), 1877
John George Mulvany (1766-1838), Return from the Fair, 1828
Frederick Goodall (1822-1904), Irish Cabin Interior, c.1840s
Alfred Downing Fripp rws (1822-1895), In a Fisherman’s Hut, 1844
Francis William Topham rws (1808-1877), Cottage Interior, Claddagh, Galway, 1845
Revd John Rooney [alias ‘Joannes Clericus’] (c.1809-1850), Sympathy, 1847
Robert Richard Scanlon (fl.1832-1876), Drogheda to Dundalk, c.1850
Stephen O’Driscoll (c.1825-1895) [attrib.], The Postwoman, c.1860
Sir Martin Archer Shee(1769-1850), The Postman, c.1830
James Brenan (1837-1907), Like Father, Like Son, 1886
Howard Helmick (1845-1907), The Dispensary Doctor, West of Ireland, 1883
Edward Sheil (c.1834-1869), Home After Work, 1863
Aloysius O’Kelly (1853-c.1941), Feeding Hens, West of Ireland (or The Return of the Fisherman) c.1879
Erskine Nicol (1825-1904), Bliss, condition, circumstance is not the thing bliss is the same in subject or in king, 1863
William Magrath (1838-1918), A Son of the Soil, c.1879 
Hugh Charde (1858-1946), Market Woman, 1886 
Sarah Henrietta Purser (1848-1943), The Cooper’s Shop, James’s Gate Brewery, c.1887 
Henry Allan (1865-1912), The Rag Pickers, 1900 
Charles McIver Grierson (1864-1939), The Potato Gatherers in the West, 1902 
James Arthur O’Connor (c.1792-1841), The Poachers, 1835 
Samuel Lover (1797-1868), The Kelp Gatherers, 1835 
William Magrath (1838-1918), The Seaweed Girl, 1877 
Aloysius O’Kelly (1853-c.1941), Seaweed Gatherers, Connemara, c.1883 
William Henry Bartlett (1858-1932), The End of the Fair, Back to the Island, 1910 
Paul Henry (1871-1957), Launching the Currach, 1910-11 
James Humbert Craig (1878-1944), Going to Mass, c.1935 
Walter Osborne (1859-1903), The Horse Fair, Galway, 1893

Sometimes packed with people, colour and event, sometimes spare, sometimes so honest in their depiction of the hard-working poor as to be painful, the pictures also have a strong narrative sweep, dense with conviction and detail.   — Mary Leland, Irish Times

This is a magnificent and excellent study.   — Books Ireland

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