Fintan Cullen. Sources in Irish Art. A Reader

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

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Fintan Cullen

Sources in Irish Art. A Reader

Cork University Press, 2000

[1] Text of the back cover:

"Sources in Irish Art: A Reader is the first comprehensive collection of documentary sources relating to the study of Irish art from the eighteenth century to the present day. Public exhibition reviews, comments from private letters and journals as well as polemical and theoretical essays illustrate what was being said and thought about artistic development in Ireland over the past three centuries. The anthology clearly illustrates the practical and theoretical parallels with both literary and other artistic traditions, which the visual tradition in Ireland enjoys. It features the work of pivotal figures in the discussion of Irish art including Edmund Burke, James Barry and Thomas Davis as well as contemporary commentators such as Richard Kearney and Luke Gibbons..."

Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Edmund Burke, about 1770, London, National Portrait Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[2] And again, from the editor’s introduction: “In tracing a documentary-based history of Irish involvement in the visual arts, this book is initially indebted to the precedent set by the “Sources and Documents” series published by Prentice-Hall a generation or more ago, which made available a wide range of material from 1400 B.C. to the midtwentieth century” [editor's note: see, in the Mazzaferro Library, the volumes dedicated to ancient Rome (by JJ Pollitt), Greece (always by Pollitt), the art of the early Middle Ages (by Caecilia Davis -Weyer), Byzantine art (edited by Cyril Mango), Gothic art between 1140 and 1450 (edited by Teresa G. Frisch), Italian art between 1400 and 1500 (by E. Creighton Gilbert) and Italian art between 1500 and 1600 (edited by Robert Klein and Henri Zerner] (p. 13). “With the exception of Edmund Burke..., Ireland has not produced a major theoretician of art and thus, to someone new to Irish Studies, many of the names that appear in this reader will be unknown. Great names such as George Berkeley and W.B. Yeats do appear..., but... this book is more concerned with identifying a series of national and at times more specifically local discourses, as opposed to attempting to rewrite the history of European art history.... Certain texts included here, most particularly Burke’s Enquiry and perhaps Berkeley’s travel journals, are not hard to find in university libraries, but the vast majority of extracts have not been anthologized before and, apart from the texts that were published in the last generation or so, many are difficult to locate.” (pp. 14-15). Cullen does not fail to point out, however, that the choice of the passages was not easy, given the need to first define how "Irish" were the themes, theories, and biographies of the authors, in a land that for centuries has seen a very difficult and tragic coexistence with England, which is certainly not the case here to recall. This has however also led to phenomena of cultural appropriation of one country against the other.

John Smybert, Portrait of George Berkeley, 1730. London, National Portrait Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

[3] The volume contains fifty texts anthologized in three different sections: Word and Image, Making and Viewing and Creating Histories. “Section I, Word and Image, is divided into two sections: “Aesthetic Viewpoints” and “Focus on the Individual”. The first offers a range of judgements on art as well as theoretical views ranging from philosophers such as George Berkeley to the poet and political commentator Thomas Davis to the present director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The “Focus on the Individual” section moves from Anthony Pasquin’s late-eighteenth-century dictionary of artists through a high Victorian celebration of the émigré artist Daniel Maclise to a close analysis of the works of such contemporaries as Louis Le Brocquy and Alice Maher. Section II, Making and Viewing, is equally divided in two, offering a range of documents informing us on “Patronage and Education” and “Display”. The emphasis here is on the nuts and bolts aspects of art provision in Ireland from the setting up of the Dublin Society Schools in the mid-eighteenth century to recent, late-twentieth-century government attitudes to the arts. Public and private patronage is highlighted just as personal reactions to display are juxtaposed with published statements in journals and newspapers. Finally, Section III, Creating Histories, supplies the reader with judicious extracts from half a dozen seminal essays, and books which have appeared over the past quarter century, each offering us a more rigorous approach to the discussion of Irish visual imagery than had been available prior to the 1970s” (p. 23). Each section is preceded by an introduction written by the curator; equally, every text anthologized comes after a short, but always clear presentation sheet that allows the reader to frame the passages in a broader context.

Mather Brown, Portrait of John Williams, aka Anthony Pasquin, about 1790
Source: Sotheby's via Wikimedia Commons

[4] The index of the volume is displayed below:

Section I Word and Image

Part One) Aesthetic Viewpoints

• George Berkeley, from First Journal in Italy, 1717;

After a short trip to Italy in 1713, George Berkeley (1685-1753), renowned Irish philosopher, made a second and much longer journey between 1716 and 1720. Berkeley left four notebooks, in which he testified his impressions, sometimes betraying some bitterness towards the Catholic Church (he was an Anglican priest), but expressing his great interest in the remains of ancient civilizations, especially the Greek one. The pages in the anthology describe the first impression of the city of Rome (January 1717).

• Edmund Burke, from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1759

Burke was born in Ireland, but then moved to London, where he ran a successful career in politics. Moreover, he was also the author of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, one of the most famous treatises of aesthetics in the eighteenth century. “The extract included here from the Enquiry discusses the difference between clearness and obscurity, as well as the differences between poetry and painting” (p. 37). The extract comes from the second edition of the work, published in 1759, while the first edition was released anonymously two years before. Other pages of the treatise, this time in Italian, were presented by Marinella Pigozzi in Itinerario critico. Fonti per la storia dell’arte nel Seicento e nel Settecento (Critical Itinerary. Sources for the History of Art in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries).

• Daniel Webb, from An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting, 1760

An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting was written by the Irish art critic Daniel Webb (about 1719 - 1798) in 1760. Webb had visited Italy in 1755. Here he had met Anton Raphael Mengs, and he had become a close friend of him. It is certain that Mengs permitted Webb to have access to the manuscript of his Reflections on Beauty (which were published in 1762). The story also had unpleasant aspects: a few years later, Johann Joachim Winckelmann publicly accused Webb of plagiarism of Mengs’ work, arguing that the Inquiry was too similar to the Reflections on Beauty to be a mere coincidence, specifically in the part that was dedicated to the evaluation of Raphael’s art. Nevertheless (or perhaps for this reason) Webb’s treatise met considerable fortune in Europe. The work is organized in the form of dialogue. "It covers [editor's note: several] areas of concern ranging from “Our Capacity to Judge of Painting”, “The Antiquity and Usefulness of Painting”, “Of Design”, “Of Colouring”, “Of the Cleare Obscure” and, as in this extract, “Of Composition”. This section... shows Webb’s preference for the controlled classicism of Raphael and Leonardo over the elegance of the seventeenth-century Baroque painters” (p. 43).

• Richard Mansergh St George, Letter to an artist, early 1790s;

• James Barry, from Works, 1809. Two excerpts are included:

a) from The Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England, 1775;

b) from Letter to the Society of Arts, 1793;

James Barry, Selfportrait, 1803, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland
Source: Wikimedia Commons

James Barry (1741-1806) - as Fintan Cullen reports in the introductory fiche to this passage - was one of the leading painters who were born in Ireland, and yet his art did not find fortune in London, where he spent most of his life. Barry’s education was strongly influenced by the long Italian stay (1765-1771), that he was able to accomplish thanks to the generous sponsorship by Edmund Burke. Back from Italy, Barry settled in London and here he tried to "convert" the local artists to the respect for tradition and the Italian Renaissance classicism. Also religious reasons were not alien to Barry’s action: he was a devout Catholic and it soon becomes clear that the theories of an Irish Catholic were viewed with suspicion in Anglican England. The extract presented in Cullen’s anthology "highlights the importance of religion in his thought and work. Written on his return to London, the Inquiry (1775) dismisses an argument put forward by, among others, Johann Joachim Winckelmann..., that Britain’s temperate climate prevented the development of a visual tradition comparable to that of the Mediterranean countries. In his counter-attack, Barry gives the role of religion a more central position in the history of European development "(p. 51).

The work has been translated into Italian by A. Mochi with the title Un’inchiesta sulle reali ed immaginarie ostruzioni all’acquisizione delle arti in Inghilterra (A survey on the real and imaginary obstructions to the acquisition of the arts in England) (master thesis at the University of Pisa 2001-02). An excerpt, with the translation of the text published here at p. 52 from the fourth last line onwards is published by Chiara Savettieri in Dal Neoclassicismo al Romanticismo (From Neoclassicism to Romanticism) (pp. 575-577).

All the known corrispondence of James Barry are now available on-line at http://www.texte.ie/barry/ (the letters are edited by Tim McLoughlin)

• Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) from Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, 1824;

It may seem strange that, in an anthology of sources of the history of art, there is also room for the work of a novelist like Lady Morgan, but – as Fintan Cullen signals - "her 1824 study of Rosa was the first art historical biography written by an Irish person as well as being the first full-length biography in English of a foreign artist. It began as a novel but turned into a biography, and she used original sources, such as seventeenth-centuries biography and Rosa’s letters, none of which had ever before appeared in English "(p. 59).

• David Wilkie, letters from Ireland, 1835;

Here are displayed two letters of the Scottish artist David Wilkie (1785-1841). The letters reported impressions from the trip that the artist performed in Ireland during 1835.

• Thomas Davis. Two excerpts are included:

a) “National Art”, 1843;

b) “Hints for Irish Historical Paintings”, 1843;

Thomas Davis was co-founder of The Nation newspaper, the organ of the Young Ireland movement, supporting the action of the Irish political leader Daniel O'Connell (at that time leader of the Repeal movement, namely a movement rejecting the political union of Ireland with England). Both papers presented in this anthology were published in 1843, “their focus being on the definition and content of a distinctly Irish national art. The first essay discusses the relevance of a national art and how it can be achieved in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. The second piece is less an essay than a list. Davis cites a range of historical events which could be painted by Irish artists and in the process shows his prodigious learning” (p. 65).

• George Petrie, from William Stokes, Life and Labours in Art and Archaelogy of George Petrie, 1868;

• W.B. Yeats, “Art and Ideas”, 1913;

• Elizabeth Thompson, Lady Butler, from An Autobiography, 1922;

• Mainie Jellett, “My Voyage and Discovery”, 1943;

• Tom Duddy, “Irish Art Criticism – A Provincialism of the Right”, 1987;

• Declan McGonagle, “Looking Beyond Regionalism”, 1990.

Part Two) Focus on the Individual

• Anthony Pasquin, from An Authentic History of the Professors of Painting... in Ireland, 1796;

• William Godwin, from The Looking Glass, 1805;

• Francis Sylvester Mahony, from “The Painter, Barry”, 1835;

• W. Justin O’Driscoll, from A Memoir of Daniel Maclise, 1871. Two writings are included:

a) Illustrating Lady Morgan and Moore’s “Melodies”;
b) Charles Dickens on Maclise, 1870;

Daniel Maclise, The Death of  Admiral Nelson, 1859-1864, Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery
Source: Wikimedia Commons

• John Lavery, from The Life of a Painter, 1940;

• Ernie O’Malley, “The Paintings of Jack B.Yeats”, 1945;

• Paul Henry, from An Irish Portrait, 1951;

• Richard Kearney, from Transitions, 1988;

• Fionna Barber, from Familiar: Alice Maher, 1995.

Section II Making and Viewing

Part One) Patronage and Education

• Samuel Madden. Two excerpts are displayed:

a) from Reflections and Resolutions, 1738;

b) from A Letter to the Dublin-Society, 1739;

• John Parker, from Correspondence of the Earl of Charlemont. Two letters are transcribed:

a) Rome, 1755;

b) Rome, 1758.

The Earl of Charlemont (i.e. James Caulfield, who lived between 1728 and 1799) was arguably the most important Irish collector and patron in the XVII Century. The Count travelled to Italy and, at the age of 23, founded an academy for British and Irish artists in Rome, led by the English painter John Parker, who, in addition to focusing on his own artistic production, also acted as a trade agent of the noble Irishman on the local market. John Parker arranged that Lord Charlemont would make the acquaintance of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The collaboration revealed fruitful. The Earl promoted and financed a collection of etchings by Piranesi entitled Le Antichità Romane (The Roman Antiquities), initially scheduled in a single volume, but then extended to four. The publication appeared in 1756 (the etchings of the book can be seen on pp. 166-319 of Luigi Ficacci, Piranesi. The Complete Etchings). The cover page of Piranesi’s work was a tribute to his illustrious financier: therein, the name and emblem of Lord Charlemont inscribed on a marble tombstone; “the oval family crest sits to the left, illusionistically embedded in the architectural framework amidst a wealth of antiquity” (p. 167). Yet the relationship between artist and his noble patron were quickly spoiled for matters related to grimy financial disputes: in fact, the Count, in financial difficulties, refrained from paying the artist; the latter retaliated with a series of satirical cartoons which were assembled in 1757 in a pamphlet entitled Lettere di giustificazione scritte a Milord Charlemont e a’ di lui agenti di Roma dal Signor Piranesi (Justification letters written to my Lord Charlemont and his agents in Rome by Mr. Piranesi) (again, see the work by Luigi Ficacci, pp. 320-331). The cover page of Le Antichità Romane was also soon replaced by a new one, in which the dedication to the Earl was replaced by one for the Roman people, while the coat of arms of Lord Charlemont appears there in a state of irreversible degradation.

The two letters by Parker to the Earl, published in this anthology, testimony the reports on artwork available for a possible purchase (the first, dated 26 July 1755) and the unpleasant events linked to the deterioration of relations with Piranesi (the second, written April 5, 1758), respectively.

Giovan Battista Piranesi, Frontispiece of the Antichità Romane without dedication to the Earl of Charlemont

• The Earl of Charlemont, Letters to Hogarth, 1759-1760;

The Earl of Charlemont (i.e. James Caulfield, who lived between 1728 and 1799) was arguably the most important collector and patron of the Irish 1700. Unfortunately, often the count ran into serious economic difficulties, as shown in the same anthology by his difficult relations with Giovanni Battista Piranesi. This is also witnessed by the two letters herein (respectively dated August 19, 1759 and January 2, 1760), addressed to the English artist William Hogarth, to whom the Count had commissioned a portrait and from whom he had also bought a couple of paintings; he was however forced, as he often did, to plea for delays in the payment of the due compensation.

• Thomas Campbell, from An Essay on Perfecting the Fine Arts, 1767;

“Thomas Campbell (1733-95)... was awarded the Dublin Society’s first honorary silver medal for his pamphlet An Essay on Perfecting the Fine Arts. The Essay supported the teaching of drawing... as being “useful in the manifactures”, but, as shown in this extract, Campbell also called for the teaching of oil painting and the setting up of a permanent collection of works by the old masters” (p. 176). The essay is dated 1767.

• Edmund Burke, letters to James Barry, 1769-74;

Edmund Burke, author of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, was the one who financed the English painter James Barry in his long stay in Italy (1765-1771). In his letters, Barry enthusiastically informed Burke of his views on Italian art, while the older man, writing from London, offered the painter advice, both in terms of social behaviour and artistic development” (p. 180). Of the three letters written to Barry by Burke and reported here, two were written in the period of the Italian journey of the young painter (are dated 1769), while the third goes back to 1774, when Barry was already back home and had moved to London.

• Hugh Douglas Hamilton, letters to Canova, 1794-1802;

Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808), famous portrait painter, lived in Italy from 1782 to 1792. During those years he became a friend of Antonio Canova. Four letters are displayed, written between 1794 and 1802; they confirm the link between the two artists. “The letters are among the few private documents we have from a late-eighteenth-century Irish artist which state personal feelings about art and indicate the local demand for portraiture and the paucity of alternative forms of patronage” (p. 186).

Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Portrait of a Young Gentleman,  XVIII century
Source: Sotheby's, via Wikimedia Commons

• John O’Keeffe, from Recollections, 1826;

• Benjamin Robert Haydon, from Diary, 1841;

• Stewart Blacker, from Irish Art and Irish Artists, 1845;

“Stewart Blacker (1813-81) was instrumental in founding the Royal Irish Art Union – or the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Ireland, by the Purchase and Diffusion of the Works of Living Artists. This extract from his 1845 essay on Irish art is part of an address delivered on 18 December 1844 to the pupils of the Royal Dublin Society Schools of Design. His theme was “the formation of a really good and flourishing Native School of Art” (pp. 195-196).

• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “McCracken”, 1853;

• Richard Robert Madden, from The United Irishmen, 1858;

• Robert Elliott, from Art and Ireland, 1906;

• W.B. Yeats, “The Gift”, 1913;

• George Moore, from Vale, 1914;

• Hugh Lane, Codicil to his Will, 1915;

• Thomas Bodkin, from Irish Free State, Official Handbook, 1932;

• Ciarán Benson, from The Place of the Arts in Irish Education, 1979.

Part Two) Display

• William Drennan e Martha McTier, from Drennan-Mc Tier Letters, 1797-1807;

• Dublin Evening Post, 1800-4;

• Anonymous Diarist, Dublin exhibitions, 1801;

• The Nation. Two articles are transcribed:

a) Denny Lane, RHA Exhibition Review, 1843;
b) Thomas Davis, “The Spirit of the Nation”, 1844;

• Hugh Lane, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, 1908;

• Thomas MacGreevy, “Picasso, Maimie [sic] Jellett and Dublin Criticism”, 1923;

• Brian O’Nolan, from The Irish Times, 1942;

• Michael Scott and James Johnson Sweeney, from Rosc, 1967.

Section III Creating Histories

• Brian O’Doherty, from The Irish Imagination, 1971;

• Cyril Barrett, from “Irish Nationalism and Art”, 1975;

• Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, from The Painters of Ireland, 1978;

• Joan Fowler, from “Art and Politics in the Eighties”, 1990;

• Luke Gibbons, from “A Shadowy Narrator”, 1991;

• Catherine Nash, from “Gender and Landscape in Ireland”, 1993.