Enfilade

From Irish Academic Press:

Jane Fenlon, Ruth Kenny, Caroline Pegum, Brendan Rooney, eds., Irish Fine Art in the Early Modern Period: New Perspectives on Artistic Practice, 1620–1820 (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2016), 276 pages, hardback ISBN: 978-1911024262, paperback ISBN: 978-1911024354, €30 / €85.

This richly illustrated book presents the latest research into Irish fine art from the 17th and 18th centuries. It is comprised of a rich selection of case studies into artistic practice that showcase the burgeoning nature of fine art media in Ireland, the quality of production, and the breadth of patronage. Investigating these signifiers of a ‘cultured’ lifestyle—their production, consumption, appreciation, display, and discourse—provides fascinating insights into the sensibility of Ireland’s minority-rule elites, and the practitioners it fostered.

Featuring contributions from emergent and established art historians, Irish Fine Art in the Early Modern Period takes its subject matter beyond the realms of academic journals, exhibitions and conferences, and presents it within a lavishly designed and vital publication that presents substantial new insights into Ireland’s artistic and social history.

Jane Fenlon is the author/editor of several books and essays on the subject of seventeenth-century Irish art and architecture, including The Ormonde Picture Collection and Clanricard’s Castle (2012). Her most recent work includes essays in Art and Architecture in Ireland, Vol. II (2014)  and in the forthcoming Cambridge History of Ireland, Vol. II ( 2017).

Ruth Kenny is a freelance curator and art historian; she is currently curator of an exhibition on the Society of Artists for the Irish Georgian Society and teaches at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin.

Caroline Pegum is an historian of British and Irish art in the late Stuart period and is currently researching a catalogue raisonné of the Irish-born portraitist Charles Jervas (1669–1739) for publication by the Walpole Society.

Brendan Rooney is Curator of Irish Art at the National Gallery of Ireland, and author/editor of numerous works on Irish art, including Thomas Roberts: Landscape and Patronage in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (2009) and Creating History: Stories of Ireland in Art (2016).

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C O N T E N T S

1  Fintan Cullen, ‘Parliament as Theatre: Francis Wheatley’s The Irish House of Commons Revisited’
2  William Laffan, ‘Theft, Concealment and Exposure: Nathaniel Hone’s The Spartan Boy’
3  Siobhan McDermott, ‘Commerce, Conquest and Change: Thomas Hickey’s John Mowbray, Calcutta Merchant, attended by a Banian and a Messenger’
4  Jacqueline Riding, ‘Artistic Connections between Dublin and London in the Early-Georgian Period: James Latham and Joseph Highmore’
5  M.G. Sullivan, ‘The “Strange and Unaccountable” John Van Nost: The Making of a Sculptural Career in Eighteenth-Century Ireland’
6  Mary Jane Boland, ‘An Irish Teniers? The Development of Paintings of Everyday Life in Ireland, c.1780–1810’
7  Jane Fenlon, ‘The Portrait Collection in the Great Hall of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin’
8  Nicola Figgis, ‘The Contribution of Foreign Artists to Cultural Life in Eighteenth-Century Dublin’
9  Elaine Hoysted, ‘Visualising the Privileged Status of Motherhood: The Commemoration of Women in Irish Funerary Monuments, c.1600–1650’

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From Four Courts Press:

Mary Clark, The Dublin Civic Portrait Collection: Patronage, Politics, and Patriotism, 1603–2013 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 238 pages, ISBN: 978-1846825842, €40 / $65.

Beginning in the early 17th century and continuing to the present day, the city of Dublin has built up a portrait collection that is unique on the island of Ireland in terms of range and diversity and is brilliantly expressive of the political aspirations and realities that have informed its creation. The collection contains sixty-six works in oil-on-canvas and eight statues in bronze and marble. These can be placed in three principal categories: royal personages; lord lieutenants of Ireland; and lord mayors and aldermen of Dublin. It includes works by Irish artists Thomas Hickey, Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Martin Cregan, Stephen Catterson Smith, Dermod O’Brien, Robert Ballagh and Carey Clarke and by leading English portraitists including Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Sir William Beechey, and Sir Thomas Lawrence.

This book contains a catalogue of the entire collection with an introduction placing it within the broader context of civic imagery and regalia, giving due regard to ceremony, heraldry, dress and accoutrements of office. The Dublin collection is placed within its historical context to show how developments in Dublin and in Ireland as a whole influenced its formation. This lavishly illustrated book illuminates the complex relationship between politics, pageantry, art and history in the Irish capital over a sustained period of 400 years.

Mary Clark is the Dublin City Archivist and curator of the Dublin Civic Portrait Collection.

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