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«This dazzling collection of essays draws out the complexity of Ireland's connections with British imperialism. The volume takes an admirably wide-ranging and generous approach to Irish visual culture, showing how features such as Irish fashion, architecture, and museum display have been affected by empire. Those interested in Irish art, in Irish culture, and in the legacies of imperialism more generally will find this book insightful, illuminating, and provocative.»
(James Moran, Professor of English, University of Nottingham)
«Ranging across a broad chronological span, this stimulating collection's focus on the role of the British empire within Irish art and visuality is much-needed. This book will be invaluable not just for scholars of Irish culture, but for the study of the crucial significance of the visual in the historical formation of empire more generally.»
(Fionna Barber, Reader in Art History, Manchester Metropolitan University)
This collection of essays discusses how the British empire resonates in a huge array of visual culture in Ireland from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. The book is about the way empire has pervaded and continues to pervade Irish art and visual culture. The collection of essays expands the analysis of things visual in terms of Ireland and the British empire to include a broad range of cultural matter: art exhibitions, museums and their displays, architecture, photography, illustrated books, fashion, public and private performances and entertainments, as well as paintings, sculpture, prints and book illustration. The essays only touch on some of the issues that need to be discussed in relation to Ireland and the visual culture of imperialism, but it is hoped that this volume will spark others to investigate the topic and thus greatly expand Irish visual historiography.
List of contents
Contents: Fintan Cullen: Introduction: Ireland, the Visual and the British Empire - Niamh NicGhabhann: An Index of Civility: Ireland, Imperialism and Histories of Medieval Architecture - Angela Griffith: Seeing the Second City of the Empire: The Engraved Illustration in Dublin Travel Guides (c.1820-30) - Justin Carville: «Pilgrims of the Sun»: John Shaw Smith and the Practice of Empire in Early Irish Photography - Rachel Hand: Museums and Empire: Reconnecting Uncomfortable Colonial Histories - Joseph McBrinn: From Parnell's Suit to Casement's Closet: Masculinity, Homosexuality and the Fashioning of the Irish Nation - Elaine Sisson: Fancy Dress and the «Colleen» as Imperial Signifier - Luke Gibbons: «Figures Suddenly Leap from Frames»: Myles na gCopaleen, Modernism and Irish Art.
About the author
Fintan Cullen is Professor Emeritus in the History of Art at the University of Nottingham. An art historian who specializes in the art and politics of Ireland's relationship with Britain, his books include
Visual Politics. The Representation of Ireland 1750-1930 (1997),
The Irish Face. Redefining the Irish Portrait (2004),
'Conquering England' Ireland in Victorian London (2005, with R. F. Foster),
A Shared Legacy. Essays on Irish and Scottish Art and Visual Culture (2005, with John Morrison),
Ireland on Show. Art, Union, and Nationhood (2012), and most recently an essay on 'John Lavery and national pictures' for the exhibition catalogue,
Studio and State. The Laverys and the Anglo-Irish Treaty (2021), and
Sources in Irish Art 2. A Reader (2021, with Róisín Kennedy).
