Art History at The Crossroads of Ireland and The United States by Cynthia Fowler - Bibis - Ir

Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland
and the United States
Taking the visual arts as its focus, this anthology explores aspects of cultural exchange
between Ireland and the United States.
Art historians from both sides of the Atlantic examine the work of artists, art
critics and art promoters. Through a close study of selected paintings and sculptures,
photography and exhibitions from the nineteenth century to the present, the depth of
the relationship between the two countries, as well as its complexity, is revealed.
The book is intended for all who are interested in Irish/American interconnectedness
and will be of particular interest to scholars and students of art history, visual culture,
history, Irish studies and American studies.
Cynthia Fowler is Professor of Art at Emmanuel College, Boston.
Paula Murphy is Professor Emerita at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy
at University College Dublin.
Routledge Research in Art History
Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of
art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering
areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on
art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By mak
ing these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to
promote quality art history research.
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Edited by Sven Dupré and Jenny Boulboullé
Art Criticism and Modernism in the United States

Stephen Moonie
Sculpture Workshops as Space and Concept

Creating the Portrait
Edited by Jane Fejfer and Kristine Bøggild Johannsen
Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art

Edited by Onur Öztürk, Xenia Gazi, and Sam Bowker
Posthumous Art, Law and the Art Market

The Afterlife of Art
Edited by Sharon Hecker and Peter J. Karol
American Art in Asia

Artistic Praxis and Theoretical Divergence
Edited by Michelle Lim and Kyunghee Pyun
Bauhaus Effects in Art, Architecture and Design

Edited by Kathleen James-Chakraborty and Sabine T. Kriebel
Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States

Edited by Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge

Research-in-Art-History/book-series/RRAH
Art History at the Crossroads of
Ireland and the United States
Edited by Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy

Cover image: Kathy Prendergast
Road Trip 10 (2021)
Gouache on paper
39 x 54 cm / 15.4 x 21.3 in (unframed)
Image courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy to be identified as the authors of
the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fowler, Cynthia (Cynthia A.) editor. | Murphy, Paula, editor.
Title: Art history at the crossroads of Ireland and the United States / edited by
Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021057526 (print) | LCCN 2021057527 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032121277 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032126609 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003225621 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Art and society—Ireland. | Art and society—United States. |
Ireland—Relations—United States. | United States—Relations—Ireland.
Classification: LCC N72.S6 A7445 2022 (print) | LCC N72.S6 (ebook) |
DDC 701/.03—dc23/eng/20211231
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057526
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057527
ISBN: 978-1-032-12127-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-12660-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22562-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Contributors vii

List of Images ix
Preface by Paula Murphy xii
Introduction 1
CYNTHIA FOWLER
1. Desperate and Glorious: John Mulvany’s Custer’s Last Rally 9

NIAMH O’SULLIVAN
2. ‘An American and Not an Irish Statue’: Commemorating

Naval Hero Commodore John Barry 25
PAULA MURPHY
3. Some Thoughts on Arthur Kingsley Porter and Françoise

Henry as Transcultural Pioneers of Early Irish Medieval Art 40
LYNDA MULVIN
4. Irish Art at the Armory Show, 1913 47

RÓISÍN KENNEDY
5. Seeing New York: Jack Butler Yeats and the American City 61
KATHRYN MILLIGAN
6. ‘This New Life of Painting’: Morris Graves in Ireland,

1954–1964 76
DANIELLE M. KNAPP
7. Ireland’s ‘Strayed Angel’: George W. Russell (AE) – From

Dublin to New York, 1904–1934 90
ÉIMEAR O’CONNOR
vi Contents
8. Dorothea Lange in Ireland: Anthropology and Image 104
JAMES R. SWENSEN
9. Sean Scully: Painting a Global Immigrant’s Vision 121

KAITLIN THURLOW
10. Transnational Solidarity: African American and Irish

Intersections in Public Art Commemorating Frederick
Douglass 136
CYNTHIA FOWLER
11. Kathy Prendergast: Transcultural Cartography 149

YVONNE SCOTT
12. Uncommon Kinships: The Generous Reciprocity of the

Choctaw Nation and Ireland 165
LAURA MARSHALL CLARK (MUSCOGEE CREEK)
Index 180
Contributors
Laura Marshall Clark (Muscogee Creek) is an interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and

curator whose work explores Native American and transnational histories, cultures,
and fine arts. She is a 2020–2021 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Ireland and founder of
WildHorse Consulting, LLC, serving education, arts, business, nonprofit, and tribal
programs.
Cynthia Fowler is Professor of Art at Emmanuel College in Boston. Her publications
include The Modern Embroidery Movement (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Hooked
Rugs: Encounters in American Modern Art, Craft and Design (Ashgate, 2013).
Related to this anthology is “Transatlantic Textiles: Ireland’s Dun Emer Textiles
in America During the First Decade of the Twentieth Century,” in Textile History
(2019).
Róisín Kennedy is Lecturer in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at Univer
sity College Dublin and former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland.
Her most recent publication is Art and the Nation State. The Reception of Modern
Art in Ireland (Liverpool University Press, 2021).
Danielle M. Knapp is an American art historian and the McCosh curator at the Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, Eugene. She oversees the
David John and Anne Kutka McCosh Memorial Collection and Archive and the
museum’s permanent collection of American and Pacific Northwest art.
Kathryn Milligan is an art historian specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
visual art, with an emphasis on urban representation, artistic networks, and cul
tural exchange. Her first monograph is titled Painting Dublin, 1886–1949: Visual
ising a Changing City (Manchester University Press in 2020).
Lynda Mulvin is Professor of Art History, University College Dublin, School of Art
History and Cultural Policy, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquities. She is currently
UCD Digital Cultures Research Leader. She contributed to Connecting Early Medi
eval European Collections (2015–2020) and has a forthcoming monograph, James
Cavanah Murphy (1760–1814) (Brill, 2022).
Paula Murphy is an emeritus professor in art history at University College Dublin. Her
books include Art and Architecture of Ireland, vol. 3, Sculpture 1600–2000 (Yale
2014). She was awarded an RHA Gold Medal (2015). She held a Terra Foundation
Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2016–2017).
viii Contributors
Éimear O’Connor is Editor of Irish Women Artists: Familiar But Unknown (2010)
and author of Seán Keating: Art, Politics, and Building the Irish Nation (2013) and
Art, Ireland, and the Irish Diaspora: Chicago, Dublin, New York 1893–1939 Cul
ture, Connections, and Controversies (2020), as well as essays, articles, and cata
logues on Irish art.
Niamh O’Sullivan is Editor of the multiaward-winning series Famine Folios. Her pub
lications include Aloysius O’Kelly: Art, Nation, Empire (2010); The Tombs of a
Departed Race: Illustrations of Ireland’s Great Hunger (2014); In the Lion’s Den:
Daniel Macdonald, Ireland and Empire (2016); and Coming Home: Art and the
Great Hunger (2018).
Yvonne Scott is a Fellow Emerita of Trinity College Dublin. She was founding Direc
tor of Triarc (Trinity College Irish Art Research Centre). She was Chair of the
Advisory Board and contributor to Art and Architecture of Ireland, Volume V:
Twentieth Century (2014). She is co-editor (with Catherine Marshall) of Irish Art
1920–2020; Perspectives on a Century of Change (Royal Irish Academy, 2022).
James R. Swensen is an associate professor of art history at Brigham Young Univer
sity. His research interests include documentary photography, American photog
raphy, and the visual representation of the American West. He is the author of In
a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Three Mormon Towns Col
laboration, 1953–1954.
Kaitlin Thurlow is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Georgia. She holds
a master’s degree in English and a BFA in painting from the University of Massa
chusetts. Her research interests include modernist and contemporary Irish fiction
and art.
Images
P.1 John B. Flannagan, Figure of Dignity – Irish Mountain Goat, 1932,

granite and cast aluminium, Gift of Alexander Shilling Fund, 1941,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © Photo SCALA, Florence xiv
0.1 Alex Pentek, Unity, 2021 (steel), Charles Houston Elementary
School, Washington, D.C. 7
1.1 John Mulvany, Custer’s Last Rally, 1881 (print), Buffalo Bill Center
of the West, Cody, Wyoming 10
1.2 John Mulvany, Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief – Scene in a
Western Justice’s Court, 1876 (oil on canvas), Szymanski Gallery,
Rock Hall, Maryland 11
1.3 John Mulvany, The Battle of Aughrim, 1885 (oil on canvas),
Gorry Gallery, Dublin 20
2.1 Wheeler Williams, Commodore John Barry, 1956 (bronze),
Wexford, Crescent Quay 26
2.2 Samuel Murray, Commodore John Barry, 1907 (bronze),
Philadelphia, Independence Square 27
2.3 Andrew O’Connor, photograph of plaster model for monument to
Commodore John Barry, 1908, National Archives Washington, D.C. 31
2.4 John J. Boyle, Commodore John Barry, 1914 (bronze), Washington,
D.C., Franklin Square 34
4.1 Jack B. Yeats, The Circus Dwarf, 1912 (oil on canvas), Private
Collection, © Estate of Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO
Dublin, 2021 49
4.2 Jack B. Yeats, Strand Races, 1912, Private Collection, © Estate of
Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dublin, 2021 50
4.3 Plan of Armory Show, New York, 1913, photo © Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution 52
5.1 Jack B. Yeats, Motor Car, 1904 (ink on paper), Yeats Archive,
National Gallery of Ireland 61
5.2 Automobile Sightseeing, n.d. (photograph), New York Public Library 62
5.3 Jack Butler Yeats with Mary Cottenham Yeats on the steamship
Mesaba, 1904 (photograph), Yeats Archive, National Gallery of
Ireland 65
x Images
5.4 Jack Butler Yeats, Inspection Station, Ellis Island, New York, 1904
(ink, graphite, and watercolour on paper), Yeats Archive, National
Gallery of Ireland, © Estate of Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO
Dublin, 2021 66
5.5 Jack Butler Yeats, Chinese Theatre, 1904 (ink, graphite, and
watercolour), Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland, © Estate of
Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dublin, 2021 68
5.6 Jack Butler Yeats, Tony Pastor’s, 1904 (watercolour, ink, and
graphite on paper), Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland,
© Estate of Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dublin, 2021 70
6.1 Morris Graves, Hibernating Raccoon, 1954 (ink and wash on
paper), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon 79
6.2 Morris Graves, Hero, 1955 (oil on masonite), Private Collection 81
6.3 Morris Graves, Irish Goat, 1955 (oil on canvas), Jordan Schnitzer
Museum of Art, University of Oregon 82
6.4 Morris Graves, detail, Instruments for a Celestial Navigation
#2, 1961–1962 (glass, brass, schist, and paper), Jordan Schnitzer
Museum of Art, University of Oregon 85
7.1 George Russell, Winged Horse, 1904 (oil on board), © Hugh
Lane Gallery 92
8.1 Dorothea Lange, John and Anne O’Halloran Prepare to Milk Cows
Together on Their Farm at Mount Callan [Hallorans in the Field],
1954, (gelatin silver print), The Dorothea Lange Collection, the
Oakland Museum of California 105
8.2 Dorothea Lange, Ten-Year-Old Bridie O’Halloran [Children], 1954
(gelatin silver print), The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland
Museum of California 111
8.3 Dorothea Lange, Catherine and Anne O’Halloran, 1954, gelatin
silver print, The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum
of California 112
8.4 Dorothea Lange, Standing Out in the Rain While the Women and
Children Attend Mass at St. Mary’s, 1954, (gelatin silver print), The
Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California 114
9.1 Sean Scully, Precious, 1987 (oil on linen), Private Collection 123
9.2 Nick Willing, Sean Scully painting in his studio in Mooseurach
(photograph) 125
9.3 Sean Scully, Dark Windows, 2020 (oil on aluminium) © Lisson
Gallery, London 131
10.1 Andrew Edwards, Frederick Douglass, 2015 (bronze), University of
Maryland, College Park, Maryland 138
10.2 Danny Devenny, Frederick Douglass, 2001 (mural), New Bedford,
Massachusetts. 140
11.1 Kathy Prendergast, Washington, D.C., City Drawings Series, 1997
(pencil on paper), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 152
11.2 Kathy Prendergast, Lost, 1999 (digital print) (edition of 25) 155
11.3 Kathy Prendergast, detail of Lost, 1999 155
11.4 Kathy Prendergast, Road Trip 10, 2021 (gouache on paper),
Private Collection 158
Images xi
12.1 Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw), Remembering Choctaw
Ancestors, 2010 (acrylic, mixed media on canvas) Private Collection 169
12.2 Billy Hensley (Chickasaw/Choctaw), Between Two Worlds, 2021
(acrylic on canvas), Collection of the Artist 171
12.3 Jane Semple Umsted (Choctaw), Peter Perkins Pitchlynn, 2007
(batik on cotton, synthetic and natural dyes, beeswax, paraffin wax,
mounted on board), Collection of the Artist 173
12.4 Alex Pentek, Kindred Spirits, 2015 (stainless steel), Midleton,
County Cork, Ireland 174
12.5 Gwen Coleman Lester, Girl Power, 2019 (acrylic on canvas),
Collection of the Artist 176
Preface
This volume was the brainchild of Cynthia Fowler, who was inspired by a conference
session she had hosted in Boston in September 2017 on the topic of transatlantic
exchange between the United States and Ireland. As an historian of American art, she
had acquired a strong interest in transatlantic connections between Ireland and the
United States while developing a course on Irish art at Emmanuel College, Boston in
2010. This interest translated into a publication that focused on the display of Dun
Emer textiles, the result of an unstable collaboration of Susan and Elizabeth Yeats
with Evelyn Gleeson, at two Irish fairs in New York in the first decade of the twentieth
century.1 When she invited me to co-edit a publication on the subject with her, I was
immersed in the study of Irish-American sculpture, a continuation of research I had
undertaken for a fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in
2016–2017. In the course of my research I had come to realise that much of the pub
lished work on the relationship between Ireland and the United States concentrated
on the historical, political and sociological aspects of the connections between the two
countries. The art and art historical elements had been completely overlooked. Cyn
thia’s proposal was an exciting opportunity to address this neglect, and I was delighted
to join forces with her.
Our search for contributors uncovered many willing participants. It appeared
that in addition to Cynthia and I, there were already a number of people on either
side of the Atlantic working on the subject of Irish/American cultural exchange –
although by degrees the broader cultural agenda of our initial book proposal nar
rowed itself down to a concentration on art history. Abstracts for the proposed
essays were submitted and accepted in February 2020, and less than a month later
much of the academic world and its research facilities closed down as a result
of the COVID-19 pandemic and would remain closed intermittently for eighteen
months. It is important to place on record just how grateful Cynthia and I are to
our contributors for staying the course in such difficult circumstances. We believe
that their commitment has resulted in a volume that is rich in interest and variety,
in revelation and confirmation. The subject matter of each and every essay is com
pelling, and a personal determination to the augmenting of this specific aspect of
the narrative of Irish/American interconnectedness is evident in the contribution of
each author.
Cynthia and I are indebted to Routledge for greeting with such enthusiasm our pro
posal for this pioneering anthology and agreeing to publish it. It has been a pleasure
working with them. We are all indebted to Cynthia for her brilliant idea, which has
Preface xiii
given us the opportunity to be involved in a ground-breaking publication. We hope
that it will be the first of many such studies.
****
My own interest in the sculpture of Irish-America was a logical progression from
work that I had long been carrying out on historic Irish sculpture. It was in the con
text of exploring the life and work of Dublin-born Augustus Saint-Gaudens – whose
all but last commission, the monument commemorating Charles Stewart Parnell,
was for the city of his birth – that I discovered that many of his contemporaries in
America were born in Ireland or were born in the United States to Irish parents. My
curiosity as to why these sculptors and their work had not been of interest to the
many writers of books on the Irish/American relationship led to the discovery that
the authors of such books were largely unaware of the artistic connections between
the two countries.
My research at SAAM, under the auspices of the Terra Foundation Senior Fellow
ship programme, was on American Sculpture: The Irish-American Contribution in the
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century. I have no doubt that I was chosen for the
fellowship because this was a topic that was entirely new to both the foundation and
to SAAM. As I developed my index of names of sculptors, I located work by them in
all types of institutions, in public buildings, in private houses, in churches and perhaps
most of all in public spaces. Busts here; statues there; monuments everywhere – work
largely, but not exclusively, on the East Coast. Portraiture, architectural and monumen
tal work were the mainstay of their different studios – and they were much in demand
for Civil War monuments. Such is the enthusiasm for all things Irish in the United States
that I was to encounter eager support for my research at every turn. I am entirely grate
ful to SAAM and to the Terra Foundation for the opportunity they afforded me and to
the many archivists, librarians, curators and administrators that I encountered in the
course of my research, all of whom could not have been more helpful.
The emigration patterns of sculptor and stone-carver from Ireland in the nineteenth
century reveal the disparity between the artist and the artisan. While Irish sculptors
made their way to London in search of fame and fortune, stone-carvers took the
boat to America seeking merely to survive. The fathers of two sculptors who make
an appearance in the anthology – Philadelphia-born Samuel Murray and New York–
born John Boyle – were Irish stone-cutters. The Irish contribution to American sculp
ture was acknowledged in the first serious study of American sculpture, Lorado Taft’s
The History of American Sculpture (1903). Taft draws attention to ‘the versatile Irish
[who] found in America a favourable field for artistic development; transplanted to
this spacious land not a few of the race have revealed an unusual gift for sculptural
expression’.2 A later such sculptor, John B. Flannagan, born in 1895 in Fargo, North
Dakota – all of whose grandparents were Irish born – travelled to Ireland in the 1930s,
where he discovered the stones of Connemara, which he thought were ‘a sculptor’s
dream’.3 Figure of Dignity (1932, Figure P.1), which he carved in Ireland, was the first
of Flannagan’s works to enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
This Irish mountain goat and its recognition in 1941 as ‘an important addition to [the]
collection of modern American sculpture’,4 might just be the perfect illustration of Art
History at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States.
Paula Murphy
xiv Preface
Figure P.1 John B. Flannagan, Figure of Dignity – Irish Mountain Goat, 1932, granite and cast
aluminium, Gift of Alexander Shilling Fund, 1941, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York © Photo SCALA, Florence.
Notes
1. Cynthia Fowler, “Transatlantic Textiles: Ireland’s Dun Emer Textiles in America During
the First Decade of the Twentieth Century,” Textile History 50, no. 2 (November 2019),
163–186.
2. Lorado Taft, The History of American Sculpture (New York and London: Macmillan,
1903), 505.
3. Letters of John B. Flannagan, introduction by W.R. Valentiner (New York: Curt Valentin,
1942), 22.
4. Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, XXXVI, no. 4, New York, April 1941, 101.
Introduction
Cynthia Fowler
This anthology considers moments of transcultural exchange between Ireland and

America through a series of case studies. This relatively new area of research has been
growing in recent years and it seemed appropriate to bring together in one publica
tion the work of some of the relevant scholars. We are delighted to include here art
historians who are already recognized for their contributions to this field of study as
well as a number of new contributors with this shared interest. The essays throughout
the anthology examine the movement of art and artists in both directions across the
Atlantic and the role of art institutions in advancing Irish art in America and American
art in Ireland. While the essays are necessarily disparate, interesting interconnections
emerge between them. Even more, they reveal a rich history of transcultural exchange
that warrants further investigation.
Transatlantic Ireland and America: Global Flow and Transcultural

Exchange
Transatlantic exchange between Ireland and America has contributed to a global flow
of ideas that transcends national borders. Here, we reference the scholarship of cul
tural theorist Arjun Appadurai, who has constructed a model for understanding the
dynamics of global cultural flow. He utilizes the term “imagined worlds” to describe
“the multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of
person and groups spread around the globe.”1 His term is useful; these essays explore
the “imagined worlds” visually constructed by both Irish and American artists who
traversed the Atlantic – both physically and creatively – and produced new works of
art in response to their experiences. As Appadurai explains, these types of diasporic
images have “loosened the internal coherence that held them together in a Euro-Amer
ican master narrative.”2 Kaitlin Thurlow’s examination of the paintings of Sean Scully
in her essay for this anthology, titled “Sean Scully: Painting a Global Immigrant’s
Vision,” engages these ideas most directly. She describes Scully’s paintings as an “urge
to express, through abstraction, the immigrants’ vision of the horizon as ‘something
you can’t see but can only imagine’.”
In their essay “Understanding Transculturalism,” published in Transcultural Mod
ernisms, scholars Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna provide an excellent sum
mary of the history of the term transculturalism that is useful in considering the case
studies in this anthology.3 They define transculturation as “denoting a process of
transformation that unfolds through extended contacts and relationships between
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-1
2 Cynthia Fowler
cultures.”4 As described by Juneja and Kravagna, the transcultural represents an effort
to “investigate the multiple ways in which difference is negotiated within contacts
and encounters, through selective appropriation, mediation, translation, re-histori
cizing and rereading of signs, alternatively through non-communication, rejection or
resistance – or through a succession/coexistence of any of these.”5 The essays in this
anthology provide multiple examples of these negotiated encounters. For example,
in her essay “Kathy Prendergast: Transcultural Cartographer,” Yvonne Scott demon
strates the ways that contemporary Irish artist Kathy Prendergast responds to exist
ing cartography of the United States. Scott explains that for Prendergast, “maps are
transcultural, both across time and across place”; the maps Prendergast herself creates
as interventions to existing ones offer “traces of the past as evidenced in the cultural
interventions of toponymy and infrastructure.” Scott continues, “From a response to
residues of the experience of migrants from elsewhere to negotiating a strange land
mass for the first time, her work reflects . . . on a universal experience of displacement
and migration.”
While this anthology is inspired by recent scholarship on transcultural exchange,
the case studies offered here are more historically driven than theoretical. Contribu
tors utilize biography, iconography, and contextual approaches in evaluating their
subjects. The value of case studies is described in the introduction to the anthology
Art/Histories in Transcultural Dynamics in which the editors note, “Case studies that
historicize narratives, concepts, and practices are crucial to understanding a transcul
tural research approach.”6 This anthology offers case studies of transcultural encoun
ters with the conviction that these encounters reveal the underpinnings to a theory of
transcultural exchange.
Art History and Irish/American Transcultural Encounters

While transcultural studies have been flourishing in academia for several decades,
transcultural encounters between Ireland and the United States have received less
attention than is warranted.7 However, this anthology does not claim to be the first
to examine Irish/American transcultural exchange in the visual arts. Irish art histo
rian Fiona Barber must be acknowledged for her inclusion of key essays on the Irish
diasporic experience in her book Art in Ireland Since 1910.8 Éimear O’Connor has
recently published Art, Ireland, and the Irish Diaspora.9 Noteworthy scholarship
by Americans include From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri and Ireland by
American scholars Jonathan Stuhlman and Valerie Ann Leeds10 and Cormac K.H.
O’Malley’s book on the photographs of Ireland taken by his mother, Helen Hooker
O’Malley.11 Paula Murphy’s fellowship at the U.S. Capitol in autumn 2017 led to
her publishing an essay on the work that Irish-American sculptors had created for
the building.12 My article on the display of Dun Emer textiles at two Irish fairs
in New York in the first decade of the twentieth century also contributes to this
scholarship.13
Collaboration among scholars from both sides of the Atlantic is sure to aid in the
advancement of scholarship on Irish/American transcultural exchange. This was most
certainly the case in the development of scholarship on early Medieval Irish art. In her
essay for the anthology, Lynda Mulvin documents collaboration among three scholars
who built upon each other’s research on this subject: Dublin-born Irish antiquarian
Introduction 3
and illustrator Margaret Stokes, the American art historian and medievalist Arthur
Kingsley Porter, and the French pioneer of Irish medieval art and architecture French
Françoise Henry. My own collaboration with co-editor Paula Murphy has been cru
cial in developing the focus of this anthology and advancing the ideas presented by the
contributors. My perspective as an historian of American art was expanded in a rich
and meaningful way through our continued conversations over the several years that
it has taken to complete this book. The back and forth we shared on American vs.
Irish perspectives has most certainly enriched the anthology as a whole.
As scholarship on Irish/American transcultural exchange continues to develop, the
Eurocentric focus of art history must also be addressed. In art history scholarship,
both American and Irish artists have been marginalized, defined by art historians
as derivative when they have participated in European art movements or provincial
when they have not. The status of American art changed dramatically with the rise of
Abstract Expressionism. But to what extent have Irish artists been adequately recog
nized as participants in global art movements? Before Irish independence, Irish artists
who came to America might have found greater freedom to express their ideas away
from the heavy hand of British colonialism, but there has been only limited recogni
tion of Irish artists within any larger discourse on American art. A notable exception
is Irish artist Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, who was able to maintain significant
visibility in both the American and Irish art worlds. Although he lived in New York
for over fifty years, he continued to participate in and influence the Irish art world
at the same time that he wrote as an art critic for the New York Times and Art in
America.14 This anthology demonstrates that Irish artists, and American artists prior
to Abstract Expressionism, were participants in the global flow of ideas in spite of the
failure by art historians to recognize them. This continues to be true in the contem
porary art world.
Irish/American Art: Politics and History

When evaluating transcultural exchange between Ireland and the United States, it
is essential to take into account the complicated histories of each country. We must
keep in mind Ireland’s historical position as a predominantly white, Western-occupied
region that, under the hands of British colonialism, suffered through the Great Fam
ine and a devastating population loss resulting from mass migration. While most of
Ireland was able to rid itself from British colonial rule to form the Republic of Ire
land, Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom, adding complexity to our
understanding of even the term “Irish art.” This anthology focuses almost exclusively
on Irish art associated with the Republic. We encourage further research that would
expand this examination of Irish art, particularly because art in Ireland continues to
transcend borders, as many Irish artists have exhibited in both North and South, and
these same artists have often been commissioned cross-border. It is also important to
remember that in spite of Ireland’s contentious relationship with England, art in Ire
land was for centuries rooted in transcultural exchange with England.
American history has long been constructed around a Eurocentric model that
emphasizes its independence from England as central to its nation-building narra
tive and westward expansion as its manifest destiny. In art history scholarship on
American art, this narrative – a narrative that denies the reality that American nation
4 Cynthia Fowler
building was grounded in slavery and the attempted genocide of Indigenous peoples –
has largely been dismantled.15 But more needs to be done as we consider works that
are only now gaining recognition by scholars. Niamh O’Sullivan tackles the conver
gence of the complex politics regarding American nation building in her essay, “Des
perate and Glorious: John Mulvany’s Custer’s Last Rally (1881).” She considers the
meaning of the Battle of Little Big Horn from a multitude of perspectives, but most
pertinent to this anthology, the contribution of three Irishmen to the formation of the
subsequent “Custer myth” that developed in response to Custer’s defeat: the journal
ists James O’Kelly and John Finerty and, in its visual definition, the artist Mulvany.
As O’Sullivan describes,
In the United States the Irish formed into militant nationalist organizations that
campaigned against British colonial rule in Ireland. But intent on establishing
themselves in the New World many lent their support to whitewashing the Black
Hills. If the Irish turned on blacks to be recognized as white, they turned on Indi
ans to be identified as American.
The art under consideration in the case studies in this anthology represent the per
spectives of a diverse array of individuals and organizations with goals ranging from
personal advancement to nation building. In this regard, it is important to remember
that the Irish community in the United States was not monolithic; it represented a
wide range of political, religious, and cultural views. This is clearly revealed by Paula
Murphy in her essay that examines the 1906 commission by the U.S. Congress for a
statue of Irish naval hero John Barry. Wrangling between different groups within the
Irish-American community led to a contentious battle over which artist would receive
the commission. As Murphy observes, “The age-old animosity between Irish Catholic
and Irish Protestant, then being played out in America, resulted in the loss of an excit
ing opportunity in American monumental sculpture” when the sculptor was selected
not for the quality of his work but for his moral standing. Laura Clark examines the
cultural mixing of the Scots-Irish with the Indigenous tribes of the southeast United
States that began in the eighteenth century. In recognition of the long historical rela
tionship between the Scots-Irish and the Choctaw people, Clark has organized Chiefs,
Clans, and Kin, an exhibition of contemporary art by Choctaw artists with mixed
heritage of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry.
As a result of mass migration to America, connections between Ireland and the
United States are, not surprisingly, often focused on the emigration of Irish people to
the United States and their subsequent efforts at assimilation.16 It is well documented
that the Irish established strong Irish-American communities throughout the United
States. But this anthology focuses largely on temporary encounters, the cultural links
formed by individual Irish artists who came to America not necessarily for permanent
residence but for short or extended visits in order to solicit wealthy American art
patrons and gain support from American art galleries interested in Irish art. These
temporary encounters resulted in important moments of intersection between the two
countries. In “Seeing New York: Jack Butler Yeats and the American City,” Kathryn
Milligan provides the first close examination of the sketchbooks Yeats produced dur
ing his 1904 trip to New York; the sketchbooks are held at the Yeats Archive of the
National Gallery of Ireland. Yeats and his wife Mary Cottenham Yeats were invited
Introduction 5
to New York by Irish-American John Quinn, a lawyer and art collector, who is recog
nized for the important role he played in supporting Irish art in the early years of his
collecting. But there is much more to the story of the American support of Irish art. In
“Ireland’s ‘Strayed Angel’: George W. Russell (AE): From Dublin to New York, 1904–
1934,” Éimear O’Connor describes the role of Russell, a poet, peacemaker, mediator,
and self-proclaimed visionary, as “a crucial link in the network of cultural connec
tions between Ireland and America before the onset of the Second World War.” AE’s
paintings were among those works by Irish artists on display at the Armory Show, but
as O’Connor documents, his paintings could also be seen at the New York galleries of
Helen Hackett and Patric Farrell. As she explains, the focus of these galleries “on Irish
art in general, and on Russell in particular, was noteworthy for creating and sustaining
the market for Irish art in New York in the 1920s and 30s.” In her essay “Irish Art at
the Armory Show, 1913,” Róisín Kennedy provides a close study of the Irish art on
display at this most significant exhibition of art in America, in which Ireland was one
of only six nations represented. As Kennedy describes, the Armory Show exhibition
“coincided with a key moment in the development of a separate identity for Irish art”
back home, where Irish art collector Hugh Lane was securing works for his Municipal
Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin at the same time. Kennedy observes that histories of
the Armory Show have largely forgotten the presence of Irish art, but that presence
stands as yet another testament to the diversity of modern art in the first half of the
twentieth century through its inclusion of Irish Expressionist painters.
While Irish migration to the United States far exceeded migration in the opposite
direction, nonetheless, the American presence in Ireland is still noteworthy. At the
same time that the Irish came to the United States seeking support for their independ
ence efforts, during the antebellum period, Americans traveled to Ireland to seek back
ing for the abolitionist movement (although they were cautious in their approach so
as not to alienate England from supporting the cause as well). Frederick Douglass is
perhaps the most widely known abolitionist to have visited Ireland to solicit support
for the cause. Several artists have created works that attempt to visualize the deep
connection of solidarity that Douglass felt with the Irish people. In my essay “Trans
national Solidarity: African American and Irish Intersections in Public Art Commemo
rating Frederick Douglass,” I discuss two examples: a mural of Douglass created by
Irish republican muralist Danny Devenny located in New Bedford, Massachusetts,
and a sculpture of Douglass, which was a collaborative effort of Irish activist Don
Mullan and British sculptor Andrew Edwards that now resides on the campus of the
University of Maryland. As I conclude in my essay,
These two works succeed as powerful expressions of transnational solidarity,

rightfully celebrating Frederick Douglass, a man who embodied this solidarity
through his words and actions and realized at least some of his hopes for the
development of inclusive communities as a black man who refused to be margin
alized in America or abroad.
At times romanticizing Ireland as an idyllic rural fairyland, Americans often traveled

to Ireland in search of an escape from their lives at home with little consideration for
the complex politics that defined the Irish nation. Danielle Knapp’s “ ‘This New Life
of Painting’: Morris Graves in Ireland, 1954–1964” describes the decision made by
6 Cynthia Fowler
Graves, a Pacific Northwest Coast abstract artist, to move to Ireland in search of the
“perfect conditions for painting.” However, his time in Ireland proved to be much
more. Describing it as “a turning point in his art and state of mind,” Knapp documents
“a period of experimentation” that served to “bridge the spiritual seeking of his early
career and his eventual retreat into nature and painting” that occurred when he left Ire
land and returned to the Pacific Northwest. American photographer Dorothea Lange
arrived in Ireland the same year as Graves to create a photographic series on the west
of Ireland for Life magazine. As James R. Swensen describes in his investigation of this
series, “Accustomed to photographing that which was close and familiar, Lange desired
to stretch herself as a photographer by working in an environment that was completely
new.” She approached Ireland informed by American anthropologist Conrad Arens
berg’s book, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (1937). The result was
a series that both reinforced familiar tropes of the Irish people as country folk and
imagined their humanity as they negotiated the life circumstances that they faced.
A Call for More Scholarship

This anthology is but a small contribution to scholarship on transcultural exchange
between Ireland and the United States. We hope that it inspires more research on this
important subject. In particular, we recognize the need for more scholarship regarding
the roles played by women in transcultural exchange. Thus, we are pleased to include
essays that highlight the contributions of women: artist Kathy Prendergast by Scott and
photographer Dorothea Lange by Swensen; the public presence of women artists even
as they have been previously written out of history, demonstrated by Agnes McCahill’s
entry to the Barry competition described by Murphy in her essay; the contributions of
women to art history scholarship through the publications of Margaret Stokes and Fran
çoise Henry discussed in Mulvin’s essay; and the role played by women gallery directors
like Helen Hackett in O’Connor’s essay. In addition to her research on Frederick Doug
lass in Ireland, Irish historian Christine Kinealy, director of the African American Irish
Diasporic Network, is now presenting material on two black American women aboli
tionists in Ireland: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield and Sarah Parker Remond.17 We hope
that acknowledgement of these important women will begin to emerge in the visual arts
as well. We recognize the need to expand the scope of art history to be more inclusive of
textiles and other media connected to women’s creative production. My own research
on Dun Emer textiles documents the creative production of Susan and Elizabeth Yeats,
two women often overshadowed by their celebrated brothers, Jack and W.B. Yeats, and
the philanthropy of American Julia Ellsworth Ford, whose name should be recognized
along with that of John Quinn as a patron of Irish arts.18
The historical precedents set by artists and art institutions examined in these case
studies continue today. Irish artist Alex Pentek, best known for his sculpture Kin
dred Spirits, which honors the long-standing relationship between the Irish and the
Choctaw Nation, continues a transcultural dialogue through his sculpture honoring
African American lawyer and dean at Howard University Law School, Charles Ham
ilton Houston.19 Titled Unity, the sculpture (Figure 0.1) is a sixteen-foot allium flower
meant to symbolize unity; it is located at the Charles Houston Elementary School in
Washington, D.C. Pentek’s work reminds us that transcultural dialogue can lead to, as
he describes, the “blurring of boundaries and interconnectedness.”20 Now more than
Introduction 7
Figure 0.1 Alex Pentek, Unity, 2021 (16-ft. steel allium flower), Charles Houston Elementary
School, Washington, D.C.
Source: Photograph by Don Gregory, AIA, cox graae + spack architects
ever, the dissolution of boundaries and a new understanding of our interconnectedness

seem essential for the survival of the planet.
Notes
As the contributors to this volume are American and Irish, their different uses of language are
respected in the disparate essays.
1. Arjun Appadurai, “Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture, and
Society 7, nos. 2–3 (1990–06), 296–297.
2. Ibid, 300.
3. Efforts to define the transcultural originate in scholarship from the 1940s by anthropolo
gist Fernando Ortiz. Ortiz used the term to describe the impact of Cuba’s complex colonial
history on the country’s encounters with colonizing forces. For their summary, see Monica
Juneja and Christian Kravagna, “Understanding Transculturalism,” in Transcultural Mod
ernisms, Model House Research Group, eds. (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013).
4. Juneja and Kravagna, 24.
5. Ibid, 25.
6. Pauline Bachmann, Melanie Klein, Tomoko Mamine, and Georg Vasold, “Introduction,”
in Art/Histories in Transcultural Dynamics: Narratives, Concepts, and Practices at Work,
20th and 21st Centuries, Pauline Bachmann, Melanie Klein, Tomoko Mamine, and Georg
Vasold, eds. (Leiden: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2017).
7. Recent scholarship has begun to address the gaps in art history regarding the transcul
tural. See Emily Burns, Transnational Frontiers: The American West in France (Norman,
OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018); and Michele Greet, Transatlantic Encounters:
8 Cynthia Fowler
Latin American Artist in Paris between the Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2018). Even books with a more European focus can help to expand art history discourse.
See Elisabeth Fraser, Mediterranean Encounters: Artists between Europe and the Ottoman
Empire, 1724–1839 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017).
8. Fionna Barber, Art in Ireland Since 1910 (London: Reacktion Books, 2013).
9. Éimear O’Connor, Art, Ireland, and the Irish Diaspora: Chicago, Dublin, New York 1893–
1939 Culture, Connections and Controversies (Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2020).
10. Jonathan Stuhlman and Valerie Ann Leeds, From New York to Corry More: Robert Henri
and Ireland (Charlotte, NC: The Mint Museum, 2011).
11. Cormac K.H. O’Malley, Helen Hooker O’Malley’s Ireland (Dublin: Gallery of Photogra
phy, 2019).
12. Paula Murphy, “The Irish Imprint in American Sculpture in the Capitol in the Nineteenth
and Early Twentieth Centuries,” The Capitol Dome 55, no. 2 (2018), 30–44.
13. Cynthia Fowler, “Transatlantic Textiles: Ireland’s Dun Emer Textiles in America During the
First Decade of the Twentieth Century,” Textile History 50, no. 2 (November 2019), 163–186.
14. His book Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space was highly influential
on both sides of the Atlantic (1976). For more on O’Doherty, see Brian O’Doherty/Patrick
Ireland: Word, Image and Institutional Critique (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2017).
15. A few early examples from the 1990s are William Truettner and Alan Wallach, eds., Thomas
Cole: Landscape into History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); and Ann
Gibson, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1997). The 1990s also saw the emergence of scholarship written by BIPOC scholars about
BIPOC artists. See W. Jackson Rushing, Native American Art and the New York Avant-
Garde (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995); and Romare Bearden and Harry
Henderson, A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1993). Examples of more recent scholarship include Phoebe Wolfskill,
Archibald Motley, Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art (Urbana,
IL: University of Illinois Press, 2017); and Mindy Besaw, Candice Hopkins, and Manuela
Well-Off-Man, Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950 to Now (Fayetteville,
AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2018).
16. See, for example, J.J. Lee and Marion Casey, eds., Making the Irish American: History and
Heritage of the Irish in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
17. Kinealy gave a talk on these women at the conference “Where do we go from here” organ
ized by the Glucksman Ireland House in New York on November 5, 2021.
18. Fowler, “Transatlantic Textiles.”
19. Jess Casey, “Cork Sculptor Plans Washington, D.C. Tribute to Activist,” Irish Examiner,
June 23, 2020.
20. In the introduction to Famine Pots, Gary Batton writes, “As an artist, he says, some of
the most exciting ideas arise out of the notion of ‘blurred boundaries and interconnected
ness’.” This description most certainly applies to his own work. Pentek, quoted in Gary
Batton, “Introduction,” in Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange, 1847-Present,
LeAnne Howe and Padraig Kirwan, eds. (Cork: Cork University Press, 2020), xxiii.
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. “Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture, and Society
7, nos. 2–3 (1990–06): 295–310.
Bachmann, Pauline, Melanie Klein, Tomoko Mamine, and Georg Vasold. “Introduction.” In
Art/Histories in Transcultural Dynamics: Narratives, Concepts, and Practices at Work, 20th
and 21st Centuries. Pauline Bachmann, Melanie Klein, Tomoko Mamine, and Georg Vasold,
eds. Leiden: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2017.
Batton, Gary. “Introduction.” In Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange, 1847-Present.
LeAnne Howe and Padraig Kirwan, eds. Cork: Cork University Press, 2020.
Juneja, Monica and Christian Kravagna. “Understanding Transculturalism.” In Transcultural
Modernisms. Model House Research Group, eds. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013.
1 Desperate and Glorious
John Mulvany’s Custer’s Last Rally
Niamh O’Sullivan
Time alone can determine whether a work of art is actually great but there is a simple rea
son to believe that this picture has the elements of greatness. It occupies a unique place in
art. Battle scenes, good and bad, have been painted over and over, and Indians have been
portrayed on canvas with a treachery to art equal to aboriginal degradation. But here is an
Indian battle, and the only one of its kind that ever occurred – a conflict in which there was
not a single white survivor. The painting tells the story with a strength of character, realism
in detail, and vividness of scene which can scarcely fail to attract the attention of the world.
(Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1882)
Speculating in the mid-twentieth century on the most popular American artwork –

“viewed, commented on and discussed by more people in this country” than any other –
historian Robert Taft suggested that two paintings of the Battle of the Little Bighorn
earn the distinction. One of them, Custer’s Last Rally (CLR) (1881) (Figure 1.1) by the
Irish-born artist John Mulvany (c. 1839–1906), was “displayed, known, and admired
throughout the country” as it went on a nationwide tour and was extensively circu
lated in chromolithographic form.1 Patriotic, thrilling, and inspiring, Mulvany’s painting
engraved Custer’s mythic last stand on the white American imagination.2 It caught the
eye of the eminent poet and critic Walt Whitman, whose praise knew no bounds. Whit
man declared the work “one of the very few attempts at deliberate artistic expression for
our land and people”.3 He looked at the painting through American eyes, never acknowl
edging Mulvany’s Irish background. This essay focuses on the visual representation of the
defeat at the Battle of the Bighorn as represented in Mulvany’s Custer’s Last Rally.
Considering Mulvany was a celebrated artist in his time, the question arises, how
can a painter of such an important painting as Custer’s Last Rally be obliterated from
the canon? And why are so many of Mulvany’s paintings, once admired, now missing?
When he died, there was no keeper of the flame.4 Notwithstanding his extensive con
nections in the higher echelons of American and Irish-American civic and public life,
his charm and bonhomie, and his critically positive reviews, Mulvany died in tragic
circumstances – alcoholic and frail in mind and body. Notwithstanding his undoubted
skill, he had clung to an aesthetic that saw him increasingly out of step with develop
ments in art at the turn of the century. His subject matter – his representations of the
West and the Civil War – was initially hailed as radical but soon perceived as out
moded. His Irish subject matter, of huge interest to Irish-Americans, was of marginal
interest in the New World. And there was more than a whiff of cordite around Mul
vany. His work with the Irish-American dynamiting campaign in London had deadly
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-2
10 Niamh O’Sullivan
Figure 1.1 John Mulvany, Custer’s Last Rally (CLR), 1881 (print).
Source: Courtesy of The Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming; Whitney Western Art Museum; 149.69.
consequences, and he became embroiled in the split in the Irish republican movement
in the United States in the 1880s. Add to that a number of scandalous liaisons. Not
surprisingly, the art world moved him to a distance, where he has languished. But the
canon is a construct worth reconsidering from time to time.
As an immigrant, Mulvany was steeped in both Irish history and contemporary
Irish-American politics. Aged twelve, towards the end of the Famine, he left Ireland as
a stowaway. Thomas Tuite, his erstwhile biographer, wrote in some detail about Mul
vany’s relationship with his erudite and zealously nationalist teacher, Master Rogers.5
In America, Mulvany sublimated this sensibility into art (in time incorporating Ameri
can nationalism into his work). He became a messenger and model in the National
Academy of Design in New York, and in 1859 enrolled there as a student. In 1861
he was working in Chicago as a photographic colorist. At the outbreak of the Civil
War he went to the front as an illustrator for Irish newspapers, following which he
painted monumental works, such as McPherson and Revenge (1888) and Sheridan’s
Ride from Winchester (1896), in which he drew on his European training, in contrast
to the work of American artists such as Winslow Homer, who also illustrated the Civil
War in an emerging American style.
With promises of support from influential Irishmen in Chicago, Mulvany dedicated
himself to executing a series of paintings of Ireland’s historic past that would mobilize
support for a resurgent nationalist movement.6 To attain the necessary skills, he went
to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich in 1869, where he was awarded the
medal of honor. He also studied in Antwerp, Paris, and Amsterdam. On his return, the
Desperate and Glorious 11
Figure 1.2 John Mulvany, Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief – Scene in a Western Justice’s
Court, 1876 (oil on canvas).
Source: Courtesy of Joseph Szymanski, Szymanski Gallery, Rock Hall, Maryland, USA.
entire contents of his studio were consumed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Left
with no more than the clothes on his back, he went west. From 1872 he painted West
ern American subjects, winning critical acclaim at the National Academy of Design
in 1876 for Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief – Scene in a Western Justice’s Court
(Figure 1.2). Other western-American subjects include Lynch Law (1877), Trappers of
the Yellowstone (1877), and Back to the Wigwam (1881). He also had a prestigious
portrait practice, painting, among others, General Thomas Francis Meagher and Rob
ert Emmet, Brigham Young, and Red Cloud. But it was his Custer’s Last Rally that
had the greatest impact on his contemporaries.
From the rear in the painting, the warriors emerge from a burning Indian village, and
through the dense smoke of carbine charge at what remains of Custer’s 7th Cavalry.
The surrounded dismounted soldiers use their dead horses as breastworks from which
they stand or stoop to fire at foe also attacking from the front. The force of the charge
contrasts with the arrested motion of the men, doomed to die, as if before our eyes.
Although all in the painting is conjecture, soldiers confirmed the fighting as “real”, “in
its vigor and desperation, [and] in fidelity to the facts of modern and contemporary
American fighting”.7 Contemporary accounts of the picture relished the overwhelming
chaos, kinaesthetically sweeping the spectator into the narrative. The contrasting per
spectives of the opposing warriors are reinforced stylistically – high realism in the treat
ment of the “gallant”, and an impressionistic swirl in the treatment of the “savages”.
The chaos is heightened to the pitch of the still-living horses writhing in terrified agony.
The right foreground is occupied by war-painted, breech-clouted, and bonneted dead
and dying Indians, reinforcing the repoussoir thrust towards Custer, the centripetal
force of the painting. Custer, taking aim with his huge cavalry pistol (glittering saber
by his side), is surrounded to his right, left, and front by twenty or so of his remain
ing men, including Captains Yates and Cook. All are characteristically identifiable: the
dead Yates, “the highest type of an American, handsome, lovable, manly, strong and
courageous”, according to Mulvany, and Cook, wounded, as we see from the bloodied
handkerchief around his head, but fighting to the last.8 On the right, just beyond Cook,
is “the typical Irish-American soldier” described as “one of the strongest figures upon
the canvas”.9 However, it was not “the heroism of a race” [my italics] that was depicted
here, but the “the combined heroism of races, and the grandeur of man, for the artist
shows the archetypes of Celt and Teuton, Saxon and Gaul, all fused and inwrought
with the life that has made them above all American Warriors of the Plains.”10
Perspectives on the Battle

It is important to consider Custer’s Last Rally in relation to the battle itself. As the
United States celebrated its hundredth anniversary, news of the defeat at the Battle
of the Little Bighorn rocked the country. On June 25, 1876, the 7th Cavalry com
manded by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer attacked a large village on
the Little Bighorn River in Montana and was defeated by an insurmountable force
of Native Americans, Lakota Sioux and their allies the Northern Cheyenne and
Arapaho tribes. Providing an important Native perspective on the battle, novelist and
poet James Welch (Blackfeet and A’aninin) described Custer as “an overweaning [sic]
fool . . . [transformed into] a martyr at a time when this country . . . desperately
needed a martyr”.11 However, notwithstanding his defeat and the deaths of 262 sol
diers, Custer was all but deified. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was the defining event
of the American Indian Wars, for though a victory in battle for Indigenous peoples,
ironically it expedited their ultimate defeat.12
In anticipation of Custer’s arrival, some three thousand had gathered above the valley
of the Little Bighorn River. Custer’s orders were to wait for reinforcements, but he decided
to go it alone (so as to attain full glory in the event of success). He first divided his com
mand. One company was assigned to protect the pack train. Three companies under the
command of Captain Frederick Benteen were sent to scout for the enemy to the rear of
the column. And Major Marcus Reno’s detachment was to approach from the southeast,
a counterattack that led to the loss of a third of his force; Custer then ordered his remain
ing men to retreat to a nearby ridge, where they remained under siege for two days.
Meanwhile, Custer moved by the Indians’ flank. Many of his troopers were raw recruits
equipped with single-shot rifles. Lacking cover and vastly outnumbered by Indians carry
ing repeating rifles and carbines, Custer and the men under his immediate command were
dead within an hour. The bodies were stripped and horribly mutilated, though not those
of Custer and his Irish officer Captain Myles Keogh (who wore a papal medal, later seen
around the neck of Sitting Bull), presumably in a gesture of warrior respect.
The battle was mythopoeic. Walt Whitman penned a poem, and artists and jour
nalists rushed to the scene. The magnificent landscape, dominated by the Black
Hills – with their lure of gold – formed the backdrop, but accounts of the bloodiest
catastrophe of the American Indian Wars were crafted around the persona of Custer,
an approach perpetuated by his widow, Libbie, who devoted her life to promoting her
husband as a hero in the public memory. Three Irishmen featured in the formation of
the myth: the journalists James J. O’Kelly and John F. Finerty and, in its visual defini
tion, the artist John Mulvany.
O’Kelly had joined General Alfred H. Terry’s command on the Yellowstone in
July 1876. He met and interviewed General George Crook, Major Reno, and Captain
Benteen, as well as other members of the 7th Cavalry. In their debriefs, Reno and Ben-
teen blamed Custer for their defeat, accusing him of disregarding orders and leading his
men to their deaths.13 Initially, O’Kelly accepted their accounts. He was one of the most
respected journalists of his era, and his experiences as a soldier with the French Foreign
Legion and as a war journalist in Cuba lent considerable weight to his dispatches. But
notwithstanding an official media blackout, O’Kelly had access to officer intelligence
and campfire gossip that summer. He became increasingly certain that the defeat was
due to the cowardice of Reno and Benteen, rather than to the recklessness of Custer. His
insistence brought the shocking defeat to national (and international) attention through
the New York Herald. Unflinchingly brave and a brilliant strategist, Custer had a repu
tation in his own lifetime that was legendary, but not unblemished. Believing Reno and
Benteen to be on their way, did Custer courageously attack to prevent the Indians from
dispersing? Or were Custer’s fellow officers cowards who ignored his predicament when
the fighting got tough, leaving him to fight an impossible battle alone? Or was the order
to attack an unparalleled act of vainglorious recklessness, in keeping with Custer’s char
acter?14 O’Kelly called for an investigation to establish “whether the massacre . . . must
be charged to rashness of the dead or prudence of the living”.15 Following the first skir
mish, Reno had saved what remained of his own battalion, in effect abandoning Custer
to his fate. Reno’s arrogance (and possible inebriation) were deemed factors in the deba
cle. O’Kelly kept up the demand for the truth. If Reno was to be commended, Custer
was to be condemned, and so began a fiercely contested competition for the acclamation
of hero. A court of inquiry was established, and in 1879 Reno was exonerated.16 But
this did not lay the matter to rest. It was at this point that Mulvany became involved.
O’Kelly, as art editor of the New York Herald, was aware of Mulvany’s impor
tance as an artist. He had reviewed him favorably in 1876, noting “the strong color
and bold drawing” in the “very fine” Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief – Scene in a
Western Justice’s Court and the “rare force” and “dramatic power” of his Vigilance
Committee.17 Apart from being Fenian comrades-in-arms, Mulvany and O’Kelly also
had history of a less auspicious kind when Mulvany arranged for O’Kelly’s wife, in
straitened circumstances, to model for a nude painting.18
Mulvany was also friendly, from his Chicago days, with John F. Finerty, another
Fenian inner-circle militant nationalist who became immersed in the Custer debacle.
There were almost six thousand newspapers in the United States that either through
syndication or dispatch covered the story. Journalists and illustrators were encour
aged to participate in the fighting while on campaign, and this may account for a
number of assertions that Mulvany was actually in the Union army rather than with
it as an illustrator. Finerty and O’Kelly were both also combatant reporters.19 When
O’Kelly and Finerty became active in the Little Bighorn story, Mulvany – who had
known Custer personally and professionally during the Civil War – was not to be left
behind. As he later recounted:
I at once realized that this was the greatest subject for a battle picture known to
American history. I had been seeking for a subject that would be fresh in the minds
of the public. I hastened to Standing Rock Agency, and it was there I obtained my
first direct information of the fight from the troopers of Reno’s command. It was
also at that agency that I was thrown in contact with many of the renegade Indians.20
In 1879, when Mulvany embarked on the painting, a Denver newspaper announced

that it had it “upon positive authority” that “one of the most brilliant of the younger
American artists” was coming to Denver to study characters for a frontier picture.21
Over the next two years Mulvany made two trips to the battle site from his studio in
Kansas City.22 He made sketches on the spot, visited the Sioux reservation, studied the
dress and equipment of the soldiers, and secured photographs of Custer and his officers.
The battle at the Little Bighorn was crucial to national narratives – old and new –
and intersected with Irish-American interests as well. A decade after the tremendous
suffering of the Civil War, and while still attempting to integrate some four million
previously enslaved African Americans, the United States had embarked on another
phase of its war against the original inhabitants of the land. Already ingrained preju
dices against Native Americans intensified. From the perspective of white America,
when the Indians won a skirmish, it was deemed butchery by savages; when the army
won, it was a victory for civilization by heroes.
The war against Native Americans had become national policy in 1830 when Presi
dent Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act.23 Then, in 1872, Secretary of
the Interior Columbus Delano declared of Native American territories in the Black
Hills of Dakota and Wyoming “that the occupation of this region of the country is
not necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the Indians, and, as it is supposed
to be rich in minerals and lumber, it is deemed important to have it freed as early as
possible from Indian occupancy”.24 Too much land, it seemed, was owned by too few
inhabitants, and when the United States had entered a period of economic downturn –
making control of the resources of the Black Hills a political and economic impera
tive – the lands of the Lakota Sioux loomed in the firing line.
General Terry ordered the exploration of the Black Hills in June 1874. He gave
Custer command of the complex military, commercial, and scientific expedition.
When Custer proclaimed “gold in the grass roots”, a stampede of prospectors and
miners ensued. President Ulysses Grant pressured the Sioux to sell the Black Hills. But
they were at the heart of the cultural, economic, and spiritual life of the Lakota Sioux
and Cheyenne. When the government could not secure agreement, it pushed the tribes
into receivership, with the government as creditor. Indians found off reservations were
now deemed hostile, and hunting, even in unceded Indigenous land (that is, their
own), was considered an act of war with the United States.
Portrayals of Indians as primitive, and whose land ownership was illegitimate, was
necessary to justify warfare for profit. The rhetoric of civilization – by extermination –
was supported by many Irish.25 Indeed, the phrase “manifest destiny” was coined by
Irish-American John L. O’Sullivan to invoke divine providence in the quest for expan
sion. Given that many Irish in America were so recently evicted from their own lands,
establishing their white American credentials meant lending their support to white
washing the Black Hills. If the Irish turned on blacks to become white, they turned
on Indians to become American. They took the high moral ground when it came to
British colonialism in Ireland, yet finding common cause with blacks and Indians did
not follow.26 Estimates suggest that some 150,000 Irish fought in the Civil War, and
between 1864 and 1875, some twenty percent of soldiers were Irish. There were one
hundred and three Irish with Custer at the Little Bighorn. Nathaniel Philbrick notes
that while the 7th was an American regiment, “much of its character was established
by its Irish-born troopers” (even Custer’s trademark buckskin outfit was made by
an Irish tailor). Prior to a charge, Custer would have the brass band play the Irish
quick-step “Garry Owen”. Samuel June Barrows, who had accompanied Custer on
his 1874 expedition, said that if Custer had “a galvanic battery connecting with the
solar plexus of every man on the field, he could hardly have electrified them more
thoroughly . . . There was no mistaking the tune and its meaning” as it echoed up and
down the Yellowstone, taunting Sitting Bull.27
Pre- and post-Famine Irish immigration brought large numbers of Irish to the west
ern frontier, as canal workers, miners, railroad workers, and journalists. Plans to
establish Irish militant colonies thrived.28 From here various campaigns, such as the
Canadian invasion plan, were fomented by nationalists, such as Finerty, who had
immigrated in 1864, just as Fenian founder John O’Mahony was organizing a unit of
the New York National Guard during the Civil War. Most Fenians, including Mul
vany, were former members of the Phoenix Brigade, an Irish militia unit. After the war
Finerty moved to Chicago, where he became president of the United Irish Societies.
He reported first for the Chicago Republican, then the Tribune, and then the Chicago
Times on the campaign that culminated in Custer’s death. Finerty founded the Chi
cago Citizen and served in Congress as an Independent Democrat. In each capacity he
promoted the work of Mulvany.29 Indeed, in his account of the American Indian Wars,
War-Path and Bivouac, Finerty featured a photogravure of Mulvany’s CLR.
In Finerty we encounter Irish claims to white American status at their most uncritical
level. Although he conceded, however reluctantly, “that even the red Indian has some
rights on the soil which bore him”, he deplored the fact that they were largely “suc
cessful in excluding all white men from the immense region”. Since the treaty of 1868,
240,000 square miles of their own “magnificent territory” were ceded to them, “as if
by act of huge generosity by the US government”. Finerty credited the “noble sacrifices
made in advancing our banner in the wilderness of the West and in subduing the sav
age and sanguinary tribes that so long barred the path of progress in our Territories”.30
The Battle of the Little Bighorn was thus the culmination of a long struggle by white
America’s settlers to conquer and annex Indian land. The response to the massacre
was swift and unremitting. By 1881 – the date of Mulvany’s painting – the Indian alli
ance was shattered, nearly all were confined to reservations, and Sitting Bull had fled
to Canada. This phase of ethnic cleansing of Native Americans was all but complete.
Critical Reception
Custer’s Last Rally, at 11 by 20 feet, was of impressive dimensions and earned its place
in the iconography of commemorative art. Certainly the reviews – many exceeding
2,000 words – were not short on hyperbole. Stylistically, Mulvany was compared to
English painter Edwin Landseer and French painter Horace Vernet; content-wise, he
was hailed as the Bret Harte of the art world, a reference to the American short-story
writer and poet, known for his stories related to the California Gold Rush.31 As cities
vied to exhibit Mulvany’s painting, hotels and concert halls, opera houses and librar
ies, were commandeered. Mulvany would sweep in, be flattered and fêted, stay a few
weeks, paint the portraits of local dignitaries, and give lectures and interviews. Curtains
would unveil the marvel, full orchestras would “blast” martial music – no wonder
Libbie Custer swooned – and the local press would strain for the most magniloquent
prose. Children were reported awestruck, women overcome, men inspired, and veter
ans suffused with memories. Season tickets were sold, and events organized around the
painting’s exhibition became spectacles in themselves, with Native American warriors
on occasions performing “ghost and scalp dances” in front of the picture.32
Kansas, where Mulvany painted Custer’s Last Rally, took special pride in being the
first to exhibit it. One newspaper described it as “a blending of art and nature, such as
is only found in truly great productions” and noted:
As a genre painting it is worthy of a place among the masterpieces of American

artists. Although the subject is a comprehensive one, and the figures necessarily
many, there is evidence of true artistic ability in the careful grouping of the figures,
in the subordination of every incident to the one central person, in the bold shad
ing, the foreshortening, the contrasts of color and the all-animating of life which
is everywhere present. In a nutshell, it is wonderfully and masterfully natural.33
When the painting arrived in Boston, critics rushed to Mulvany’s hired studio, where
the artist
in overcoat and violet velvet smoking-cap, which admirably sets off his fine olive
complexion and features, more Hungarian than Milesian, [was] putting the finishing
touches to his magnum opus, the monument of two years’ diligent labor in sketch
ing, journeying after local details, collecting facts and materials, and composing. 34
Here, the perceived American qualities were lauded: “the artist has selected types of
American low-life [soldiers] that are really national types, characteristic and familiar.
This is the artist’s forte”. But the reviewer chastised the artist for breaching aesthetic
or painterly norms, not least in its profusion of details: “the composition lacks point
and force, does not tell the story at once in a large way, leaving the detail to rein
force it”. The reviewer thought the figures “well drawn and anatomically correct” and
“dramatically connected with each other, and combine well”; however, it noted that:
In short, while there is a method in the composition, the ranging of the soldiers
in a ring or half-circle, the open side towards the spectator, so that the plan of the
fighting is easily understood – and while there is an artistic study to wreathe all
the active forms and lines into this ring not too rigidly, but just rigidly enough,
there is a failure to observe the larger laws of composition as regards lighting and
values. A woeful letting down too, is the central figure of Custer. This is vulgarly
exaggerated in size . . . It is a pity, so much good painting and highly creditable
artistic design should be sacrificed in this way.35
In response, Mulvany reduced the size of Custer and adjusted the relative scale of the
elements in the composition, to an avalanche of praise.36
The Boston Evening Transcript also picked up on the national notes, observing
that he “is not painting the French and German models of his academic youth . . . but
he gives genuine American types, not always flattering, but true and valuable and of
powerful effect”. In the same paper, Ed Clements, an important critic, commended
the scale and ambition of the painting and its sense of time and place, sacrificing
decorum and European compositional norms in favor of an authenticity that brings
out a democratic heroism: “All are American heroes, unmistakable types of our race
and of our day. The picture will go straight to the hearts of the people, especially in
the great West”.37
But the most important review was that of Walt Whitman, who personified it as the
visual rendition of the American epic. In a long “meditation” on the painting (his first
major art review), Whitman lionized both artist and his subject.38 His ode “A Death
Sonnet for Custer” (1876) (later published as “From Far Dakota’s Cañons”) had been
rushed into print in July 1876.39 As Ed Folsom describes it, Mulvany’s painting was “a
summarizing emblem” for Whitman.40 Even though no white combatant survived to
describe the battle, the poet envisioned Custer “Desperate and Glorious – aye, in defeat
most desperate, most glorious”. The treatment of light and shadow is embraced by
Whitman as an authentically American compositional strategy. His canonical review
commended its vastness: “all crowded, and yet not crowded . . . There are no tricks;
there is no throwing of shades in masses; it is all at first painfully real, overwhelming,
needs good nerves to look at it”. In Custer’s Last Rally, Whitman saw:
Altogether a western, autochthonic phase of America, the frontiers, culminating,

typical, deadly, heroic to the uttermost – nothing in the books like it, nothing in
Homer, nothing in Shakespeare; more grim and sublime than either, all native, all
our own, and all a fact. A great lot of muscular, tan-faced men, brought to bay under
terrible circumstances – death ahold of them yet every man undaunted . . . Two
dead Indians, herculean, lie in the foreground, clutching their Winchester rifles,
very characteristic. The many soldiers, their faces and attitudes, the carbines, the
broad-brimm’d western hats, the powder-smoke in puffs, the dying horses with
their rolling eyes almost human in their agony, the clouds of war-bonneted Sioux
in the background, the figures of Custer and Cook – with indeed the whole scene,
dreadful, yet with an attraction and beauty that will remain in my memory . . . it is
very tonic to me; then it has an ethic purpose below all, as all great art must have.
Having toured Boston and New York, the painting then went to Louisville. There,
Young Allison, the writer and poet, commended its transgressions of aesthetic proto
cols as the “genius” of its Americanism:
A poet of the brush who has walked out to meet the new sun of American art
upon the upland lawn of the West has just come back with his inspiration to lay
before the country . . . Upon Mulvany’s canvas one can see the poetical magnifi
cence of that slaughter in the lonely valley of the Little Bighorn as it appeared
to the mind of genius. It breathes the spirit of mortal hate, of heroic sullenness,
and that matchless courage jeweling the sword of Custer, which even in its fall
“Flashed out a blaze that charmed the world”. 41
From Louisville, the painting traveled to Chicago, naturally eliciting a review from
Finerty, who sought to reconcile Mulvany’s Irishness with the painting’s American
sentiments:
The fine painting of Custer’s Last Rally by Prof. Mulvany – an Irish-American

artist . . . is the most realistic battle picture we have ever seen . . . It is, indeed,
without exaggeration, a noble work of art, and reflects credit upon the race from
which Prof. Mulvany has sprung.42
From 1881 to 1944, the painting crisscrossed America, the critical inflation increasing
in tandem with the retrospective heroism heaped on Custer.43 One review perceived
the painting as “beyond the power of words to describe . . . the mind is awed and
silence is the sincerest expression of the feeling that one experiences in first viewing
it”.44 Another claimed Custer’s “heroism and dauntless endurance” exceeded even
Thermopylae and the Charge of the Six Hundred, but
[t]he great power in the work lies in the fact that the spectator does not see the bat
tle as an outsider, from a distance, but is taken into the very midst of the conflict.
And sees and feels it in all its horrible hopelessness, as the few brave men who
made it one of the grandest and most pathetic events of American history must
have seen it.45
Verisimilitude as Historical Accuracy

From this sample of reviews, it is possible to see how the acclaimed veracity of the
painting passed almost imperceptibly into heroic elevation, for what was at stake were
two different versions of realism, one of which acted as the ground for the imaginative
license of the other. The first version, to which much of Mulvany’s assiduous fieldwork
was devoted, may be identified with the concept of authenticity, the accuracy of details
relating to topography, weaponry, costume, and so on. Such verisimilitude contributed
to the sense of historical actuality. Through configurations of aesthetic form, the accu
racy of details is deployed to lend credibility to what is an imaginative exercise, the
dramatic reconstruction of the action in suitably elevated terms. No white combatant
survived to tell the tale, so imagination was free to step in where the record left off,
even if its contribution had more to do with myth and desire than realities. Initially,
Mulvany depicted Custer as known to the popular mind – commanding carriage, flow
ing locks, dashing buckskins – but as the artist subsequently explained, Libbie Custer
had a presentiment of impending evil, and knowing the enmity felt toward her
husband by several of the savages, she induced him to have his hair cut that he
might become . . . less easily recognized. He also had a photograph taken just
before his departure and it was from that photograph that I painted him in that
final encounter.46
Mulvany explained how he “wished to rid the painting of any conventionality.

Whenever nature is to be represented it should be nature itself, and not somebody’s
guess”.47 His commitment to detail was noted approvingly by both army brass and art
critics. “All this has been done with a love of country and a burning desire to portray
one of the most illustrious deeds in its history” affirmed the Louisville Commercial.48
But in using terms like true to “nature” or “life”, Mulvany was not so much recording
the facts as making a critical intervention in the surrounding controversies. As he noted:
That dreadful slaughter ought never to have happened, and it never would
have happened if Reno had obeyed his instructions. Reno was a coward and a
renegade, and ran away, leaving Custer and his whole command to be ruthlessly
slaughtered . . . One of Reno’s sergeants told me that they could hear the volleys
of Custer’s command, and the men murmured – because they were not allowed to
go to their assistance . . . Had Reno stayed where he belonged, the Indians could
never have massed.
When he first secured his position the bucks were all on foot and the squaws
and young ones were out on the hills driving in the ponies . . . Custer would have
been able to have carried out his original intention, and the Indians would have
been routed and the village destroyed . . . Some of the Indian chiefs admitted to me
that had the soldiers [Reno’s men] fought in the timber like those on the hillside,
the Indians would surely have been beaten . . . The present outlook for trouble!
Well, it is hard to say. They are an ignorant mass, and if someone more enlight
ened had gotten hold of a point by which he can incite them to an uprising there
will be a massacre.49
Thus, notwithstanding Mulvany’s Indian antipathy, the point of the painting was to
address animosities within the white “camp” – that is, to exculpate Custer at the expense
of Reno, thereby signaling his belief that art had a role to play in establishing this par
ticular truth.50 For the painting to be read as “proof” of what happened, liberties had
been taken to underpin the ideological viewpoint: for example, the slaughtered horses,
“fallen” in a neat semi-circle, conceal the contrivance of their disposition so as to aug
ment Custer’s heroism. Regardless of the plethora of detail, the image of a fearless Custer
in the center of a vortex of “whooping” Indians was fabricated by Mulvany and repro
duced again and again by subsequent artists until his death assumed a mythic authority,
with many of the reviews succumbing to the notion of the painting as documentary:
As you stand before the picture you are thrilled through and through. Nothing
could be more realistic. Custer is there “fighting to the death”, but his spirit has
animated the whole body of his faithful compatriots.51
This parting with known facts (insofar as they could be established) was noticed. One
reviewer observed that as “a historical picture it is of about as much value as George
Washington Crossing the Delaware”.52 But the price to be paid for the elevation of
action in history painting was a refusal in the first instance to be tied down by the
particularity of place or action to convey universality, a larger-than-life moment that
transcended its circumstances:
All truly great national paintings have been inspired by some such dramatic and
signal event. The last terrible moments of General Custer and his men who were
sacrificed, yet died not wholly in vain, afforded a theme for the noblest exercise of
that that is most vigorous and sterling in art.53
Though far from being the first artist to go west, Mulvany’s mission was different.
It was not the majesty of nature, or even the noble aspects of the human story that
caught his attention, but life on the edge of civilization – vigilantism, land appro
priation, mining, claim jumping, trapping, and trading. He brought his training in
Europe, his knowledge of the work of European artists from a variety of countries,
including German painter Hermann Kaulbach; Belgian painter Nicaise De Keyser;
Figure 1.3 John Mulvany, The Battle of Aughrim, 1885 (oil on canvas).
Source: Courtesy of The Gorry Gallery, Dublin.
and French painters Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, Alfred Brunel de Neuville, and the
previously mentioned Vernet. This knowledge was enlisted as he added his own war
experiences to bear on this. By imbuing big, bold subjects – the horrors of the Civil
War and dispossession of Native Americans – with the everyday, he brought history
painting itself into contact with daily experience. In adapting history painting to his
Western subjects, he took liberties with its conventions. His paintings were highly
immersive. In cinematic adumbration, he adopted a wide angle – panning from left
to right in Horse Thief, zooming in for Custer’s Last Rally – as he sought to create in
the audience the sensation of having been there. He may have refused to select, prior
itize, classicize even, but he did bring his painting of the people to the people, leading
to some retrospective froideur from more refined contemporary critics. Through his
incorporation of “low-life” into history painting, the profusion of details, and the
flaunting of European compositional norms, Mulvany can be seen as improvising aes
thetic forms appropriate to what he would have considered the democratic vistas of
the New World (with all their racial shortcomings).
In all this there was, perhaps, something to be learned from his Irish background
and the attempts of Irish-American republicanism to strike common cause with its
American counterparts. Ed Clements had identified that Mulvany’s nationality “aptly
fitted him for such an essay at a grand national and historical painting. The Irish pas
sion for the heroism of combat and the intense Americanism cultivated in Western
life”.54 The lack of order or hierarchy of organization, the chaos alluded to earlier,
allowed for a sense of uncertainty, a suggestion that an event could have been other
wise, thus turning a defeat into the paradoxical triumph of failure. This was certainly
the message of Mulvany’s next great history painting, The Battle of Aughrim (1885)
(Figure 1.3), commemorating the calamitous defeat on July 12, 1691, in which a con
tingent result would have altered the course of Irish history. Just as Aughrim become a
rallying call for the cause of Catholic Ireland, Custer’s last stand, and its visualization
by Mulvany, generated its own heroic version of failure for white Americans.55
Notes
1. Robert Taft, “IV. Custer’s Last Stand: John Mulvany, Cassilly Adams and Otto Becker,”
The Pictorial Record of the Old West (1946), 361, reprint from Kansas Historical Quar
terly 14:4, Kansas Historical Quarterly 14:4; see also Taft, Artists and Illustrators of the
Old West (New York: Charles Scribner, 1969).
2. Native American perspectives of their victory is the subject of other scholarship. See for
example, David Miller, Custer’s Fall: The Native American Side of the Story (New York:
Penguin Putnam, 1992); and Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Mani
festo (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1969).
3. Walt Whitman, “Letter from Walt Whitman: Custer’s Last Rally”, New York Tribune,
August 15, 1881.
4. In recent years his grandniece Anne Weber has done sterling work in reviving interest in
the artist, and I am grateful to her for sharing her family material so generously.
5. Thomas P. Tuite, “John Mulvany, Great Irish Painter: Man of Genius and Sterling Patriot
Whose Great Work Does Credit to the Race. “Custer’s Last Rally”, “Sheridan’s Ride” and
“The Battle of Aughrim”, The Gaelic American, March 6, 1909.
6. Mulvany was a member of the militant Clan na Gael, led by Alexander Sullivan, and
played a part, albeit peripheral, in the “split” culminating in the murder of Dr. Philip
Henry Cronin in 1889. See, for example, Lawrence J. McCaffrey, Ellen Skerrett, Michael
F. Funchion, and Charles Fanning, The Irish in Chicago (Urbana, IL and Chicago: Uni
versity of Illinois Press, 1987); and Gillian O’Brien, Blood Runs Green: The Murder that
Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
7. Boston Transcript, June 20, 1881.
8. Louisville Commercial, December 17, 1882.
9. Walt Whitman et al. Press Comments on John Mulvany’s Painting of Custer’s Last Rally
(n.d., n.p.), compiled by John and Peter Mulvany, reprint 1970, https://pdfmedia.net/book/
xi9CAQAAMAAJ/press-comments-on-john-mulvany-s-painting-of-custer-s-last-rally/
walt-whitman/unknown/8/188?/978186723xxxx/little-bighorn-battle-of-the-mont-1876,
accessed October 18, 2021.
10. Whitman et al., Press Comments.
11. James Welch, quoted in Norman K. Denzin, Custer on Canvas: Representing Indians,
Memory, and Violence in the New West (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2011), 9.
12. See Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little
Bighorn (New York: Viking, 2010), passim.
13. See Ronald H. Nichols, In Custer’s Shadow: Major Marcus Reno (Norman, OK: Univer
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1999).
14. See discussion in Paul Andrew Hutton, The Custer Reader (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1992).
15. James J. O’Kelly, “A Review of Custer’s Fight at the Little Big Horn”, New York Herald,
September 21, 1876.
16. W.A. Graham, The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract of the Official Record of the Proceed
ings (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1995). See also James Donovan, A Terrible Glory:
Custer and the Little Bighorn: The Last Great Battle of the American West (New York:
Black Bay Books, 2009); and Joan Nabseth Stevenson, Deliverance from the Little Big
Horn: Doctor Henry Porter and Custer’s Seventh Cavalry (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2013).
17. New York Herald, January 16, 1876; and April 2, 1877.
18. Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, June 22, 1880.
19. See Oliver Knight, Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspond
ents Among the Indian Campaigners (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993);
Jennifer Brittan, A Foreign Correspondent in the Mambi-Land: James J. O’Kelly’s Fugi
tive Cuba, Fernando Ortiz’s Irish Mambí, https://doi.org/10.1080/13645145.2011.6179
67, accessed July 14, 2021; and John F. Finerty, War-Path and Bivouac, or the Conquest
of the Sioux: A Narrative of Stirring Personal Experiences and Adventures in the Bighorn
and Yellowstone Expedition of 1876, and in the Campaign on the British Border, in 1879
(Chicago, IL: Donohue & Henneberry, 1890).
20. Omaha Daily Bee, November, 30, 1890.
21. Daily Tribune, February 23, 1880.
22. Omaha Daily Bee, November 30, 1890.
23. The Great Famine was acknowledged as the worst demographic catastrophe of the nine
teenth century, but the Trail of Tears, when 15,000 Cherokee were ejected from their land
and forced to walk more than 1,200 miles west, was not far behind. Remarkably, in 1847
the Choctaw Nation sent $170 to the starving Irish, but when they had their chance, there
was little Irish reciprocity. See LeAnne Howe and Padraig Kirwan, eds, Famine Pots: The
Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange, 1847–Present (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University
Press, 2020). See also Clark and McIntyre-Brewer in this anthology.
24. Quoted in Cynthia-Lou Coleman, Environmental Clashes on Native American Land:
Framing Environmental and Scientific Disputes (New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2020), 11.
25. With notable exceptions, such as editor Patrick Ford, who perceived a shared victimhood
between colonialism and oppression – an identity shared by Irish and Native Americans –
and defended Sitting Bull for standing between his people and extermination.
26. See, for example, Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (London and New York:
Routledge, 1995); David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness (London and New York: Verso
Books, 1991); and J.J. Lee and Marion E. Casey, Making the Irish American: History and
Heritage of the Irish in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
27. Samuel June Barrows, quoted in Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull,
and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (New York: Viking, 2010), 62.
28. See, for example, Jane Conard, “Charles Collins: The Sioux City Promotion of the Black
Hills,” South Dakota State Historical Society 2, no. 2 (Spring 1972), 131–171.
29. Although they later supported different factions within Clan na Gael, they remained close.
30. Finerty, War-Path and Bivouac, 37–38.
31. Atlantic Monthly, June 1876; Freeman’s Journal, June 30, 1885 and July 11, 1885; and
Des Moines Register, December 15, 1886.
32. Morning Call (SF), February 15, 1894.
33. Kansas City Daily Journal, March 2, 1881.
34. Mulvany and Custer shared a personal flamboyance: Custer favored a black velvet uni
form with coils of gold lace, a red neckerchief, and a large, broad-brimmed sombrero and
oiled and perfumed his cascading locks.
35. “ ‘Greta’s’ Boston Letter”, Art Amateur 4, no. 6 (May 1881), 118–119, 118.
36. Mulvany produced two versions of an eight-page pamphlet, “Press Comments on John
Mulvany’s Painting of Custer’s Last Rally” (published c. 1882 & 1893), to accompany the
painting on tour.
37. Boston Evening Transcript, April 11, 1881 and June 20, 1881.
38. Walt Whitman, New York Tribune, August 15, 1881 (widely syndicated throughout
America); and Whitman, “Specimen Days [1883],” in Complete Prose Works (Philadel
phia, PA: David McKay, 1897), 186.
39. Walt Whitman, “A Death-Sonnet for Custer” (1876), reprinted as “From Far Dakota’s
Cañons”, in Leaves of Grass (Boston, MA: James R. Osgood, 1881–1882).
40. Ed Folsom, Walt Whitman’s Native Representations (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 62–65. Michael Adams describes the action in “dramatic epic form”. First,
the poet assumes an ambush and treacherous behavior: the command is probably decoyed
into a ravine and there bushwhacked by the “dusky Sioux”, an alien foe. The great hero
cannot be conquered save by treacherous means. Second, Whitman assumes a heroic last
stand in which the cavalry companies fight “to the last in sternest heroism . . . There can
be no question of panic, a breakdown of morale, a slaughter of ordinary mortals, defeated
and routed. The soldiers are legendary warriors who must have kept their heads, tactical
cohesion and discipline to the end in the face of certain death.” Michael Adams, “Poet
Whitman and General Custer,” Studies in Popular Culture 18, no. 2 (April 1996), 1–17, 1.
41. Courier-Journal, December 18, 1881.
42. The Citizen, August 1, 1882.
43. When purchased in 1898 by Henry J. Heinz, it was moved between the Heinz Auditorium,
Pittsburgh, his New York exhibition room, and the Heinz Pier, Atlantic City. Following
the 1944 hurricane in Atlantic City, the provenance of the painting is uncertain. Heinz had
commissioned a replica by Mulvany in 1900, and though it is likely that the original was
destroyed, leaving the replica extant, various appraisals for commercial purposes suggest
otherwise.
44. Public Ledger, December 27, 1881.
45. Chicago Times, August 13, 1882.
47. Interview with the artist, Kansas City Daily Journal, March 2; and March 17, 1881.
48. Louisville Commercial, March 17, 1893.
50. His plan to do a second painting, focusing on Reno’s part in the massacre, was intended to
further “correct” negative perceptions of Custer and to add to the “truth”.
51. Louisville Commercial, March 17, 1893.
52. Daily Inter Ocean, March 26, 1881.
53. Omaha Daily Bee, February 1, 1891.
54. Boston Transcript, June 20, 1881.
55. I thank Luke Gibbons for his generous support in writing of this essay.
Works Cited
Adams, Michael. “Poet Whitman and General Custer.” Studies in Popular Culture 18, no. 2
(1996): 1–17.
Brittan, Jennifer. A Foreign Correspondent in the Mambi-Land: James J. O’Kelly’s Fugitive
Cuba, Fernando Ortiz’s Irish Mambí. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645145.2011.617967
(accessed July 14, 2021).
Coleman, Cynthia-Lou. Environmental Clashes on Native American Land: Framing Environ
mental and Scientific Disputes. New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2020.
Conard, Jane. “Charles Collins: The Sioux City Promotion of the Black Hills.” South Dakota
History 2, no. 2 (1971): 131–171. www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-2-2/
charles-collins-the-sioux-city-promotion-of-the-black-hills (accessed October 18, 2021).
Denzin, Norman. Custer on Canvas: Representing Indians, Memory, and Violence in the New
West. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2011.
Donovan, James. A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn: The Last Great Battle of the
American West. New York: Black Bay Books, 2009.
Finerty, John F. War-Path and Bivouac, or the Conquest of the Sioux: A Narrative of Stirring
Personal Experiences and Adventures in the Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition of 1876,
and in the Campaign on the British Border, in 1879. Chicago, IL: Donohue & Henneberry,
1890.
Folsom, Ed. Walt Whitman’s Native Representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
Graham, W. A. The Reno Court of Inquiry: Abstract of the Official Record of the Proceedings.
Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 1995.
“ ‘Greta’s’ Boston Letter.” Art Amateur 4, no. 6 (1881).
Howe, LeAnne and Padraig Kirwan, eds. Famine Pots: The Choctaw-Irish Gift Exchange,
1847–Present. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2020.
Hutton, Paul Andrew. The Custer Reader. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.
Knight, Oliver. Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspondents among
the Indian Campaigners. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
Lee, J. J. and Marion E. Casey, eds. Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the
Irish in the United States. New York: New York University Press, 2006.
McCaffrey, Lawrence et al. The Irish in Chicago. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 1987.
Nichols, Ronald H. In Custer’s Shadow: Major Marcus Reno. Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1999.
O’Brien, Gillian. Blood Runs Green: The Murder That Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago. Chi
cago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
O’Kelly, James J. “A Review of Custer’s Fight at the Little Big Horn.” New York Herald, Sep
tember 21, 1876.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
New York: Viking, 2010.
Roediger, David. Wages of Whiteness. London and New York: Verso Books, 1991.
Stevenson, Joan Nabseth. Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter and
Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.
Taft, Robert. “IV. Custer’s Last Stand: John Mulvany, Cassilly Adams and Otto Becker.” The
Pictorial Record of the Old West. 1946. Reprint, Kansas Historical Quarterly, 14, no. 4.
Taft, Robert. Artists and Illustrators of the Old West. New York: Charles Scribner, 1969.
Tuite, Thomas P. “John Mulvany, Great Irish Painter: Man of Genius and Sterling Patriot
Whose Great Work Does Credit to the Race.” “Custer’s Last Rally”, “Sheridan’s Ride” and
“The Battle of Aughrim”. Gaelic American, March 6, 1909.
Whitman, Walt. “Letter from Walt Whitman: Custer’s Last Rally”. New York Tribune,
August 15, 1881.
Whitman, Walt. “Specimen Days 1883.” In Complete Prose Works 1897. Philadelphia, PA:
David McKay, 1883.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Boston, MA: James R. Osgood, 1881–1882.
Whitman, Walt et al. Press Comments on John Mulvany’s Painting of Custer’s Last Rally (n.d.,
n.p). Reprint 1970. https://pdfmedia.net/book/xi9CAQAAMAAJ/press-comments-on-john
mulvany-s-painting-of-custer-s-last-rally/walt-whitman/unknown/8/188?/978186723xxxx/
little-bighorn-battle-of-the-mont-1876 (accessed October 18, 2021).
2 ‘An American and Not an Irish
Statue’1
Commemorating Naval Hero
Commodore John Barry
Paula Murphy
In June 1941, in anticipation of the bicentenary of the birth of Commodore John

Barry (1745–1803), the U.S. Congress approved the presentation of a statue of the
naval hero to the Irish nation2 (Figure 2.1). Delayed due to the war, the statue was
not completed until 1956, when it was transported to Ireland on a U.S. destroyer3 and
unveiled in Wexford on 16 September with members of the Irish Naval Service and
U.S. Marines in attendance. The sculptor, Chicago-born, New York–based Wheeler
Williams (1897–1972), made reference in his design to an earlier Barry monument
commission that had proved controversial. The unusually sloped base on which
Wheeler’s figure of Barry stands pays homage to Irish-American Andrew O’Connor’s
unrealised model for the Barry monument in Franklin Park in Washington, D.C.
‘Saucy Jack Barry’,4 or simply ‘Old Jack Barry’,5 was to find himself the subject of
two significant monument commissions in America in the early twentieth century − one
in the U.S. capital, the other in his American hometown Philadelphia. The Washing
ton commission, the subject of this essay, was fraught with controversy. By contrast,
the Philadelphia monument proceeded from inception to completion without a hitch.
The statue, instigated and paid for by the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick,6
was unveiled in Independence Square on 16 March 1907 (Figure 2.2). The work of
Samuel Murray, a native of Philadelphia and the eleventh child of an Irish stonecutter,
the vigorous portrait – ‘a strikingly handsome piece of work’7 – depicts Barry in his
Continental Naval uniform, a long spyglass under his left arm and his right arm raised
in a commanding gesture. This form of active representation is relatively unusual in
American heroic portraiture of the time, where pedestrian statues (standing figures)
are often just that – pedestrian! Murray’s success in Philadelphia would encourage him
to think, incorrectly, that he was a shoo-in for the D.C. Barry monument; however,
misinformation resulted in his failing to even get to compete.8
The proposal in 1902, for a monument to be commissioned for the American capi
tal, anticipated the centenary of Barry’s death. Born in County Wexford, Barry had
left Ireland as a youth, making his way to Philadelphia from where he established
himself as a naval officer of considerable repute. By the time of his death, he had
achieved a heroic reputation and was being referred to, although not exclusively, as
the Father of the American Navy.9 Barry’s peer John Paul Jones (1747–1792) was
similarly acknowledged and would be memorialised simultaneously in D.C. Members
of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, of which Barry was a member,10 were
adamant that Barry would be publicly recognised as the true claimant to the title by
including the very words on the proposed monument. That they were unsuccessful in
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-3
26 Paula Murphy
Figure 2.1 Wheeler Williams, Commodore John Barry, 1956 (bronze), Wexford, Crescent
Quay.
Source: Photographed by the author
this particular detail was not to be their only failure in a monument commission that
was rife with dissension, both of an artistic and an administrative nature.
The Barry Statue Bill introduced to the House of Representatives proposing a Barry
monument for Washington11 was prompted by the Irish-born archbishop of Saint Paul,
Minnesota, John Ireland, who had issued a directive to the Friendly Sons of St Patrick
to organise the erection of ‘a monument to some Irish soldier to commemorate the
part Ireland took in the Revolutionary War’.12 This was inspired by the recent installa
tion in the U.S. capital of monuments commemorating the French contribution to the
war. Statues of the Marquis de Lafayette (by J.A.J. Falguière and Antonin Mercié) and
the Comte de Rochambeau (by Fernand Hamar) were erected in Lafayette Square in
1891 and 1902, respectively. In fact, the archbishop gave his instruction at a dinner in
New York given by the Friendly Sons of St Patrick in connection with the installation
of the Rochambeau statue – one of many celebrations to mark the occasion. It is per
haps unsurprising therefore that the Rochambeau became the desired statue type for
the Barry memorial among the Irish-Americans, and inevitably it was expected that
the statue would be placed alongside Rochambeau in Lafayette Square.
‘An American and Not an Irish Statue’ 27
Figure 2.2 Samuel Murray, Commodore John Barry, 1907 (bronze), Philadelphia, Independ
ence Square.
Irish-Catholic America went to some lengths to garner support for their proposed
monument by making Barry better known.13 Scottish-American and Protestant John
Paul Jones was considerably more famous than him at the time, and Barry’s religion
and nationality were deemed determinants in his lack of fame.14 Catholic politicians
and societies joined forces to ensure the success of their proposal, and Irish-American
newspapers fêted Barry’s achievements. Ultimately several non-sectarian societies of the
revolution, including the Sons and the Daughters of the American Revolution, offered
their support. Over a period of four years, partisan members of Congress and the Senate
made several unsuccessful attempts to bring the monument bill before their respective
houses, until, in 1906, the act ordaining the erection of a monument to the memory of
Commodore John Barry in the national capital was finally passed. The sum of $50,000
of Treasury money was allocated, and a statue committee – the Barry Statue Commis
sion (BSC) – was formed. This was a triumph for the Irish in America and a recognition
of their ‘Americanization’,15 but it was also a coup for American Catholics, who, it had
previously been considered, were ‘not true to the principles of American liberty’.16 This
was the beginning of ‘a concerted program of Catholic presence’ in the nation’s capital.17
28 Paula Murphy
The minutes of their first meeting, in June 1906, record that Secretary of War Wil
liam Taft – who, three years later, would become twenty-seventh president of the
United States – was elected chair and that a telegram proposing Dublin-born Augus
tus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907) for the commission was discussed and greeted with
enthusiasm. Potential locations for the monument, at either the intersection of New
Jersey and Massachusetts Avenues or in Franklin Square – not Lafayette Square – were
also given consideration.18 What must have seemed like real progress so early in the
procedure was promptly stalled by representatives of a number of Irish associations in
America who had been invited to participate in the discussion. They wanted more time
to consider both the sculptor and the site.19 Ultimately the manner in which the Irish
Americans involved themselves in the monument process was to prove detrimental.20
Irish-American societies were growing in number and membership at the turn of
the century, and the power that they wielded resulted from those members who held
important and influential positions, particularly those who held seats in Congress.
These societies were formed largely to assist the considerable numbers of Irish immi
grants in America, as well as to promote Irishness, or at least their idea of it. The two
largest and most prominent among the societies were the Ancient Order of Hiber
nians (AOH), more Catholic, Nationalist, and working class, and the Friendly Sons
of St Patrick, more affluent and less sectarian. Both were aggressively antipathetic
towards the British − which, along with religion, would play a major role in their
choice of sculptor for the Barry monument. If the Friendly Sons played the key role in
the Philadelphia commission and the AOH had driven the early stages of the national
memorial, both groups were in play ultimately, along with many others, in bringing
the Washington statue to fruition.
Names other than that of Saint-Gaudens began promptly to circulate, and by the
time a sculptor was finally offered the commission in 1910, he had been dead three
years. Over a period of four years from 1906, the names of several now-forgotten
Irish-American sculptors joined others who were better known in being proposed or
proposing themselves for the commission. By 1910 some twenty-five sculptors would
have had some connection with the process. One among them, Jerome Connor, would
emerge the main contender among the Irish societies, and his overt connection to these
groups would ultimately cost him the commission. In June 1906 he was proposed for
the monument commission by the Irish Society.21 Augustus Lukeman22 and Gutzon
Borglum23 proposed themselves, and the John Barry Statue Association proffered John
Boyle and James Kelly.24 Names dropped in and out of favour over the coming months,
until, in February 1907, the Irish-Americans presented the BSC with a list of six sculp
tors who should be invited to compete for the commission:25 John Boyle and Agnes
McCahill of New York; Jerome Connor of Syracuse; Ulric Dunbar of Washington,
D.C.; Samuel Murray of Philadelphia; and John Mahoney (listed as Maloney) of Indi
ana – an odd mixture of the known and the unknown! The named sculptors were all
of Irish descent, which by then had become a requisite for participating and a matter
on which the Irish societies proposed to have the final say.26 Although such a stipula
tion had not been in place for the commissioning of the Lafayette statue, for which
six sculptors – three American and three French – had been invited to submit designs,
it was perhaps inevitable that the French would prevail, with in this instance two of
them being offered the commission. Much less ambiguous, the insistence that the Barry
statue be the work of a sculptor of Irish descent ruled out Lukeman, whose years of
apprenticeship with Irish-American sculptor Launt Thompson would not help him to
qualify, and Borglum who did not even have such a connection. More significantly, it
prevented many leading American sculptors of the day from seeking the commission.
John J. Boyle (1851–1917) was the best known among those named, with several
public monuments to his credit, particularly in Philadelphia, where he was raised. He
had impeccable credentials, as both of his parents were Irish,27 and he had letters of rec
ommendation from such eminent American sculptors as J.Q.A. Ward and Daniel Ches
ter French.28 He also had serious political support − from the Friendly Sons of St Patrick
and from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote of this ‘young American of
Irish descent’ as ‘just the man to do the Barry statue’.29 Little could Roosevelt have
known at the time just how right – and, curiously, how wrong – he would be proved.
The other sculptors listed were variously experienced, some in public monument
work, and most had at least one parent born in Ireland. Agnes McCahill (née McGuire;
d. 1910), a former pupil of both Herbert Adams and Saint-Gaudens,30 is the least
known today and as such is an enigmatic presence on the list. Nonetheless the pres
ence of a woman among the male sculptors must be recognised as a considerable
achievement on her part. The Whitney/Sumner controversy of 1875 had only rela
tively recently been resolved with the erection of the statue in the grounds of Harvard
in 1902.31 With no apparent experience in public statue work, McCahill is known to
have completed – somewhat astutely, it must be thought – statuettes of both Barry
and John Paul Jones in March 1906.32 Of the six, Jerome Connor (1876–1943) had
the considerable advantage of being Irish-born. Already in the United States for nearly
twenty years, he was, nonetheless, still largely inexperienced in monumental work.
Rather than the random offering of names, the BSC proposed to formalise the pro
cess by organising a statue competition, the programme for which was finalised in
June 1908. ‘Artists of Irish descent who are citizens of the United States’ were invited
to submit models by the end of the year. The submission and judging process was laid
out, including the fact that three models would be shortlisted; that honorariums of
$1,000, $750 and $500 would be awarded; that all statue work and bronze casting
was to be executed in the United States; and that the sculpture should ‘represent the
character and individuality of the subject’.33 Legitimacy with regard to Irish descent
had to be ascertained by the committee before permission to participate was granted.34
Fourteen sculptors were sent the programme, 35 and a further seven requested it.
Among the latter group, few had any substantial experience of public monument
work or the requisite Irish connections.36 Andrew O’Connor (1874–1941) and John
Flanagan (c. 1856–1952) were the most significant new names to emerge at this stage.
That this was turning into a long-drawn-out and, ultimately, contentious procedure
was not unusual. Methods of selecting a sculptor for a public commission had long
been problematic in America and beyond. Direct commissioning was considered elit
ist and open to abuse; open competition, the most democratic procedure, failed to
attract the best artists. Daniel Chester French and Saint-Gaudens had long ceased to
participate in competitions.37 Select competitions, whereby certain artists were invited
to compete – a preferred option to many – was unsatisfactory for emerging artists who,
little known, would mostly not be chosen to participate. And all three methods were
predisposed to gender bias. In the early twentieth century competitions had ‘fallen
into disrepute’,38 and in the aftermath of the D.C. Sherman monument controversy, a
code of practice was being sought.39 The outcome of the competition in 1896 to com
memorate General William T. Sherman in Washington saw the choice of the expert
judging panel, which included Saint-Gaudens, Ward and French,40 ignored in favour of
30 Paula Murphy
a model chosen by the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, the instigators of the com
mission.41 By coincidence, a little over ten years later, once more in D.C., the choice
of the experts would be overruled as a result of input from the monument initiators.
Thirteen of the sculptors, who were deemed to be ‘of “Irish descent” sufficiently
to comply with the terms of the program’, were invited to participate in the Barry
competition.42 Models were received from eight of them: Jerome Connor, John Flana
gan, Andrew O’Connor, Agnes McCahill, Frank Elwell, Lot Flannery, Elmer Hannan
and J. Maxwell Miller. The advisory committee, comprising artists F.D. Millet, D.H.
Burnham and Herbert Adams, gathered to view the models on 8 February 1909. Their
unanimous choice was the model of Andrew O’Connor, with runners-up Jerome Con
nor and John Flanagan in second and third place, respectively. Lorado Taft, in his then
recently published The History of American Sculpture, includes all three sculptors in
a essay titled ‘The Younger Generation in New York’, noting O’Connor’s ‘remark
able aptitude for composition’; Connor’s ‘directness and sympathy’; and Flanagan’s
status in the profession, recognised by awards received in Paris.43 While the other
models were largely ignored in the discussions that followed the selection, Andrew
O’Connor’s successful design and the subsequent thorny issues surrounding it were
widely commented on. The BSC accepted the panel’s recommendation of O’Connor
with the proviso that he revisit the architectural features of his model. Based in France
at this time and working in the outskirts of Paris, O’Connor was informed of his suc
cess and invited to submit another design. The Rochambeau monument in Lafayette
Park was proposed as an exemplar, with which O’Connor was happy to comply.
On discovering that Andrew O’Connor was to be awarded the commission, the Irish
societies were quick to inform the BSC that the model of Jerome Connor was the ‘unani
mous selection of the representatives of the Irish Societies’.44 A representative of the
AOH imparted this information to the BSC in an uncompromising manner, with the full
expectation that their decision would hold sway.45 Only the members of the BSC were
privy to their own unanimous decision, agreed at a meeting in July 1909, ‘that under no
circumstances should the award be given to Mr. Jerome Connor.’46 In Connor’s favour,
this decision would have been the consequence of the Irish societies promoting him for
the commission, rather than any reflection on the actual merits of the work.
Andrew O’Connor’s submission to the competition had been dispatched from
France in November 1908.47 There can be no doubt that his maquette (Figure 2.3) was
the most imaginative of all the submissions. The dominant and vigorous portrayal of
Barry on a pedestal was set against an architectural feature that incorporated a relief
panel illustrating Ireland’s history and framed at either end by relief figures depicting
emigrants and Erin (Ireland). O’Connor explained this design as symbolising
the history of a people who, oppressed in their own country, emigrated to Amer
ica, where, joining the colonists, they continued the struggle against the same
oppressors and for the same object, which was liberty. In their struggle to which
this exile of Erin, John Barry, displayed distinguished loyalty and skill, the whole
soul and mind of his race was with him . . . To ignore the truth of this in a monu
ment to the exile of Erin, who was by birth a foe to the king, repudiated by the
American, would be to accord to it less than its due.48
Whereas the Washington Post hailed the model as ‘close to being a triumph of
the sculptor’s art’, Irish Americans, particularly members of the AOH, found it
Figure 2.3 Andrew O’Connor, photograph of plaster model (first) submitted to design competi
tion for monument to Commodore John Barry, 1908, National Archives Washing
ton, D.C.
Source: Photograph: Washington, D.C., National Archives, RG42, Barry Statue, Box no 1, Entry 330.
Washington, D.C., National Archives.
objectionable.49 The Post, attempting to explain the displeasure of the Irish Americans,
settled on the presence of the nude figures depicting ‘the rude, uncivilized children of
Erin’ as an inappropriate representation of the ‘proverbial modesty of the woman
hood of [the Irish] race’.50 While first-generation immigrants from Ireland, many of
whom were rural peasants, might have been familiar with the ‘uncivilized’ nature of
the country they had known, the second generation, born and raised in America, could
not accept such a characterisation of their ancestral homeland. Even the figure of Barry
met with their criticism, described as having the appearance of ‘a Bowery tough’,51 and
the Irish allegorical figures in the composition were deemed ‘decidedly objectionable’ in
their seeming absence of dignity. This was not a representation of Ireland that the Irish
Americans recognised or welcomed, and they certainly did not want it promoted in a
public monument. In addition, their preference was for a traditional monument to rep
resent Barry – what they described as ‘an American statue of an American naval officer,
something on the order of the Rochambeau monument now on Lafayette Square’.52
While the Rochambeau suggestion was conveyed to O’Connor by the BSC in connec
tion with the working of his second design, the source of the suggestion was not.
The Rochambeau in Lafayette Park is the work of French sculptor Fernand Hamar
and was commissioned as a counterpart to the Lafayette statue already in place. Hamar
32 Paula Murphy
had been invited to adapt a replica of his Rochambeau statue in Vendôme, in France,
which was unveiled in 1900. Both the Lafayette and Rochambeau statues were mod
elled and cast in France; both depict French, not Franco-American, men; and both are
traditional in style. Neither appears to have engendered friction between the French
and the Americans. The bronze figure of Liberty on the Rochambeau monument holds
two flags in her hand – those of France and America – drawing the two countries
together. By contrast, Barry, as an Irish American, was straddling two communities –
one of which believed, incorrectly, that it was in charge of the monument process.
While working on the second model, O’Connor received a request from a repre
sentative of the French government who wanted to secure a bronze cast of the original
Barry model for the Luxembourg Museum in Paris.53 O’Connor was obliged to seek −
and was granted − permission from the BSC to have the cast made.54 That O’Connor’s
work was about to take its place among the luminaries of contemporary sculpture in
what was then a major museum of modern art should have given the commission cause
to rethink the disapproving role of the Irish societies in the monument discussion. And
yet not only did the French commission not have any impact in Washington at the
time, but in 1910 O’Connor’s second model was rejected. The French Ministry of Fine
Arts, somewhat unbelieving of what was taking place in Washington, would join the
protest to the BSC against the rejection of O’Connor’s model for the Barry statue.55
To date discussion of the Irish societies’ rejection of O’Connor’s first model has
centred on their distaste for certain aspects of the artwork. Kirk Savage, in his elo
quent discourse on the Barry monument controversy, notes how the Irish Americans
were ‘deeply offended’ by O’Connor’s design,56 which, as has been demonstrated, was
indeed the case. However, the objections of this conservative group of people went
well beyond the monument design. This ‘mess with the Ancient Order of Hibernians’
was, as O’Connor knew, personal and resulted from their dislike of his moral behav
iour.57 The sculptor had made the BSC aware of ‘the numerous attacks directed against
[him] personally’.58 Even the ‘attackers’ had informed the BSC of their investigation
into the sculptor and their resulting unhappiness with both his moral behaviour and
his religion. A document signed by members of the Irish societies reported that he had
‘deserted his wife and children and left them in destitution’, that he was now ‘a fugi
tive from justice’ – and that he was a Protestant.59 The sculptor’s divorce proceedings
in the New York Supreme Court in 1906 were known by way of media coverage,60
and he had indeed left for Paris when the legal action commenced. He was undeni
ably a Protestant, the son of a father who had converted to the Protestant faith, and
these religious conformists were determined that a non-Catholic would not be offered
the commission.61 There is a certain irony in the sculptor being taken to task for
his religion in these circumstances. Had these Irish Americans been better informed,
they would have been aware that in Ireland sculpture commissioning was an instance
where religious sectarianism was not practiced, where Catholics undertook Protes
tant commissions and vice versa. In the context of the Barry commission, a form of
unthinking religious orthodoxy predominated.62
With regard to his moral behaviour, what scandalised the Irish Americans was con
sidered immaterial by Americans. Colonel Charles Larned, for whom O’Connor had
carried out work at the Memorial Hall at West Point, New York, and who was famil
iar with O’Connor’s ‘badly tangled’ family affairs, declared his distaste for mixing
morals and art, noting that historic figures such as Benvenuto Cellini and moderns like
Rodin would fare badly if they were to be so judged. And American art professionals
63
were at one in admiration of O’Connor’s work and in disgust at the mismanagement

of the competition. The arts societies (National Society of the Fine Arts, National
Sculpture Society, American Institute of Architects, American Federation of Arts) were
appalled to find the views of experts being overturned under pressure from local inter
ested groups and were wary of the precedent that was being set. Architect Cass Gil
bert, who was fulsome in his praise of O’Connor’s work generally and of this design
in particular, was firm in his belief that if the choice of the expert jury was overturned
in this instance, the government would find it ‘exceedingly difficult [in the future] to
induce artists of ability to enter its competitions’.64
By February 1910 the BSC, weary of the controversy that had now been in train for
nearly four years and wanting to have done with the whole affair, decided to inform
the sculptors who had participated in the competition that none of the designs submit
ted were deemed satisfactory65 and they chose to look elsewhere. The political clout of
the Irish Americans had ensured that the commission was not awarded to O’Connor.
However, their success did not extend to having their own choice of sculptor, Jerome
Connor, accepted. In March 1910, John J. Boyle, whose name was in play from early
in the process, was offered the commission, although not before Archbishop John
Ireland, with whom this whole process had started and who had been kept informed
throughout, had given his blessing.66
If the BSC thought that Boyle would be a non-controversial appointment for the
Barry commission, they were wrong. The three models submitted by the sculptor met
with ‘unanimous disapproval’ from the Irish societies.67 This was not to deter the BSC,
whose appointed design committee, comprising sculptor Paul Bartlett and architects
Walter Cook and Whitney Warren, made their selection of one of the models.68 With
the names of Andrew O’Connor and Jerome Connor still in play in the respective
camps, the BSC sought and were given the endorsement of the Fine Arts Commission
for the Boyle work, with suggestions for improvements.69 Yet again the Rochambeau
statue was proffered as an indicator. This had become the established monument for
mula in America in the first decade of the twentieth century − a standing figure atop
a pedestal with subsidiary symbolic figural representation at its base. The pedestal on
which Boyle’s Barry stands presents a willowy allegorical female (Victory) in the man
ner of the Rochambeau. However, the sculptor’s representation of Barry rejects the
commanding gesture of Hamar’s French general and, indeed, that of Samuel Murray’s
Barry statue in Philadelphia.
While there is a marked contrast between Samuel Murray’s lively depiction of Barry
and Boyle’s self-satisfied portrayal, both remain conventional beside O’Connor’s
dynamic interpretation. O’Connor presents a rugged sea captain, hatless, balancing
precariously on a sloping base, the wind blowing through his open uniform coat and
whirling about his trouser legs. This is a man in charge, at sea, fighting the elements
and the enemy, rather than the decorated hero in Franklin Square, who, on dry land,
and ‘formally posed’,70 sports a cloak and a three-cornered hat. Such was O’Connor’s
conviction about how Barry should be portrayed that he retained his initial conceit
for the figure in both of the maquettes while radically changing the setting. President
Roosevelt had been incorrect in thinking that Boyle was ‘just the man to do the Barry
statue’.71 The realised Barry monument in D.C. (Figure 2.4) cannot be considered orig
inal or innovative. The O’Connor design – had it been put in place − would have made
34 Paula Murphy
Figure 2.4 John J. Boyle, Commodore John Barry, 1914 (bronze), Washington, D.C., Franklin
Square.
a rich contribution to the story of monument making in America, building on the

extraordinary versatility of fellow Irish-American Saint-Gaudens’s monument design.
The unveiling of the monument – the pedestal of which bears no laudatory obser
vations about Barry and no claim to fatherhood of the navy – in Franklin Square on
16 May 1914 was a colossal affair with President Wilson presiding. Wilson, who at
appropriate times liked to refer to the ‘very considerable strain of Irish blood’ that
ran through his veins, was also quick to incorporate reference to his Irish ancestry
being in Ulster, which had a distancing effect and which, for some, aligned him with
Britain.72 He had courted the Irish-American vote prior to his election in 1912, but in
his unveiling speech noted that Barry ‘was not an Irish-American; he was an Irishman
who became an American’.73 Wilson made use of Barry to inform the Irish-American
community of his opposition to their hyphenated suggestion of a dual nationality,
proposing that immigrants owed allegiance to the country that had welcomed them.
***
The support for Andrew O’Connor and for his model amidst the American artistic
and professional community was immense. Moral behaviour and religious persuasion
were not considered to have any role in the selecting of an artist for a commission.
Excellence and professionalism were the only determinants. An example of similar
religious zealotry was witnessed in London shortly before the Barry controversy in
D.C., when the American-British sculptor Jacob Epstein carved eighteen nude figures
for the façade of the British Medical Association Building (now Zimbabwe House)
in 1908. Religious extremists were vocal in their objection to such a public display
of nudity, but calls for the removal of the statues proved unsuccessful and the work
remained in place.
There are precedents in the history of public commissioning where the artist rather
than the artwork has been called into question. Issues of gender have been evident,
notably in America in that notorious instance in Boston in 1875, when Anne Whit
ney was denied the commission for the Sumner statue, in spite of having won the
competition.
However, was the moral standing of the artist ever to have taken hold, the world
would have been deprived of many of its major works of art. It was O’Connor’s mis
fortune that publicity of his divorce case rendered his private life public. Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, who is known to have had several affairs and at least one long-time
liaison, managed to keep the non-professional side of his life private, as a result of
which his patronage was not affected. The behaviour of Saint-Gaudens, Rodin and
so many of their fellow artists, while unacceptable to some, is to others nothing more
than what has been described as ‘the libidinous drive of being an artist’.74
While O’Connor’s behaviour was far from unusual within the artistic milieu, it was his
bad luck to find himself at odds with a group of Irish-American Catholic conservatives,
stalwarts of respectability, whose standards were resolute – and who happened to have
political clout. The degree of their animosity is revealed in a letter Andrew O’Connor
senior, also a sculptor, wrote to U.S. Secretary of War Jacob McGavock Dickinson, who
had become the chair of the BSC, detailing an encounter he had in Washington when
he brought his son’s model to the city for the competition. ‘The “Art Director” of the
A.O.H., a good friend of mine, who is not a bigot’ acknowledged on that occasion that,
in a fair competition, no sculptor would have had a chance against a model submitted
by Andrew O’Connor junior. But the AOH member could already report to him that
his son was ineligible before anyone even saw the work, because he was unacceptable
to the AOH. He was not ‘a Catholic in good standing in the Church and a Hibernian in
good standing in the Order’ and, even more offensive apparently, was the father him
self who was deemed a Catholic renegade, a turncoat, a pervert. Reading the letter one
wonders why O’Connor senior even bothered to leave the model for the judging panel –
except, of course, that he knew well that there was no mention in the competition
programme of the involvement of the AOH in the selection process. However, neither
did the programme indicate that the selection panel would have the final say. Rather, it
had indicated that the selection would be made by the BSC, who would be ‘assisted by
an Advisory Committee, composed of one or more artists of national reputation’.75 In
this way they afforded themselves permission, in the end, to reject the winning model
along with the two other short-listed works and to choose instead a sculptor who ‘never
missed mass on Sunday’ and was a ‘Hibernian in the best of standing’.76
Unusual sculptural style or quality of craftsmanship was not a consideration in
the decision; aesthetics were not a factor. It was the age-old animosity between Irish
Catholic and Irish Protestant, then being played out in America, that resulted in the
loss of an exciting opportunity in American monumental sculpture.
36 Paula Murphy
Notes
1. Michael E. Driscoll, House of Representatives, to Mr Pedigo, Secretary, Barry Statue Com
mission (BSC), January 15, 1909, RG42, Records of the Office of Public Buildings and
Public Parks of the National Capital, Records concerning Barry statue, Records of the
Barry Statue Commission (RG42, Barry Statue, National Archives), Letters received by the
Secretary 1906–1914, Box No 1, Entry 337, National Archives, Washington, DC.
2. 80th Congress, H.J. Res. 297, Joint Resolution. The sum allocated was increased from
$20,000 to $30,000 in June 1948.
3. Irish Times, August 9, 1956.
4. Henry Preble, “Commodore John Barry, Senior Office of the U.S. Navy from 1783–1803,”
United Service: A Quarterly Review of Military and Naval Affairs (1879–1905), 12, no. 5
(May 1885), 518.
5. Memorial to Commodore John Barry, Father of the Navy of the United States (Philadel
phia, PA: Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, 1907), 13.
6. Memorial to Commodore John Barry, 1907, 5.
7. Quote of the monument committee who viewed the clay model in the sculptor’s studio,
Philadelphia Enquirer, December 29, 1905.
8. Murray to Jacob M. Dickinson, April 26, 1909 (arrival stamp), RG42, Barry Statue,
National Archives: Correspondence and other records of the executive and disbursing
officer 1907–1917, Box no 1, Entry 339. Dickinson was Taft’s replacement when he stood
down as Secretary of War to become President.
9. The Portfolio, July 1813, quoted in Martin I.J. Griffin, The Story of Commodore John
Barry (Philadelphia, PA, 1908), 1.
10. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Patrick J. Haltigan to Secretary of Navy,
June 12, 1906.
11. H.R. 15350, 57th Congress, July 1, 1902.
12. “A Monument to Commodore John Barry,” The American Catholic Historical Researches,
19, no. 4 (October 1902), 180. The Barry statue is now one of fourteen statues in Wash
ington, DC, listed as American Revolutionary Statuary with the National Register of His
toric Places.
13. For a detailed examination of the attempts, between the years 1902 and 1906, to have a
Barry Statue Bill passed see: Kathleen Szpila, “Passing the Barry Statue Bill: First Memorial
of a Catholic American Revolutionary Hero in the Nation’s Capital,” American Catholic
Studies, 126, no. 4 (Winter 2016), 49–79.
14. Szpila, 65 and 67.
15. Ibid, 56.
16. “Illiberality Rebuked,” Irish American Weekly, August 12, 1871. Quoted in Szpila, 53.
17. Szpila, 56.
18. Barry Statue Commission, Minute Book, 5, RG42, Barry Statue, National Archives: Min
utes 1906–1910, Box 1, Entry 336, 6.
19. BSC, Minute Book, 7.
20. Many of the Irish associations involved are listed in the minutes of the meeting of the
commission held 16 April 1908: Irish Society; Barry Statue Association; Shamrock Club;
United Irish League; Knights of Columbus; Gaelic Association of Washington; Gaelic
League; Friendly Sons of St Patrick. The Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) and the
American Irish Historical Society, not included in the list, played an active role in the Barry
monument in D.C.
21. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: William Taft’s Private Secretary to Michael
E. Driscoll, September 15, 1906.
22. Correspondence and other records of the executive and disbursing officer 1907–1917:
Lukeman to Senator George Wetmore, June 21, 1906.
23. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Borglum to Senator Wetmore, August 14,
1906.
24. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Michael F. O’Donoghue to William Taft,
December 3, 1906.
25. BSC, Minute Book, 9.
26. Ibid.
27. 1900 United States Federal Census.
Ward (February 20, 1907) and French (February 9, 1907) to Barry Monument Association.
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick to William Taft, June 7, 1907; President Theodore Roosevelt
to Senator George Wetmore, 8 June 1907.
30. The Art Amateur, July 1894, 43.
31. The controversy surrounded the commissioning of a statue of Charles Sumner for Boston.
In 1875, Anne Whitney was successful in the anonymous competition to choose a sculptor,
but was denied the commission when the judges discovered that a woman had submitted
the winning design.
32. New York Times, March 25, 1906.
Programme of Competition for the Pedestrian Statue of the late Commodore John Barry
to be erected in the City of Washington, District of Columbia.
Charles G. Bromwell to Samuel Murray, August 13, 1908.
Typed list of names and addresses, n.d.
Hermon A. MacNeil (letter on his behalf), Leo Lentelli, Robert Paine, W. Clark Noble,
Edmond Quinn, Eugene Morahan and Helva Beatrice Wilson.
37. Mary French, Memories of a Sculptor’s Wife (Boston, MA and New York: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1928), 209.
38. Washington Post, June 29, 1904.
39. Washington Post, February 12, 1896.
40. The American Architect and Building News, June 13, 1896.
41. Washington Post, June 4, 1896.
42. Correspondence and other records of the executive and disbursing officer 1907–1917: BSC
to H.A. MacNeil, 3 September 1908. Those invited were Jerome Connor, John Flanagan,
Andrew O’Connor, Agnes McCahill, Frank Elwell, Eugene Morahan, Ulric Dunbar, Lot
Flannery, Edmond Quinn, Elmer Hannan, John H. Mahoney, John J. Boyle and J. Maxwell
Miller.
43. Lorado Taft, The History of American Sculpture (New York and London: Macmillan &
Co., 1903), 447, 448.
44. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Minutes of meeting of Barry Monument
Committee United American Irish Societies, March 31, 1909.
45. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: William J. Frizzell to Mr Pedigo, January 15,
1909.
Minutes, Meeting of BSC, July 16, 1909.
Customs Declaration.
48. Owen Flanders, “Too Irish for the Irish,” Washington Post, May 30, 1909.
49. “Too Irish for the Irish.”
50. Ibid.
51. F.M. O’Donoghue, “Not an Irish Design”, Washington Post, June 1, 1909.
AOH to Chairman Barry Monument Commission, February 18, 1909.
O’Connor to Col. Spencer Cosby, May 15, 1909.
54. The sculpture forms part of the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
O’Connor to Gilbert, March 25, 1910.
56. Kirk Savage, Monument Wars (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011 (2009)),
207.
57. Correspondence and other records of the executive and disbursing officer 1907–1917: Col.
Larned to Col. Cosby, April 5, 1910.
38 Paula Murphy
O’Connor to Cosby, January 11, 1910.
59. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Irish Societies to BSC, May 25, 1909.
60. New York Times, May 20, 1906.
61. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Andrew O’Connor senior to Barry Monu
ment Commission, March 31, 1910.
62. John Barry had suffered the penalty of being a Catholic. The family, when Barry was an
infant, had been driven from their home in Ballysampson. Under Penal Laws, a Catholic
family was not permitted ownership of property. Nenagh Guardian, September 15, 1956.
63. Savage, 207.
64. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Cass Gilbert to Col. Cosby, July 22, 1909.
65. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: BSC meeting, February 25, 1910. RG42.
to Archbishop John Ireland, February 25, 1910, as note 8.
Boyle to Cosby, June 22, 1910, as note 8.
Bartlett, Cook and Warren’s report to BSC, May 27, 1910, as note 8.
meeting, December 8, 1910, as note 8.
70. James M. Goode, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, DC (Washington, DC: Smithso
nian Institution Press, 1974), 280.
President Theodore Roosevelt to Senator George Wetmore, June 8, 1907.
72. Robert Schmuhl, Ireland’s Exiled Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 77.
I am grateful to Giollamuire Ó Murchú for directing me to Schmuhl’s book.
73. New York Times, May 17, 1914.
74. The Observer, 9 April 2017.
Competition Programme.
76. Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914: Andrew O’Connor Senior to J.M. Dickinson,
March 31, 1910.
Works Cited
Manuscripts
RG42, Records of the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capi
tal, Records concerning Barry statue, Records of the Barry Statue Commission, National
Archives, Washington, DC.
– Barry Statue Commission, Minute Book, Box 1, Entry 336
– Correspondence and other records of the executive and disbursing officer 1907–1917, Box
no 1, Entry 339.
– Letters received by the Secretary 1906–1914, Box No 1, Entry 337,
*****
– 80th Congress, H.J. Res. 297, Joint Resolution.
– H.R. 15350, 57th Congress, 1 July 1902.
– 1900 United States Federal Census
– Anonymous. “A Monument to Commodore John Barry.” The American Catholic Historical
Researches 19, no. 4 (October 1902).
– French, Mary. Memories of a Sculptor’s Wife. Boston, MA and New York: Houghton Mifflin
Co, 1928.
– Goode, James M. The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, DC. Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
– Griffin, Martin I.J. The Story of Commodore John Barry. Philadelphia, PA: Project Guten
berg, 1908. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25100 (accessed January 19, 2022).
– Preble, Henry. “Commodore John Barry, Senior Office of the U.S. Navy from 1783–1803.”
United Service: A Quarterly Review of Military and Naval Affairs (1879–1905) 12, no. 5
(May 1885).
– Savage, Kirk. Monument Wars. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011 (2009).
– Schmuhl, Robert. Ireland’s Exiled Children. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
– Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. Memorial to Commodore John Barry, Father of the
Navy of the United States. Philadelphia, PA: Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, 1907.
– Szpila, Kathleen. “Passing the Barry Statue Bill: First Memorial of a Catholic American Revo
lutionary Hero in the Nation’s Capital.” American Catholic Studies 126, no. 4 (Winter 2016).
– Taft, Lorado, The History of American Sculpture (New York and London: Macmillan & Co.,
1903).
Newspapers
American Architect and Building News, June 13, 1896.
Art Amateur, July 1894, p. 43.
Flanders, Owen, ‘Too Irish for the Irish’, in Washington Post, May 30, 1909.
Irish Times, August 9, 1956.
Nenagh Guardian, September 15, 1956.
New York Times, March 25, 1906; May 20, 1906; May 17, 1914.
O’Donoghue, F.M., ‘Not an Irish Design’, in Washington Post, June 1, 1909.
The Observer, 9 April 2017.
Philadelphia Enquirer, December 29, 1905.
Washington Post, February 12, 1896; June 4, 1896; June 29, 1904.
3 Some Thoughts on Arthur Kingsley
Porter and Françoise Henry as
Transcultural Pioneers of Early
Irish Medieval Art
Lynda Mulvin
This essay introduces the pioneering scholars Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933) and
Françoise Henry (1902–1982) as exponents of early Christian art in Ireland. Their work
represents an innovative phase of discovery and scholarship in the historiography of
Irish art that formulated the value of Irish art as a precursor to European Romanesque
art. Connections can be made between Porter and Henry as scholars of Irish medieval
art who were both keen to explore the identity and iconography of the High Crosses
and question the level of awareness of secular mythology in terms of Irish identity. Their
new theoretical approaches and methodologies to writing about the past demonstrate
their key roles in the development of the study of Irish medieval art history.
Margaret Stokes
Before addressing the work of Porter and Henry, we must consider Dublin-born Irish
antiquarian and illustrator Margaret Stokes (1832–1900), as her work had a significant
impact on Porter and Henry. Stokes edited Dunraven’s Notes on Architecture in 1885
which initialised a methodological approach to Irish medieval art, combining the practi
cal elements of note-taking, writing, photography and drawing within the framework of
architecture into which the arts were situated.1 Subsequently, in 1887, in her publication
Early Christian Art in Ireland, Stokes wrote about Irish scribes and scholars in Europe
and their role in disseminating Irish art.2 In the first essay of this impressive volume,
published in the South Kensington Museum Series, she gathered invaluable information
about the survival of manuscripts and relative artefacts in various monastic libraries and
town repositories across Europe. She quoted the writings of William Wilde (1815–1876),
but went on to establish a typology of Irish medieval art from 1887 published in the Vic
toria and Albert museum guide series as Early Christian Art in Ireland (1887), which
received instant recognition on the international stage.3 Her work was complemented
by some of the first extant surveys of the crosses, such as H.S. Crawford’s Handbook of
Carved Ornament of the Christian Period published in Dublin in 1926.4
Stokes raised pertinent questions regarding the development of Irish art concern
ing how far the style emerged and asked what degree of influence there was via “the
advancing tide of European civilisation spreading north-west till it was stayed upon
the Irish shore” and whether this form of Irish art, when re-introduced into that of
the Carolingian period on the continent, was a return wave of a style already becom
ing extinct in certain parts of Europe whence it originally came.5 She examined how
much Irish manuscripts are decorated, as distinguished from their counterparts of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-4
Some Thoughts 41
the Carolingian period. Stokes’s work pointed to the continental influences on Irish
art and in many respects informed the writing of Arthur Kingsley Porter. Porter’s
links with the published works of Margaret Stokes and his contemporary Françoise
Henry are significant in this growing discourse of historiography of early Irish medi
eval art.
Arthur Kingsley Porter

American art historian and medievalist Arthur Kingsley Porter was the author of the
renowned survey of Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads (1923) leading
to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.6 Porter’s work on Romanesque art explored the
interchange of sculptors across the pilgrimage roads of France and Spain, as well as
their Romanesque sculpture.7 In a seminal article in volume five of the Marburger
Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, he sought Coptic and Oriental sources in Irish High
Cross iconography. He published Crosses and Culture of Ireland in 1931, which
resulted from his lectures given at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum and the Met
ropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 1926 and 1931.8 In this illustrated
volume, he outlined new ideas of mythologies associated with Irish High Crosses. This
was his contribution to a pioneering phase of discovery and scholarship in the histori
ography of early medieval Irish art and architecture. Porter introduced a personal view
determined by his interpretation of an independent, autonomous Irish art, combined
with his interest in parallel artistic developments such as Lombardic architecture.9
Porter’s interest in Ireland stemmed from his work with the Spanish Romanesque
and his on-going debate with French art historian and medievalist Émile Mâle over the
origins of the Romanesque as a whole. Porter dated Irish High Crosses to the begin
ning of the tenth century and argued for multiple centres of sculptural production
before the advent of the French Romanesque. His work was imbued with romantic
associations of St. Columba and a continuity of visual forms, which he presented from
pagan Celtic Ireland into the Christian era. This line of enquiry led him to base himself
in Glenveagh, Co. Donegal, in the 1920s, close to the birthplace of St. Columba.10
While it has already been mentioned that Porter built on the work of Stokes, Irish
writer, critic and artist George William Russell (1867–1935), known as AE, must also
be mentioned as an influence. Porter spent time with AE, who was involved in the
Theosophical movement.11 AE stimulated Porter’s interest in Irish art, folklore and
mythology as the foundation for an unbroken past ethnic identity for Ireland of the
future. Following AE’s exclusion of mainstream western sources, Porter attempted to
raise the same level of awareness of mythology through his readings of crosses.
Françoise Henry
Françoise Henry is another acknowledged pioneer of Irish medieval art and archi
tecture. She was born in France in 1902 and studied under Henri Focillon and Henri
Hubert in Paris. Focillon was renowned for his abstract methodological approach to
iconography with a focus on tradition, interaction and experience. He became Henry’s
mentor and led her to seek connections with the past as an organic force.12 She worked
in the French Museum of National Antiquities at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, dividing her
time with periods of teaching at University College Dublin (UCD), where she estab
lished the first Department of the History of Art in Ireland in 1966.13
42 Lynda Mulvin
Henry came to Ireland for the first time to visit and stay at Cashel, which prompted
her master work that she continued under Focillon.14 She took technical notes and
made observations on style, ornament, material and techniques to illustrate details
and draw comparisons and groupings of different types of objects, careful to note
the setting and the environment. This enabled her to establish a chronology of Irish
art.15 Henry’s attention to figurative crosses emphasised the originality of the iconog
raphy and a link from the old world to the modern Christian world.16 She produced
La Sculpture Irlandaise pendant les douze premiers siècles de l’ére chrétienne, which
would become a major source of reference. She also photographed a number of High
Crosses along with other monuments, which would become the essence of her polemi
cal Irish Art in the Early Christian Period (1940), a seminal source book of informa
tion. Henry linked the sources of Irish High Crosses to Carolingian imagery rather
than to the Eastern Mediterranean, as proposed by Porter.17
Like Porter, Henry followed in the footsteps of Stokes. In Henry’s case, she was
influenced by the way that Stokes created different strands of study, from metalwork,
to stone, to the architecture of the early Christian monastery. Although younger than
Porter, Henry was his peer in their profession. Intrigued by Porter, she was interested
in his linking the sources of Irish High Crosses with Eastern Mediterranean sources
rather than to Carolingian imagery. She was also influenced by many of the same
predecessors. Like Porter, she relied on the early scholarship of Margaret Stokes and
H.S. Crawford. Stokes was influential on Henry’s approach to studying a monument.
Corrigendum in The Crosses and Cultures of Ireland

Several convergences of note are clear between the scholarship of Henry and Porter.
Porter’s The Crosses and Culture of Ireland provided interpretations of the illustra
tions of old Irish mythology as he perceived them appearing on many of the High
Crosses, which had panels that he could not correlate with the Bible.18 His experience
of Continental examples would have a bearing on his writings about Irish art, but
Henry identified chronological problems with his schema. Henry published an article
in Revue archéologique in 1930, which was overtaken in 1931 by Porter’s book of lec
tures. Yet Henry suggested Porter was not systematic in his work, as he relied on what
he knew to explain the iconography, rather than interpreting the scene in the context
of other Irish examples. Henry also criticised him for picking and choosing scenes that
he could recognise and not providing logical groupings of scenes, incorrectly looking
further afield to Byzantine Coptic Egypt rather than Carolingian examples, which
Henry favoured as sources for the Irish iconographic panels on the High Crosses.
As Porter went to press with his lectures in his The Crosses and Culture of Ire
land, he included a corrigendum to his volume referring to Henry’s article in Revue
archéologique which questioned his sources of the Ulster crosses.19 He supported
Henry’s iconography, as Henry refuted Porter’s Anglo-Irish sources and connections
for images in the High Crosses with other sculptures such as the Ruthwell Cross, and
pointed towards Carolingian sources as more closely connected links.20 Porter had
described how the crosses of Ulster produced scenes such as ‘Naming the Animals’
and ‘Annunciated to Shepherds’ which he linked to the five-part diptych of Ada group
in the South Kensington Museum.21 Porter connected continental influences, moving
from the Lombardic sculptural to Coptic origins seeking traces of sources for the ico
nography of Irish art.
Some Thoughts 43
Henry responded to Porter in 1933 in La Sculpture Irlandaise pendant les douze
premiers siècles de l’ère chrétienne, which was an appropriate and complementary
study to the Director of the National Museum Adolf Mahr’s metalwork-orientated
Christian Art in Ancient Ireland published in Dublin in 1932.22
The Role of Photography in Establishing Scholarship

Both Porter and Henry expressed the need for a photographic corpus of Irish High
Crosses. Photographic studies used by Porter are located in the Special Collections,
Fine Arts Library, Harvard University, Arthur Kingsley Porter Study and Teaching
Archive; those used by Henry are in the archives and the School of Archaeology at
UCD and in the Royal Irish Academy (RIA). The overall quality of these photographs
would suggest that they were shot using either a medium or large format camera
mounted on a tripod, since most of them have quite a decent depth of field. Porter
engaged Thomas Mason and his wife Lucy Porter, while Henry relied on her own
camera work. These archives await further investigation.23
Henry’s photographic approach to recording early Christian remains was a process
of following line drawings, where the aim was to convey a flattening out of volumes
and reducing detail to a minimum through the use of light and shadow to undercut the
image. Through her photographs, it is evident that Henry divided the High Crosses
into types, and connections were made identifying their closest links with Scotland
rather than England. Porter also drew sources from the Iona crosses and presented
them in plate-glass images, whereas Henry grouped several of the northern crosses
together to create a sense of progression from decorative to figurative imagery. Henry
interpreted the Ahenny crosses as translations from metal ornament as they related
to the Tara Brooch and linked to the Lindisfarne Gospels, which provided her with a
schema dating from the first half of the eighth century. Her focus was on the Ulster
crosses, in which she identified the overarching theme of redemption and suggested
that only further research would prove Carolingian influence.
The Unique Contribution of Porter and Henry in the Study of

Irish Art
Porter’s writings in the early essays of the The Crosses and Culture of Ireland drew
upon reflections on Irish traditions and interpretations of folklore. The High Crosses
were perceived by him as less scriptural, demonstrating sculptures of Christ Trium
phant rather than suffering.24 His book progressed sequentially from the mythology
of St. Patrick with folklore tales relating to the text and image as it related to relics
and images. AE may have influenced his thinking in terms of mysticism and spiritu
ality having regard to iconography and meaning. Porter was struck by the original
ity of the scenes on High Crosses such as the granite High Cross at Castledermot,
Co. Kildare, to make a case for the continuing independence of the iconography
of the Irish Crosses. He emphasised the originality of the scenes infused with some
background knowledge of Byzantine models, such as the Psalter of Studio (British
Museum MS 19352).25 He concluded that while Irish sculpture was independent,
there was a certain knowledge of Byzantine prototypes such as the theme of the sol
dier in the tomb as an early Christian motif. Whereas the theme of St. Paul and
St. Antony and the Raven, which was a tale of two hermetic saints, would be seen as a
44 Lynda Mulvin
direct Coptic image derived from other sources and influences, as seen from examples
at Abu Makar, Egypt.26
Much of Henry’s work was focused on High Crosses, with large sections of her
early publications given over to the elucidation of High Cross iconography. With
the emphasis on iconographic study, Henry went further than Porter to demonstrate,
for example, that Old Testament themes such as the presentation of Daniel and Abel
appeared as a parallel to Christ in the New Testament. Porter set a trend in consider
ing the subject matter on the panels of the High Crosses and their interpretations by
drawing folklore connections. Whereas Henry’s emphasis with Irish art was one that
identified an unbroken, continual unified tradition.
Conclusion
This essay demonstrates the transcultural dialogue that defined the development of
scholarship on Irish medieval art and architecture. The American medievalist Arthur
Kingsley Porter played a significant role in establishing this scholarship, informed by the
preceding work of Irish antiquarian Margaret Stokes. Based in Ireland, French medi
evalist Françoise Henry added to this transcultural dialogue with her own responses to
both Stokes’s and Porter’s work. That the photographic archives for Porter and Henry
are found on different sides of the Atlantic is a physical manifestation of this trans
atlantic connection. A rich history of medieval Irish art and architecture is the result.
Notes
1. Margaret Stokes, ed., Notes on Irish architecture by Edwin, Third Earl of Dunraven (Lon
don: George Bell, 1875), 26.
2. Ludwig Bieler, Ireland, Harbinger of the Middle Ages (London, Oxford, New York and
Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1963).
3. For Margaret Stokes’s papers refer to the Royal Irish Academy Library (RIA), Margaret
Stokes, RR/66/O/18. See also Margaret Stokes, Early Christian Art in Ireland (London:
South Kensington Guides, 1887). Among her other publications, consult Margaret Stokes,
Early Christian Architecture in Ireland (London: George Bell & Sons, 1878) and Margaret
Stokes, High Crosses of Castledermot and Durrow (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1898).
4. See Henry S. Crawford, “A Descriptive List of Early Cross-slabs and Pillars,” Journal of
the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 42 (1912), 217–244.
5. Stokes, 1887, 31.
6. Arthur Kingsley Porter, Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads, 10 vols (Boston,
MA: Marshall Jones Company, 1923).
7. Arthur K. Porter, Medieval Architecture, Its Origins and Development, with Lists of Mon
uments and Bibliographies (New York: The Baker and Taylor Company, 1909) and see
also Arthur K. Porter, The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1911), for discussion of interconnections in Romanesque art.
8. Arthur Kingsley Porter, The Crosses and Culture of Ireland (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1931).
9. Julius Von Pflugk-Harttung, “The Old Irish on the Continent,” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 5 (1891), 75–102.
10. Lucy Costigan, Glenveagh Mystery, the Life, Work and Disappearance of Arthur Kingsley
Porter (Dublin: Merrion, 2013).
11. Michael and Brian McKenna, George Russell (AE) Lurgan and North Armagh (Dublin:
Rathgar Press, 2019), 1–5.
12. For further details on Henri Focillon, professeur d’archéologie et du moyen age, and
Henry consult Royal Irish Academy Library papers: Henry, Françoise, MRIA, 1902–1982;
Marsh-Micheli, Geneviève AP 1945/71 (RRG/6/F); *C/21/1–2/Henry offpr./5. I am grate
ful to the librarian of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA), who freely gave of her time to dem
onstrate this extensive archive of Henry papers.
Some Thoughts 45
13. For further information on UCD, Henry collection of archived photographs consult: Pho
tographic Archive, UCD School of Archaeology, A/IE/295/1N – B/FR/251/10518N-C/
PT/533/10523P. This is a database of over 10,555 black and white photographs taken
by Henry. I am grateful to Dr Conor McDermott and Professor Muiris O’ Sullivan, UCD
School of Archaeology, who freely gave of their time to enable me consult this archive.
Further research work is planned in due course on this collection of photographs and this
archive.
14. R. Moss, “Iconography and Meaning,” in Art and Architecture of Ireland Vol 1 Medieval
c. 400–1600 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2014), 30.
15. For more on Henry see Royal Irish Academy Library papers (RIA) C/21/1–2/Henry. Also
for recent Henry (RIA) Library information, consult: Peter Harbison www.ria.ie/francoise
henry-and-history-irish-art. Also see: Françoise Henry, “les Origines de l’iconographie
irlandaise”, Revue Archéologique (1930), 79–89; Françoise Henry, Irish Art in the Early
Christian Period (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1940); Françoise Henry, “Remains of the
Early Christian Period on Inishkea North, Co. Mayo,” Journal of the Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland 75 (1945), 127–155; Françoise Henry, “Early Christian Slabs and
Pillar Stones in the West of Ireland,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
67 (1937), 265–279; Françoise Henry, Irish Art in the Early Christian Period (London:
Methuen, 1940).
16. Henry, Irish Art in the Early Christian Period, xviii.
17. Françoise Henry, “les Origines de l’iconographie irlandaise,” Revue Archéologique (1930),
89.
18. Kathryn Brush, “German Kunstwissenschaft and the Practice of Art History in America
After World War I. Interrelationships, Exchanges, Contexts,” Marburger Jahrbuch für
Kunstwissenschaft, 26. Bd. (1999), 7–36.
19. Porter, 1931, 9.
20. Arthur Kingsley-Porter, “An Egyptian Legend in Ireland,” Marburger Jahrbuch für
Kunstwissenschaft (1930), 1.
21. Henry, 1930, 89.
22. Adolf Mahr, Christian Art in Ancient Ireland (Dublin: Stationary Office, 1932), 17–22.
23. Grateful thanks are due to Professor Kathryn Brush who freely gave of her time to discuss
the workings of the VSCO 229, Arthur Kingsley Porter Study and Teaching Collection,
in Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University. This is a vast collection
consisting of over 26,000 black and white photographs taken by Porter and Lucy Porter,
with other photographs gathered from different sources, which I have had the opportunity
to consult briefly with a view to carrying out further research in due course. For further
details see also, Kathryn Brush, “Blazing ‘the Way’. Arthur Kingsley Porter’s First Trip
to Northern Spain (1920),” Ad Limina 9 (2018), 225–245 and Kenneth Conant, Ken
neth, Edward Forbes, and Chandler Post, “A. Kingsley Porter,” Bulletin of the Fogg Art
Museum 3, no. 1 (November 1933), 2–5.
24. Porter, 1931, 9. Grateful thanks are due to Professor Bernd Nicolai for his expert observa
tions on iconography in the context of Porter and his Romanesque Sculpture and Pilgrim
age routes to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. See Bernd Nicolai and Klaus Rheidt (eds.)
Santiago de Compostela: Pilgerarchitectur und bildliche Repräsentation in neuer Perspek
tiv (Bern: Peter Lang, 2015).
25. Psalter of Studio MS 19352 www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_
19352, accessed September 8, 2021.
26. Ibid, Psalter of Studio MS 19352.
Works Cited
Bieler, L. Ireland, Harbinger of the Middle Ages. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.
Brush, K. “Blazing ‘the Way:’ Arthur Kingsley Porter First Trip to Northern Spain (1920).” Ad
Limina 9 (2018): 225–245.
Brush, K. “German Kunstwissenschaft and the Practice of Art History in America after World
War I. Interrelationships, Exchanges, Contexts.” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft
26. Bd. (1999): 7–36.
46 Lynda Mulvin
Conant, Kenneth, Edward Forbes, and Chandler Post, “A. Kingsley Porter.” Bulletin of the
Fogg Art Museum 3, no. 1 (November 1933): 2–5.
Costigan, L. Glenveagh Mystery, the Life, Work and Disappearance of Arthur Kinsley Porter
(Dublin: Merrion, 2013).
Crawford, Henry S. “A Descriptive List of Early Cross-slabs and Pillars.” Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 42 (1912): 217–244.
Harbison, P. www.ria.ie/francoise-henry-and-history-irish-art (accessed September 8, 2021).
Henry, F. “Les Origines de l’iconographie irlandaise.” Revue archéologique (1930): 79–89.
Henry, F. “Early Christian Slabs and Pillar Stones in the West of Ireland.” Journal of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 67 (1937): 265–279.
Henry, F. “L’Art Irlandais du VIIIe siècle et ses origines.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6e série 17
(1937): I, 131–144.
Henry, F. Irish Art in the Early Christian Period (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1940), xviii.
Henry, F. “Remains of the Early Christian Period on Inishkea North, Co. Mayo.” Journal of the
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 75 (1945): 127–155.
Mahr, A. Christian Art in Ancient Ireland. Dublin: Stationary Office, 1932.
Marquardt, J. T. (ed). Françoise Henry in Mayo. The Inishkea Journals. Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 2012.
McKenna, M. and B. McKenna. George Russell (AE) Lurgan and North Armagh. Dublin:
Rathgar Press, 2019, 1–5.
Moss, R. Art and Architecture of Ireland Vol 1 Medieval c. 400–1600. Dublin: Royal Irish
Academy, 2014.
Nicolai, B. and K. Rheidt (eds). Santiago de Compostela: Pilgerarchitectur und bildliche
Repräsentation in neuer Perspektiv. Bern: Peter Lang, 2015.
Pflugk-Harttung, Julius Von. “The Old Irish on the Continent.” Transactions of the Royal His
torical Society 5 (1891): 75–102.
Porter, Arthur K. Medieval Architecture, Its Origins and Development, with Lists of Monu
ments and Bibliographies. New York: The Baker and Taylor Company, 1909.
Porter, Arthur K. The Construction of Lombard and Gothic Vaults. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1911.
Porter, Arthur K. Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads. Boston, MA: Marshall Jones
Company, 1923).
Porter, Arthur K. “An Egyptian Legend in Ireland.” Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft
(1930): 1–12.
Porter, Arthur K. The Crosses and Culture of Ireland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1935.
Stokes, M. (ed.) Notes on Irish architecture by Edwin, Third Earl of Dunraven. London: George
Bell & Sons, 1875.
Stokes, M. Early Christian Architecture in Ireland. London: George Bell & Sons, 1878.
Stokes, M. Early Christian Art in Ireland. London: South Kensington Guides, 1887.
Stokes, M. High Crosses of Castledermot and Durrow. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1898.
4 Irish Art at the Armory Show,
1913
Róisín Kennedy
The International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, was
described by Irish American lawyer and collector John Quinn as the ‘the best exhibi
tion of contemporary art that had ever been held anywhere in any country.’1 Organ
ised by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors, the 1913 Armory Show
originated in New York, where it made a major contribution to public awareness of
avant-garde art before travelling in more modest form to Chicago and Boston. The
show of over 1000 works by American and European artists traced the progress of
modern art from classicism to Cubism, bringing some of the most radical art of the
day from Paris to the United States.2 Its attendance has been estimated at 275,000.3
The Armory Show was a moment of transformation in the American art world,
one in which the traditional expectations of the viewer and critic were challenged by
what were viewed as the extreme forms of modernism found in the Cubist and Fauvist
paintings and sculpture seen at the exhibition. The show enforced the central position
of the Parisian avant-garde to modern art and prioritised stylistic innovation above
a wider political or social content. Its immediate aftermath was to make American
art seem outdated, while for some ‘it blew everything open wide.’4 The diverse range
of American art shown at the exhibition, along with the less controversial European
works, reveals a much broader and varied understanding of modernism than con
temporary polemical responses to the Armory Show might suggest. In hindsight, the
array of work presents an expanded idea of modern art before the movement was later
institutionalised by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and other critical forces that
favoured abstraction.5
This essay seeks to shed light on the inclusion of the work of Irish artists in the
exhibition and the positioning of Irish art within the wider frameworks that the show
produced in the United States. It examines how the specific conditions of the display
and presentation of Irish art at the show impacted on its reception and subsequent
placement within modernism.6
The Armory Show was one of several major exhibitions of modern art held in
Europe and the United States before World War I. Minor versions of these shows were
also shown in regional cities, including Dublin, where the United Arts Club staged
two exhibitions of Post-Impressionist and Cubist art in 1910 and 1911.7 Organised
in a rush with the selection of European art beginning in October 1912, less than
five months before the opening, the Armory Show did not give a balanced presenta
tion of modern art.8 Several key aspects of European modernism were excluded, most
notably the work of the Russian avant-garde and the Italian Futurists.9 The organisers
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-5
48 Róisín Kennedy
admitted the hurried and compromised manner by which the selection was made but
asserted that ‘nothing was accepted or asked for which did not at any rate show sus
ceptibility on the part of the artist to the vital influences of his period.’10
Among the 1046 works listed in the catalogue of the Armory Show, 12 are by Irish
artists. These comprise six works by Jack B. Yeats, four by George Russell and two by
the elderly Nathaniel Hone. Their inclusion at the Armory Show was almost entirely
due to the efforts of John Quinn, who lent five of the works and encouraged Yeats to
send more. Quinn lent The Waders (1907, cat. 574) and the Bather (1905, cat. 575) by
Russell. The two other Russell works, The Waders (cat. 576) and The Lake (cat. 577),
were lent by Frederick J. Gregg, an Irish journalist and art critic based in New York.11
A close friend of Quinn, Gregg had attended the High School in Dublin with W.B. Yeats
and had acquired the Russells from Quinn’s collection.12 Hone’s Lough Swilly (1895,
cat. 585) and a large oil Hastings, (1890, cat. 586) both came from Quinn’s collection.13
Quinn and Gregg played central roles in the organising of the exhibition.14 Gregg
was press agent for the Armory Show, taking time off from his job as art critic for the
New York Evening Sun to complete this task. He was a pivotal figure in the massive
publicity machine that drove media interest in the event across large swathes of the
American press.15 He was a knowledgeable advocate of European modernism and a
critic of ‘the lethargy’ into which, he asserted, the majority of American artists had
fallen.16 Quinn was legal advisor to the Association of American Painters and Sculp
tors (AAPS) and he liaised closely with the key artists involved in the selection of
artworks, Walt Kuhn, Walter Pach and its president, Arthur B. Davies. Quinn for
mally opened the exhibition on 17 February 1913 and is listed, along with Gregg,
as an honorary member of the AAPS in the catalogue. Quinn was the biggest single
lender to the Armory Show, loaning 79 works in total.17 The inclusion of his French
Post-Impressionist art was central to the show’s objective of setting out the historical
precedents of avant-garde art.
Quinn’s taste in art was developing rapidly in this period. He visited Paris in 1911
and 1912, buying work by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne. In the
aftermath of the show he became a legendary patron of modern art, acquiring iconic
works by Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi
that would come to form the dominant canon of modernism in the coming decades.
At the same time his interest in Irish art declined. But his patronage of art began when
he purchased modern Irish art on his first visit to Ireland in 1902. Jack Yeats’s water
colours of life in the west of Ireland were then attracting the attention of prominent
figures in the Irish Cultural Revival, with whom Quinn consorted. In 1904 Quinn was
instrumental in procuring a one-man exhibition for Yeats in the Clausen Gallery in
New York.18 In 1905 he lent 78 works to the Irish Industrial Exhibition at Madison
Square Gardens. By 1913 he had accumulated an impressive array of Irish art, but
the selection committee for the Armory Show took only one of the 12 works by Yeats
in Quinn’s collection for inclusion in the show. The watercolour, A Political Meeting
Sligo (cat. 587), purchased by Quinn in 1905, is a display of pageantry and nationalist
sentiment prompted by the address of the Lord Mayor of Dublin to the Lily of Lough
Gill branch of the Irish National Forresters.19 In its spectacle and prominent inclusion
of patriotic symbols, the work relates to conventional notions of Irish visual culture
associated with Irish America and promoted at World’s Fairs and Industrial Exhibi
tions in the United States in the preceding decades.20
Irish Art at the Armory Show, 1913 49
Figure 4.1 Jack B. Yeats: The Circus Dwarf, 1912 (oil on canvas), Private Collection.
Source: © Estate of Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dublin, 2021
Photo © National Gallery of Ireland
For the Armory Show, Quinn advised Yeats to send oils rather than watercolours to
New York, a medium that the artist had only recently begun using.21 Most of the work
at the Armory Show was lent directly by artists rather than by private collectors.22
Yeats’s five oils each focus on a single figure cast as an outsider from conventional
society.23 The most impressive is The Circus Dwarf (1912, cat. 356) (Figure 4.1), a
large work which had been rejected by the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in
1912. When the work was subsequently shown in London, one review noted that ‘the
people Mr Yeats are [sic] interested in are a rough, hard-bitten, unshaven and gener
ally disreputable lot of men. His broken-down actors, practising fencing, his ‘Circus
Dwarf’ . . . are subjects no other artist would have chosen to paint.’24 The figure stands
in a corner of a circus tent, leaning on a trestle seat with his hand tightly clenched.
Warm reds and browns dominate the palette. The carefully controlled composition is
made up of competing vertical and diagonal patterns that augment the intense mood
of the painting, revealing Yeats’s proficiency in the exaggeration of form and senti
ment associated with modernist art. Its realist representation separates it, however,
from the more extreme examples of modern art at the Armory Show.
50 Róisín Kennedy
Figure 4.2 Jack B. Yeats: Strand Races, 1912, Private Collection.

Source: © Estate of Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dublin, 2021
Among the smaller oils is The Barrel Man (1912, cat. 353), another fairground
scene, the subject of which was developed from sketches that Yeats made at a fair at
Gort, Co. Galway in 1903.25 The stark composition of the man silhouetted against the
sky fending off batons dispenses with all details of the fair and the crowd. In another
work, the elegant figure of The Last Corinthian (cat. 355) stands at the edge of an
empty boxing ring. The Studio later described the work as having ‘the effect upon the
imagination of good fiction.’26 Its downbeat contemplative mood is counteracted by
that of The Stevedore (cat. 352), a fist-waving docker silhouetted against a stormy
sky and quayside buildings. The final work, Strand Races (cat. 354) (Figure 4.2), an
understated painting of a jockey on horseback, evokes the heroism and candour of life
in the west of Ireland. This was bought by George F. Porter, the son of the Chicago
railroad and steel magnate Henry H. Porter.27 Porter, who travelled from the Midwest
to New York to see the show, was heavily involved in bringing the exhibition to the
Art Institute in Chicago, where it opened at the end of March.28
There is nothing exclusively Irish about the subject matter of Yeats’s oils. They
address common aspects of modernity such as the impact of leisure and industrial
labour on the individual. Their ostensible realism has prompted comparisons to be
made with the work of the New York Ashcan School, which was also shown at the
Armory Show.29 One example, George Bellows’s The Circus (1912, cat. 919), was dis
played in an adjoining gallery to Yeats’s paintings, and while it shares the same theme
as Yeats’s Circus Dwarf, its treatment is entirely different, with none of the inten
sity of composition or mood of the latter. The Ashcan School was dedicated to the
truthful representation of modern American urban life and to making art that would
be accessible to a wide public. Prior to the Armory Show, its work was perceived as
radical but its stress on content rather than style fell afoul of the show’s prioritisation
of stylistic innovation, and its paintings came to be seen by pro-modernists as overly
traditional in approach.30 Yeats’s work also shares a concern with spectacle found in
the work of English artist Walter Sickert. The latter’s depiction of a rowdy theatre
audience, Noctes Ambrosianae (c. 1906, cat. 378.), was shown in the same gallery
as Yeats’s work.31 The loose application of paint and fragmented composition in the
paintings of both artists encourage careful scrutiny by the viewer. The emphasis on
physical materiality differentiates it from the more naturalistic approach of the Ashcan
School.32 The connections between the work of these three artists were overshadowed
in contemporary critical responses by reactions to the extreme subjectivity found in
the displays of the Cubist and Fauvist galleries.
Comparisons can also be made between the paintings of Russell and those of other
exhibitors. His work is imbued with a knowledge of symbolist art and theory, evident
in The Waders, a version of which, in the Hugh Lane Gallery, gives an idea of the
work shown in New York.33 The ethereal figures at the water’s edge, standing against
an expanse of yellow sand and the curving stream of white sea water extending to the
horizon, encapsulate the poetic dreamlike quality of Russell’s art. While some Irish
critics spoke of the Celtic qualities of such imagery, Quinn compared it to the work of
the American painter Arthur P. Davies.34 The latter’s Sea Drift, shown at the Armory,
with its multiple nude figures rising out of the water, recalls Russell’s waiflike imagery
and their shared symbolist aesthetic.
The Impact of the Display

The Armory Show was installed in a matter of days in the large hall of the 69th Regi
ment Armory on Lexington Avenue, New York.35 The works were arranged in a series
of 18 temporary galleries, lettered from A to R. An anti-clockwise circulatory flow of
visitors was encouraged from the entrance hall through the American galleries (B to
F), then the European galleries (G and I), down through the central galleries (O to R)
and along the mixed collections of galleries (N to I) (Figure 4.3).36 The central galler
ies contained historical European work by artists such as Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot,
Honoré Daumier, Eugène Delacroix, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet and Puvis de
Chavannes. The Irish works were displayed along with works by English and German
artists in a corner of the enormous hall, in Gallery G.37 This gallery also had an exit
out of the show and was, as a result, ‘a hugely trafficked space.’38 The four galleries
to the right leading up to Gallery G contained work by American artists, including
John Sloan, Bellows, Kuhn and Davies. Next to Gallery G, Gallery H, the largest
gallery, featured some of the most controversial works in the exhibition, including
work by Matisse, Brancusi and Georges Rouault. Gallery I, known in the press as the
Chamber of Horrors, the last room on the visitors’ route, was where the Cubist works
were shown. It attracted enormous media and visitor attention and included one of
the most notorious works in the exhibition, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a
Staircase (No. 2) (1912, cat. 241). The most radical and largest work in Gallery G was
Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation #27, Garden of Love (1912, cat. 213), one of the
first non-objective paintings to be exhibited in the United States.39 Subjected to mock
ing speculation in the press, it was acquired by Alfred Stieglitz, whose 291 gallery
52 Róisín Kennedy
Figure 4.3 Plan of Armory Show, New York, 1913.

Source: Walt Kuhn Family papers and Armory Show records, 1859–1984, Association of American Painters
and Sculptors (New York, NY). Photo ©Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
had exhibited European avant-garde art in New York since 1908. Its radical take on
modernism prevailed in the coming decades.40
The location of Irish art along with English and German art, including Kandin
sky’s painting, in Gallery G separated it from the dominant displays of American and
French art, placing it in a liminal space, removed from the main forums of debate
and analysis at the exhibition. It also marginalised the work of these artists from the
broader unfolding arena of modern art that made the exhibition so fascinating to
visitors. The emphasis on nationality in the press and official literature also encour
aged an artificial schism between the works in Gallery G and the rest of the show. In
the case of the Irish artists, the strong parallels between the landscapes of Hone and
those of nineteenth-century French naturalists such as Corot, with whom Hone had
worked, were missed as the Irishman’s work was shown separately. Similarly, the
affinities between Russell’s symbolist fantasies and those of the colourful introspective
works of painters such as Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau were set adrift in the
organisation of the show.
Comparison can be made between the random display of work in Gallery G and that
of the galleries of American art. Unlike the careful chronological layout of the French
art with galleries specifically dedicated to Fauvism and Cubism, the American galleries,
according to Virginia Mecklenberg, ‘intermingled paintings and works on paper . . .
with little regard for subject matter or stylistic relationships.’ Had the display been
more strategically grouped, viewers might have discerned, she argues, that a ‘fledg
ling modern movement’ was developing in American art.41 Furthermore while Davies,
Kuhn and Pach took great care in their selection of French modernist art, the choice of
American work, like that of the English and Irish, was more haphazard. Its selection
was based on ‘friendships and vague convictions about doing something new.’42
Apart from the dominant American and French sections, the only other nation
alities mentioned in the catalogue and press releases are English, German, Swiss and
Irish. This emphasis on nationality is a legacy of the displays at international exhibi
tions, where art was presented in the context of national pavilions, as well as being a
central facet of wider art historical and institutional conventions of dividing art into
national schools. While Irish art was normally included in the British section, the idea
of a separate national identity for Irish art had been mooted at the 1893 Chicago’s
World’s Fair and the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. The latter’s Irish village offered
a combination of ‘an art exhibition and a trade show.’43 Quinn facilitated displays of
modern Irish art from his collection in the Irish Industrial Exhibitions in New York
in 1905 and 1908. A distinct category of Irish art had been proclaimed in the London
art world by Hugh Lane’s 1904 Exhibition of Works by Irish Painters held at the
Guildhall and by the separate display of modern Irish paintings in the Franco-British
exhibition in 1908.44 An exhibition devoted to Irish art opened within weeks of the
Armory Show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in May 1913, at which work by Yeats,
Hone and Russell featured.
Nationality was central to current debate concerning modern art despite the trans
national networks of dealers and artists that drove the movement. Roger Fry’s second
Post-Impressionist exhibition (1912) was constructed along a tripartite division between
English, French and Russian art. The assertion of national characteristics was a feature
of the wider theoretical framing of modernism, most notably expressed in Wilhelm
Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy (1908), which argued that the will to abstract
was an inherent feature of Northern European, and more specifically, German art. The
Italian Futurist movement, then at its height, positioned itself in direct rivalry to French
Cubism. While the Armory Show proclaimed itself a manifestation of the cosmopolitan
modern art world, its goal of transforming American art by exposing its artists and pub
lic to modern European painting and sculpture fostered awareness of national achieve
ment and failure.45 Comparison between American and French art was central to its
mission and encouraged by the display, selection and marketing of the show.
Reactions to the Irish Art

Within the context addressed in this essay, it is not surprising that Irish art received
little critical attention. Arthur Hoeber of the New York Globe thought that ‘it is an
Irishman, Nathaniel Hone, of the Royal Hibernian Society [sic], with two sea and
shore views, who has in his broad and rigorous manner much to say.’46 Charles Henry
54 Róisín Kennedy
Dorr told readers that ‘there is atmosphere in the Lough Swilly, a convincing marine
by Nathaniel Hone . . . depicting a breezy day off the coast of Ireland, with threaten
ing skies, a picture of genius merit, with the salty flavour of the sea.’47 Both of these
critics were sceptical of modernism and therefore more likely to give attention to
the less controversial works.48 The most prominent mention of the Irish art came in
Frank Jewett Mather’s review ‘Old and New’ originally published in the Nation on 3
March 1913.49 Mather, a distinguished critic and professor of art and archaeology at
Princeton, argued for the continued significance of nature in visual art. He criticised
the ‘egotistical’ work of Matisse, whose painting ‘will work nothing but harm.’ Dis
missing Cubism as either ‘a clever hoax or a negligible pedantry,’ Mather declared
that the ‘trouble with the newest art and its critical champions is that fundamentally
they had no real breadth of taste.’ He concludes, ‘A glance at the . . . delightfully inti
mate landscapes with figures by George Russell, and at Jack Yeats’s keen visions of
Irish political humour will tend to efface the irresponsible nightmares of Matisse, and
the calculated discomforts of Cubism.’50 In this case Irish art provided an oasis of calm
and sanity in an otherwise largely problematic exhibition. It encapsulated the ‘breadth
of taste’ that Mather advocated. But in relation to radical modernism, Irish art was
positioned firmly in the rear guard.
The coverage of Irish art, scant though it is, is remarkable for its distinguishing
of the Irish identity of Yeats, Russell and Hone and for there being no reservations
expressed at the specific inclusion of Irish art in a major exhibition of modernist art.51
One of the reasons for this was the media’s reliance on press releases issued by the
AAPS and drafted by Gregg that specifically mentioned the inclusion of Irish art.52 But
modern Irish art was not completely unknown in New York. As well as seeing it at
the Irish Industrial Exhibitions, Irish Americans may have read such reportage as Irish
nationalist Constance Markievicz’s extensive article in the Gaelic American in 1910,
which declared that the work of Yeats, Russell and Hone, diverse though it is, ‘laid
the foundations of a definite school’ of Irish art and that the work of Yeats ‘could not
have been done by a man of another race.’53 The selection of these three artists for
the Armory Show reflected a widely held view amongst Irish critics that their work
represented the best of contemporary Irish art.54
Lane’s project for a Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin had propelled Ire
land into the forefront of institutional support for modernism. Lane was an honorary
vice-president of the Armory Show, despite his dislike of Post-Impressionist and Cubist
art. His acquisition of Impressionist art for Dublin was proclaimed at the show as a
model for the collector of modernist art and for the underlying educational and trans-
formative project of the Armory Show. Quinn singled out Lane as a young Irishman
of culture who proved that ‘when a man sets out to make a collection of the work of
living artists he undertakes to anticipate the future.’55 This reveals Quinn’s belief in
the power of the collector to intervene in the cultural and social fabric of their era.56
Lady Gregory, an influential force in the Irish literary revival and in New York at the
time on a tour of the Abbey players to fundraise for Lane’s gallery, visited the Armory
Show. While declaring ‘that there is no nationality in art,’ she pronounced that ‘I want
Ireland to be in the van[guard] of this [modern] movement in painting, in music and
in drama.’57 She presented Lane’s bringing of modern art to Dublin as an equivalent
to the Armory Show. Both were concerned with establishing modernism as the new
orthodoxy and bypassing the imperial traditions of the past. This broad and inclusive
vision of modernism reflects the diverse reactions of Yeats and Russell. While open
to modernism, Yeats was unwilling to commit his work to any specific agenda. In
June 1913 he told Quinn that ‘the great good these post-Impressionists and futurists
will do will be that they will knock the handcuffs off all the painters.’58 He made full use
of this freedom in the coming years. Russell regarded the work of Picasso and Matisse
as ‘a kind of hopeless drivel of line and colour and ideas which makes one feel unhappy
as if one were in a society of lunatics.’59 But Russell remained committed to the broader
project of modernism, supporting the work of modern Irish artists in his editorship of
the Irish Statesman.60 Having assisted Lane in bringing modern French art to Dublin in
1904, Russell declared of the work of Jean-Francois Millet, Manet, Monet and others,
‘I will suck them into my soul. I will get more good out of them than anyone else.’61 He
remained keenly aware of the value of exposing artists and the public to modernism.
Legacy
The participation of Irish artists at the Armory Show was largely forgotten about
in the coming years. It does not feature in accounts of their careers until after their
deaths, when the significance of the Armory Show was more widely recognised in
Europe and the need to link Irish art with canonical modernism became a concern for
collectors and academics. By facilitating the inclusion of Irish art in the show, Quinn
and Gregg may have hoped that it would enable the work to be recognised within the
dramatically changing settings of modern art. But the narrowing of the parameters of
modern art caused by the Armory Show further marginalised Irish art, as it did much
American art, from the limited definition of modernism that it engendered in New
York. In 1924 Quinn wrote that ‘no Fifth Avenue dealer would be interested in an
exhibition of the work of Mr. Jack Yeats, [or] Mr George Russell . . . They specialise
either in American work or in French work.’62 Quinn did not buy any more of their
work, although he remained friendly and supportive of their careers.63
Like most of the work shown at the Armory Show, Irish art was part of an expan
sive and diverse geographical modern movement. Not overly concerned with stylistic
extremes, its varied explorations were shaped by local and personal preferences, as
well as transcultural ideas and tendencies. Its display in Gallery G isolated it from these
wider contexts, highlighting instead the nationality of the artists. A victim of the confu
sion between nationalism and internationalism that prevailed at the Armory, the work
of Russell, Yeats and Hone was deemed, like most of the work on view, to be irrelevant
to the future canon of modern art. Now that this canon has been largely dismantled,
we can begin to recognise the true relationship of Irish art to the modern movement.
Notes
I acknowledge the generosity of Deirdre Kelly and Orla Fitzpatrick, who shared their research
and resources with me, and Leah Benson for facilitating access to the Yeats Archive in the
National Gallery of Ireland and Karen Reihill and Charlie Campbell-Gray for help with secur
ing images.
1. John Quinn to George Russell, March 2, 1913, quoted in D. Kelly, Interpreting the Ico
nographies of Mythology and Spirituality in the ‘Dream’ Paintings of George (AE) Russell
(PhD Dissertation, University of Limerick, 2015), 138.
2. Formal statement issued by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS),
December 20, 1912, quoted in Milton Brown, The Story of the Armory Show (New York:
Abbeville Press, 1988), 85.
56 Róisín Kennedy
3. J.M. Mancini, Pre-Modernism: Art World Change and American Culture from the Civil
War to the Armory Show (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 133.
4. Kenneth Henry Miller quoted in B. Haskell, ‘The Legacy of the Armory Show. Fiasco or
Transformation’, in The Armory Show at 100. Modernism and Revolution, Marilyn Satin
Kushner and Kimberly Orcutt, eds. (New York: New York Historical Society, 2013), 411.
5. See S. Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism,
Freedom and the Cold War (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1983); P. Wood, F.
Frascina, J. Harris and C. Harrison, eds. Modernism in Dispute: Art Since the Forties,
(London and New Haven, CT: Open University Press and Yale University Press, 1993);
Carol Duncan, Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995).
6. For existing scholarship on Irish art at the Armory see Betsy Fahlman, “Irish Modern: Jack B.
Yeats and the Armory Show,” in The Only Art of Jack B Yeats (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2009),
Declan J. Foley, ed., 87–98; Deidre Kelly, Interpreting the Iconographies of Mythology and
Spirituality in the ‘Dream’ Paintings of George (AE) Russell, 137–139; Eimear O’Connor,
Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2020), 120–126.
7. Róisín Kennedy, “Transmitting Avant-garde Art: Post-impressionism in a Dublin Con
text,” Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 31, nos. 1–2 (2015),
61–73. DOI:10.1080/01973762.2015.1004780.
8. The choice of work was strongly influenced by the emphasis on French art found in Roger
Fry’s London Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 and by the 1912 Cologne
Sonderbund exhibition which had directly inspired the AAPS in their plans for the show.
Gail Stavitsky, “Americans and the Armory Show: An Introduction,” in The New Spirit.
American Art in the Armory Show, 1913, G. Stavitsky and L.E. McCarthy, eds. (Montclair,
NJ: Montclair Art Museum, 2013), 13.
9. Early plans and press releases suggest that work by the Italian Futurists was to be included
but in the end it was not. See Brown, The Story of the Armory Show, 79. The work of the
‘Russian Modernists’ was not included due to shortness of time. See Frederick J. Gregg,
“Letting in the Light,” in For and Against. Views on the International Exhibition held
in New York and Chicago (New York: Association of American Painters and Sculptors,
1913), Frederick J. Gregg, ed., 8–9.
10. Frederick J. Gregg, “The Attitude of the Americans,” Arts and Decoration (March 1913),
167.
11. I have been unable to identify the specific works by Russell included in the show.
12. Kelly, Interpreting the Iconographies of Mythology and Spirituality in the ‘Dream’ Paint
ings of George (AE) Russell, 137. Gregg, who was part of Quinn’s circle of literary friends,
admired the works in Quinn’s apartment and acquired them in 1908. See also William H.
Murphy, Prodigal Father (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 127, 140. Quinn
reintroduced John Butler Yeats to Gregg when the older man moved to New York in 1907.
See Murphy, 58, 66, 342.
13. Homan Potterton, “Nathaniel Hone and John Quinn: A Correspondence,” in Art Is My
Life. A Tribute to James White, B. P. Kennedy, ed., (Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland,
1991), 133–153. Hone’s Hastings (cat 160); Russell’s The Bather (cat.361) and The Wad
ers (cat 362); and Yeats’s A Political Meeting (cat. 447) were included in Armory Show at
the Art Institute of Chicago and in Boston.
14. It is likely that Kuhn and Davies became aware of the London Post-Impressionist exhibi
tions through their connections with Quinn and Gregg. Stavitsky, “Americans and the
Armory Show: An Introduction,” 13.
15. For an analysis of Gregg’s role in the Armory Show, see Dennis Raverty, “Marketing Mod
ernism: Promotional Strategy in the Armory Show,” Prospects 27 (October 2002), 359–374.
16. Gregg, “The Attitude of the Americans,” 165–167; Gregg, “Letting in the Light,” 17–25.
17. Judith Zilczer, ‘The Noble Buyer’ John Quinn. Patron of the Avant-garde (Washington,
DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1978).
18. B.L. Reid, The Man from New York. John Quinn and His Friends (Oxford: Oxford Uni
versity Press, 1968); Zilczer, ‘The Noble Buyer’; Ysanne Holt, “New York, London, Ire
land: Collector John Quinn’sTransatlantic Network, c. 1900–1917,” Visual Culture in
Britain (2013), 55–67.
19. The work is titled ‘The Political Meeting’ in the catalogue.
20. The work, now in The Model, a cultural centre located in Sligo, was one of several paint
ings acquired from Quinn’s collection by Mary Quinn Sullivan, future founder of MoMA.
Catalogue of the sale of the collection of Mrs Cornelius J. Sullivan, Perke-Bernet Galleries
Inc, 30 East 57 St New York, December 7, 1939, no. 150, Y1/JY/18/1/1/, YArc Parcel 49,
Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland. It is described as ‘A surging throng before a
public building, a speaker appearing in an upper window beneath an emerald green ban
ner, other party banners waving at the left.’
21. The selectors apparently proposed that Yeats be represented solely by work in Quinn’s col
lection probably due to time constraints, but this was overruled by Quinn. Fahlman, “Irish
Modern,” 93.
22. Roberta J.M. Olson, “Drawings at the Armory: The Currency of Change and Modern
ism,” The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution, in M. Kushner, K. Orcutt,
and C.N. Blake, eds., 304.
23. Yeats wrote to Pach less than a month before the opening, giving the particulars of his
paintings and their prices. He also requested that a frame maker put glass in the frames.
Jack Yeats to Walter Kuhn, January 18, 1913, American Archives of Art, Walt Kuhn Fam
ily Papers and Armory Show Records, Box 001, Folder 13. https://edan.si.edu/slideshow/
viewer/?damspath=/CollectionsOnline/kuhnwalt/Box_0001/Folder_028
24. A.J. Findberg. “Art and Artists in the West of Ireland,” Star Newspaper, July 16, 1912,
quoted in B. Arnold, Jack Yeats (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1998), 181. The exhibition was Pictures of Life in the West of Ireland, Walker Gallery,
London, July 1–13, 1912.
25. H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings (London: André Deutsch,
1992), 1, 35. Since most of the works cited in this paper are in private collections, this
catalogue raisonné is an invaluable resource.
26. The Studio, August 1914; Press-cuttings book 1891–1925 Y1/JY/4/2/1; YArc Parcel 25 A,
Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland.
27. Statistically, 20 percent of the Irish art that was for sale sold at the Armory Show. A letter
from AAPS to Jack Yeats, 23 June 1913, suggests that there was a delay in informing Yeats
of the sale and that he had questioned where his painting was. Box 001, Folder 73, Walt
Kuhn Family Papers and Armory Show Records, American Archives of Art.
28. After Porter’s death in 1927, the work was presented to the Art Institute of Chicago, where
it remained until deaccessioning in 1944. While frustrated in his attempts to sell his work,
Yeats was savvy about publicising it and exhibiting it at a diverse range of exhibitions
and locations. Several of the oils shown at the Armory were also exhibited in London and
Paris during these years. An image of The Circus Dwarf was included in Life in the West of
Ireland (Dublin: Maunsel Press, 1912). It was exhibited in London in 1912 and 1914. The
Barrel Man was exhibited in London, Paris and Dublin, 1912–14. The Last Corinthian
was shown in London and Paris in the months before the New York exhibition.
29. Fahlman, “Irish Modern,” 87–98. As Fahlman makes clear, Yeats’s father, John Butler
Yeats, then resident in New York, was friendly with several of the Ashcan painters. In
addition, their great mentor, the painter Robert Henri, visited Ireland in 1913 and subse
quently bought a house on Achill Island.
30. Erica Doss, Twentieth Century American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),
35–53; Rebecca Zurier, Picturing the City. Urban Vision and the Ashcan School (Berke
ley, CA: University of California Press, 2006); David Peters Corbett, “Camden Town and
Ashcan: Difference, Similarity and the ‘Anglo-American’ in the Work of Walter Sickert
and John Sloan,” Art History 34, no. 4 (September 2011), 774–795. William Macbeth,
the owner of the Macbeth Gallery, where the Ashcan School had first shown as a group
in 1908, was Yeats’s agent in New York since his earlier one-man show in 1904. In 1910
Yeats’s work was included in a group exhibition at the gallery.
31. The two artists had been friends since 1907. Arnold, Jack Yeats, 163.
32. See Peters Corbett, ‘Camden Town and Ashcan’.
33. George Russell, The Waders (1909), Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane. http://emuseum.
pointblank.ie/online_catalogue/work-detail.php?objectid=1776
34. John Quinn to George Russell, 1909, quoted in Kelly, Interpreting the Iconographies of
Mythology and Spirituality in the ‘Dream’ Paintings of George (AE) Russell, 197.
58 Róisín Kennedy
35. Virginia M. Mecklenberg, ‘Slouching Towards Modernism: American Art at the Armory
Show’, in The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution, Kushner, Orcutt, and
Blake, eds., 251.
36. Roberta J.M. Olson, “Drawings at the Armory: The Currency of Change and Modern
ism,” in The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution, Kushner, Orcutt, and
Blake, eds., 297–309, 298.
37. There are no extant photographs of Gallery G, but Quinn reassured Yeats that he ‘will see
that . . . [his pictures] are properly hanged, not too close to any either high-keyed or low
spirited neighbours’. John Quinn to Jack Yeats, January 17, 1913, quoted in Reid, 142,
and Arnold, 181.
38. Paul Cappucci, “Improvisation at the Armory Show: An Approach to Understanding Was
sily Kandinsky’s Influence on the Writings of William Carlos Williams,” William Carlos
Williams Review 32, nos. 1–2 (2015), 83.
39. Stavitsky, “Americans and the Armory Show: An Introduction,” 21–24.
40. The New York Press devoted considerable copy to a mocking speculation on its mean
ing. ‘One wonders,’ it concluded, ‘whether Mr. Kandinsky will ever paint another like
it’. Bob Hoskins, New York Press, March 9, 1913, Walt Kuhn Scrapbook Vol 2, Ameri
can Archives of Art. Kandinsky’s painting is now in the collection of the Metropolitan
Museum, New York.
41. Mecklenberg, “Slouching Towards Modernism,” 256, 259.
42. Ibid, 245.
43. Homan Potterton, “Letter from St. Louis,” Irish Arts Review 10 (1994), 245–251.
44. Fintan Cullen, Ireland on Show. Art, Union and Nationhood (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate,
2012), 155. The Guildhall exhibition had originally been intended for St. Louis World’s
Fair.
45. The AAPS declared that the society is ‘called American because we are an American organ
ization. Beyond that we are not drawing the line of locality or nationality upon art.’ Pub
lished in the New York Times, January 11, 1912; quoted in Stavitsky, “Americans and the
Armory Show,” 11. See also Laurette McCarthy, “American Artists in the Armory Show,”
in The New Spirit. American Art in the Armory Show 1913, Stavitsky, MacCarthy, Dun
can, eds, 67–99. On nationalism and modern art, see Richard R. Brettell, Modern Art
1851–1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 196–209.
46. Arthur Hoeber, “Art and Artists,” New York Globe (February 17, 1913), Walt Kuhn
Scrapbook Vol 1, American Archives of Art.
47. Charles Henry Dorr, “Cubists and Futurists Here Needed America,” New York World
(February 23, 1913), Walt Kuhn Scrapbook Vol 1, American Archives of Art.
48. Brown, The Story of the Armory Show, 155–156. Brown identifies both critics as
anti-modernist.
49. Francis Jewett Mather, “Old and New,” Nation 96 (March 6, 1913), 204–243, reprinted
in Gregg, For and Against, 56–64.
50. Mather, “Old and New,” in Gregg, For and Against, 64.
51. Part of the reason for this is the press releases being issued from the AAPS and Gregg,
which made clear the different nationalities of the artists.
52. See Raverty, “Marketing Modernism,” 365. It is evident from newspaper coverage of the
show that press releases were widely duplicated.
53. Constance Markievicz, “Developing a New School of Irish Art,” Gaelic American undated
article, c.1910, Press-cuttings book 1891–1925 Y1/JY/4/2/1, YArc Parcel 25, Yeats
Archive, National Gallery of Ireland.
54. The work of John Lavery and William Orpen, the two leading Irish artists in London, and
that of the Paris-based artist, Roderic O’Conor, was not included. Quinn did not possess
work by them, and the artists were not directly associated with the Irish Cultural Revival,
although their work was included in Lane’s Dublin Gallery of Modern Art. Lane had been
close friends with Orpen. See B. Arnold, Orpen: Mirror to an Age (London: Cape, 1981),
129, 222; Morna O’Neill, Hugh Lane. The Art Market and the Art Museum (New Haven,
CT and London: Yale University Press, 2018), 9, 32, 41.
55. J. Quinn, “Modern Art from a Layman’s Point of View,” Arts and Decoration (March 1913),
159. See O’Neill, Hugh Lane, 176–179, on comparison of Lane’s and Quinn’s collecting of
modern art.
56. Jeremy Braddock, Collecting as Modernist Practice (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Uni
versity Press, 2012), 2–10.
57. “Lady Gregory for Irish Art,” New York Sun, February 23, 1913, 7.
58. Jack B. Yeats to John Quinn, 14 June 1913, NY Public Library, quoted in Fahlman, “Irish
Modern,” 97.
59. George Russell to John Quinn, February 7, 1913, quoted in O’Connor, 136. Russell was
referring to his visit to Fry’s second Post-Impressionist exhibition.
60. With the one notable exception, a review of Mainie Jellett’s Cubist abstraction. See Rói
sín Kennedy, Art and the Nation State (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021),
217–220.
61. George Russell to John Quinn, November 9, 1904, quoted in Diana Beale, “Landscapes
and Faery,” Apollo (December 2004), 73.
62. Letter of John Quinn of 1924 re proposed exhibition of Paul Henry’s work in the United
States, quoted in O’Connor, Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora, 152.
63. Yeats was hopeful in this regard and sent Quinn photographs of work. See letters of John
Quinn to Jack Yeats, October 14, 1917, Y1/JY/5/2/62; 29 January 1918 Y1/JY/5/2/63,
Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland. The work of Yeats and Russell continued to be
exhibited in the United States in the coming years, usually in contexts associated with their
Irish identity. Work by Yeats, Hone and Russell was acquired for the University of Wiscon
sin after a visit by Professor Richard T. Ely to Dublin in 1913. In 1917 an exhibition of Rus
sell’s work was held at the Art Institute of Chicago. The work of Russell was later shown
at the Helen Hackett Galleries between 1928 and 1930. Kelly, 136–137. Yeats’s work was
shown at the Society of Independent Artists 1920–26; Hackett Galleries 1930 and Museum
of Irish Art at the Barbizon Hotel, New York City, 1931–32. Fahlman, “Irish Modern,”
181, footnote 5, See also Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, II, 1097–1113, for a complete list of the artist’s
exhibitions.
Works Cited
Arnold, B. Orpen: Mirror to an Age. London: Cape, 1981.
Arnold, B. Jack Yeats. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.
Beale, Diana. “Landscapes and Faery.” Apollo (December 2004): 70–75.
Braddock, Jeremy. Collecting as Modernist Practice. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University
Press, 2012.
Brettell, Richard R. Modern Art 1851–1929. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Brown, Milton. The Story of the Armory Show. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988.
Cappucci, Paul. “Improvisation at the Armory Show: An Approach to Understanding Wassily
Kandinsky’s Influence on the Writings of William Carlos Williams.” William Carlos Williams
Review 32, nos. 1–2 (2015), 81–94.
Corbett, David Peters. “Camden Town and Ashcan: Difference, Similarity and the ‘Anglo-
American’ in the Work of Walter Sickert and John Sloan.” Art History 34, no. 4 (Septem
ber 2011): 774–795.
Cullen, Fintan. Ireland on Show: Art, Union and Nationhood. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012.
Doss, Erica. Twentieth Century American Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Duncan, Carol. Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. London: Routledge, 1995.
Fahlman, Betsy. “Irish Modern: Jack B. Yeats and the Armory Show.” In The Only Art of Jack
B Yeats. Declan J. Foley, ed. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2009.
Gregg, Frederick J. (ed.). For and Against: Views on the International Exhibition Held in New
York and Chicago. New York: Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 1913.
Gregg, Frederick J. “The Attitude of the Americans.” Arts and Decoration (March 1913):
165–167.
Guilbaut, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Free
dom and the Cold War. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1983.
Holt, Ysanne. “New York, London, Ireland: Collector John Quinn’s Transatlantic Network,
c. 1900–1917.” Visual Culture in Britain (2013): 55–67.
60 Róisín Kennedy
Kelly, D. Interpreting the Iconographies of Mythology and Spirituality in the ‘Dream’ Paintings
of George (AE) Russell. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Limerick, 2015.
Kennedy, R. “Transmitting Avant-garde Art: Post-impressionism in a Dublin Context.” Visual
Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 31, nos. 1–2 (2015): 61–73. DOI:10
.1080/01973762.2015.1004780.
Kennedy, R. Art and the Nation State. The Reception of Modern Art in Ireland. Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2021.
Kushner, Marilyn Satin, Kimberly Orcutt, and C. N. Blake (eds). The Armory Show at 100.
Modernism and Revolution. New York: New York Historical Society, 2013.
Mancini, J.M. Pre- Modernism: Art World Change and American Culture from the Civil War
to the Armory Show. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Murphy, William H. Prodigal Father. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
O’Connor, Eimear. Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2020.
O’Neill, Morna. Hugh Lane: The Art Market and the Art Museum. New Haven, CT and Lon
don: Yale University Press, 2018.
Potterton, Homan. “Nathaniel Hone and John Quinn: A Correspondence.” In Art Is My Life.
A Tribute to James White. B. P. Kennedy, ed. Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1991.
Potterton, Homan. “Letter from St. Louis.” Irish Arts Review 10 (1994): 245–251.
Pyle, H. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings. London: André Deutsch,
1992.
Raverty, Dennis. “Marketing Modernism: Promotional Strategy in the Armory Show.” Pros
pects 27 (October 2002): 359–374.
Reid, B. L. The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1968.
Stavitsky, G. and L. E. McCarthy, eds. The New Spirit. American Art in the Armory Show,
1913. Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum, 2013.
Wood, P., F. Frascina, J. Harris and C. Harrison, eds. Modernism in Dispute: Art Since the For
ties. London and New Haven, CT: Open University Press and Yale University Press, 1993.
Yeats, Jack B. Life in the West of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsel Press, 1912.
Zilczer, Judith. ‘The Noble Buyer’ John Quinn. Patron of the Avant-garde. Washington, DC:
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1978.
Zurier, Rebecca. Picturing the City. Urban Vision and the Ashcan School. Berkeley, CA: Uni
versity of California Press, 2006.
5 Seeing New York
Jack Butler Yeats and the American
City
Kathryn Milligan
Nestled among the many views, notes, and doodles made by Jack Butler Yeats (1871–
1957) during his visit to New York is a rough sketch of one of the city’s famous
sight-seeing automobile tours (Figure 5.1). The open-top vehicle is filled with visitors,
pilloried locally as ‘rubberneckers’, listening to the guide who stands with a mega
phone at the front.1 A comparison with a 1904 stereoscope (Figure 5.2) shows that
Yeats’s pen ably captured the scene: perhaps Yeats and his wife, Mary Cottenham
Yeats, had themselves gone on a tour with the ‘Seeing New York’ company. At the
very least, the sight of the vehicles leaving their terminus at the corner of the Flatiron
Building on Fifth Avenue would have been familiar after their stay in the city. During
Figure 5.1 Jack B. Yeats, Motor Car, 1904 (ink on paper).

Source: Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland. © Estate of Jack B. Yeats, DACS London/IVARO Dub
lin, 2021.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-6
62 Kathryn Milligan
Figure 5.2 The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Automobile Sightseeing, n.d. (pho
tograph), New York Public Library.
Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections.
the six weeks of their visit in March and April 1904, Jack and Cottie explored Man
hattan, Brooklyn, Ellis and Staten Island, and New Jersey, being hosted by John Quinn
(1870–1924), an important benefactor and patron of the arts.2 The chief reason for
the Yeats’s visit to the American metropolis was an exhibition, organised by Quinn,
of Jack’s work at the Clausen Gallery, at 381 Fifth Avenue. Although open for two
and a half weeks, the exhibition was not the success Quinn (nor presumably the art
ist) hoped it would be, with Quinn purchasing the majority of the twelve works sold.3
Despite this disappointment, Jack and Cottie seem to have made the most of their visit.
The phrase ‘Seeing New York’ ably captures the sense of the city gleaned from eight
sketchbooks now in the Yeats Archive at the National Gallery of Ireland. Through
these visual diaries and other archival material, this essay will explore Yeats’s time in
America, showing how the artist immersed himself in the life of the city, exploring its
theatres and shows, migrant communities, street life, and other cultural experiences.
From the outset, it is worth noting that although Yeats kept sketchbooks throughout
each stage of the visit, it is not always possible to gauge the chronology of their itiner
ary; for the most part, the sketches are undated and may also only represent a fraction
of the visual material created by the artist during his stay in the city.
Seeing the City: Observing Modern Life

The Yeats’s visit to New York came at an exciting moment in the city’s history: the
Progressive Era witnessed a flourishing of urban culture in America, and as Rebecca
Zurier has noted, New York offered a visual and material cornucopia to its inhabit
ants and visitors, as well as ample opportunity for the urban observer, or flâneur,
which expanded beyond Baudelaire’s Parisian exemplar.4 New York’s cosmopolitan
Seeing New York 63
nature – driven by its communication and financial networks and varied commercial
activity – made it a key site of modernity, defined by the images it created and the
culture of looking that permeated through the city streets.5 This wide-ranging visual
culture included the illustrated press, photography, and the cinema; the sketches and
paintings of artists; and innovations in advertising and promotions, window displays,
and other forms of urban spectacle.
In the fine arts, this city of looking was most notably captured in the work of the Ash
can School, a group of artists assembled by John Sloan through an exhibition in 1908.
When the Ashcan painters came to public prominence, their work was seen by some
critics as conservative (due to its formal realism) and deriving from French Impres
sionism; others denigrated their depiction of the messy reality of the modern city or
conflated the artists’ sensory impressions of the city with the city itself.6 As it had been
for Baudelaire’s upper-class and detached flâneur, walking the city streets was at the
heart of these artists’ urban practice; however, the American artists diverged from their
Parisian counterparts in their focus on the less bourgeois and picturesque aspects of city
life, showing streets; parks; shops and stalls; and urban entertainments such as boxing
matches, cinemas, and theatres. As Edward W. Wolner outlines, artists such as George
Bellows sought to avoid ‘New York versions of . . . comely Paris’, but rather capture
the city’s ‘thrumming, contentious, and destabilizing energies’.7 Like Yeats, many of
the painters associated with the Ashcan School had begun their careers as illustrators
working for newspapers and other publications, with several based in Philadelphia.
When Yeats’s father, John B. Yeats, relocated to New York in 1908, he became friendly
with both Robert Henri and Sloan, who along with Bellows, William Glackens, George
Luks, and Everett Shinn, made up ‘the Eight’.8 Jack Yeats’s visit to New York largely
pre-dates the work of the Ashcan School, and although Henri was working in the city
at the time, there is no evidence that they were acquainted. Nonetheless, Yeats shares
several affinities with the group, and his sketches of the city contribute to the visual
record of the city created in the early decades of the twentieth century.
Prior to his visit to New York, we can see from Yeats’s sketchbooks that he was
already deeply interested in the city as subject, with depictions of London and Dublin
filling many pages across his collection of sketchbooks. Within the NGI collection,
for example, we find Yeats sketching scenes from daily London life from the mid
1890s, showing the kind of subjects that dominate Yeats’s urban oeuvre around the
fin-de-siècle: advertising, music hall acts, scenes from the theatre and other recitals,
racetracks, boxing matches, cafés, bartenders, and quick illustrations of people he
saw on the street. These sketchbooks also show a consistent interest in the racial and
cultural diversity of the metropolis: cafés run by Italian migrants, Jewish newspapers,
black musicians, and the Chinese businesses around Limehouse Causeway. Many of
these subjects are repeated in the artist’s Dublin sketches, most notably in a series of
sketchbooks from 1901, although it is evident that Dublin’s streets did not offer the
same diversity of migrant populations as London.9 Ascertaining Yeats’s attraction to
these urban subjects is difficult: for example, it is unclear whether his interest in the
working class and migrant areas of the city was driven by his own personal interests,
by feelings of social conscience, or by the more prurient but popular practice of ‘slum
ming’, a phenomenon witnessed in many cities wherein middle-class urbanites visited
slum districts as a form of sightseeing.10
The sketchbook has long served as preparatory ground for artists, offering a space
to explore new subjects and themes, as well as a place in which to note down visual
64 Kathryn Milligan
and verbal observations. Yeats was no different, and certainly in the early phase of his
career scenes from his sketchbooks served as inspiration for more fully realised art
works. For example, sketches of a Dublin tattoo shop sketched by the artist in 1901
and 1903 were later incorporated into an illustration for A Broadside, an Arts and
Crafts publication produced by his sister Elizabeth Corbet Yeats. The sketchbooks
take on significance, then, as a type of visual diary kept by the artist, a harbour for
observations and occurrences: pocket-sized, they are intimate objects, made to be held
close and filled at speed after being pulled out on street corners, in tram carriages,
and at café tables. The intimate and tactile nature of the sketchbooks is enhanced by
the artist’s frequent insertion of other ephemera into their pages, although these are
lacking from the NGI’s New York series. Yeats’s creation of paper worlds is evident
throughout his archive: from the orange wrappers carefully collated in scrapbooks;
programmes for the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin; to maps, postcards, and photographs
relating to the cities he visited and lived in throughout his life.
Journeys: Sea, River, New York

The New York sketchbooks open with scenes from the Yeats’s journey on the SS Mesaba,
interspersed with scenes from a regatta in Dartmouth and the Hammersmith Music Hall,
London, made prior to their departure.11 Through these two sketchbooks, Yeats explores
the ship’s decks and records his fellow passengers and the ship’s crew, making thumbnail
portraits, for example, of the ship’s purser, the chief engineer, and other members of
the crew. The gentle, if repetitive, pace of life on board is evoked through depictions of
card games, the smoking room, and a more intimate view of Cottie reading on a deck
lounger, well wrapped up against the Atlantic chill. This sketch is echoed in two sepia
photographs taken of the couple during the crossing, perhaps by an on-board photogra
pher or fellow passenger12 (Figure 5.3). The ship’s decks and interior spaces (such as the
dining, smoking, and newspaper rooms) are presented as relaxed and sociable, suggest
ing an easy and congenial experience of crossing the Atlantic. While these are suggestive
of a calm crossing, other views of the deck and surroundings suggest that this was not
always the case. In a short series of views, Yeats paints the ship’s bow and deck against a
horizontal band of blue water, the horizon line relegated to the upper third of the page.
The physical experience of rough seas is shown most dramatically in two views, ‘pitching
bow up’ and ‘bow down’. In the former, the pointed bow is shown almost vertically, its
point occupying the same space on the page as the clouds, before falling, as seen in the
latter image, down into the blue-grey waves, which crash onto the deck.13
As the Mesaba came closer to America, Yeats began to record sightings of other
vessels. The ship’s course brought them close to the Nantucket Shoals to the south of
Nantucket Island, near Cape Cod. The treacherous shoals were demarcated by sev
eral lightships, and Yeats presents the distinctive, red-hulled ship, with a note that its
‘Nantucket Shoals’ name was shown in white letters. On the previous page, he showed
the ‘Southern Fruit Boat’ passing the lightship and the Mesaba.14 While engaging with
the daily scenes of the crossing were no doubt a way for the artist to pass the time, the
journey must also have appealed to both his sense of adventure and long-standing
connection to the sea and maritime life. In Sligo, the birthplace of Yeats’s parents, both
families had been involved in the shipping business. The sea and coastline of the west
of Ireland would always have an immense draw for the artist. His writings for children
Seeing New York 65
Figure 5.3 Jack Butler Yeats with Mary Cottenham Yeats on the steamship Mesaba, 1904.
Source: Yeats Archive, National Gallery of Ireland.
from around this period often tell of seafaring men and pirates, and scrapbooks kept
throughout his life trace Ireland’s maritime connections with the world.15
The Yeats’s arrival on the Mesaba was not their only opportunity to view the city
from the water. A ferry journey on the East River is recorded in views of the Brook
lyn Bridge with the Statue of Liberty in the distance; trips to Staten Island and New
Jersey also offered opportunities to explore the waters around Manhattan. Beside the
Harlem River, Yeats sketched the fast-moving carriages on the Speedway and walked
with Quinn at Palisades, a rocky outcrop by the Hudson River just a little way outside
of the city. On Staten Island, Yeats sketched a small fleet of schooners ‘entering the
narrow’, as he looked across to Coney Island, before exploring the seafront and South
Beach and taking in a game of baseball.16
Perhaps the biggest contrast to Yeats’s own arrival in New York, however, came
when he visited the immigration centre at Ellis Island (Figure 5.4). Across twenty-
three sketches, Yeats recorded the sights of the immigration centre, including an apple
seller and Italian guitar player, who were among his travelling companions on the
ferry across the East River. Once landed on the island, Yeats brings the viewer of
the sketchbook through the different stages of the immigration process, including
66 Kathryn Milligan
Figure 5.4 Jack Butler Yeats, Inspection Station, Ellis Island, New York, 1904 (ink, graphite,
and watercolour on paper).
lin, 2021
medical inspectors carrying out examinations, a man held in a separate area for ‘spe
cial enquiries’, rows of beds, and people waiting to be questioned.17 Alongside this
final scene the artist noted that during his time in the centre, he saw ‘no emigrant smil
ing at any time while going through the long inspection’.18 Although it is difficult to
gauge Yeats’s emotional or personal response to witnessing the immigration process,
there are moments of poignancy within the collection, as seen in a thumbnail sketch
of a lone bag covered ‘with red and white striped canvas’, which is given a whole page
in the sketchbook and visually echoes the large American flags seen elsewhere, or a
quick pen and pencil sketch of a man holding a ‘carpet bag with nothing in it’.19 In his
notations, Yeats remarks that many of the immigrants he saw were Italian. However,
on accompanying sketches of a man in a sheepskin coat and the head and torso of a
woman, he wrote ‘very few shawls among the Irish’, a sparse indication that he was
witness to some of his countrymen and countrywomen at the start of their new life in
America. The opportunities for Irish arrivals to America is wryly alluded to elsewhere
in this series of sketches, when Yeats notes that one of the officials working at the
immigration centre is referred to as ‘Mr Patrick McCool, the Irish immigrant man’.20
From our contemporary perspective, the idea of an immigration centre as being
a tourist ‘sight’ is deeply distasteful, yet Ellis Island frequently appeared in contem
porary guidebooks, like other popular areas for ‘slumming’. For example, in a 1903
edition of New York: A Guide in Comprehensive Essays, published by the Brooklyn
Daily Eagle, the author noted that a visit to Ellis Island presented a ‘vastly interesting
picture of foreign peoples, the peasantry of Europe’.21 Indeed, as indicated previously,
the consumption of migrant, working-class, or slum life into a form of visual spectacle
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was not unusual. In some Ashcan
paintings, the representation of the multitude of cultures was an intrinsic part of the
depiction of New York life, for example, in Luk’s Street Scene (Hester Street) (1905,
oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum), which depicts a range of urban ‘types’, including
pedlars, shoppers, and children in the predominantly Jewish Lower East Side. As a
visitor to New York, Yeats would have been offered an array of opportunities for
‘touring’ the diverse parts of the city: among these the most notable (and heavily mar
keted) ‘attraction’ was Chinatown.
Seeing New York 67
Dinner and Show: Yeats in Chinatown
After the Yeats’s had returned to Devon, Quinn noted in a letter to George Russell (AE)
that ‘he [Jack] and Mrs Yeats are delighted with New York and I believe that he has
seen more of the city than I ever have, who lived here for years’.22 Mapping the loca
tions identified in the sketchbooks certainly bears out Quinn’s assessment, with sites of
interest clustered in Manhattan, with occasional forays into Brooklyn. In addition to
the city’s popular theatres (discussed later in this essay) the Chinatown area of down
town Manhattan was prominent among the places Yeats visited, providing a rich street
life and visual interest through signage, advertising, and entertainments. On at least
one occasion, Jack and Cottie dined in a Chinese restaurant: two double-page sketches
show a relatively sparse interior, heated by a stove, and the walls decorated with prints
of portraits, American flags and rosettes, animals, advertisements, and paper lanterns.23
Yeats kept a guidebook to Chinatown, presumably purchased during his visit, offering
an insight into how the district was marketed to tourists at this stage in its develop
ment. Published by Charles F. Gong, a publisher based at 3 Doyer Street in the heart
of Chinatown, the Guide of Chinatown and Souvenir Programme aimed to offer the
reader ‘more interesting news and facts of the Chinese quarter’, with sections on ‘Life
in Chinatown’, ‘The Chinese Theatre’, and ‘Restaurants’, among other topics and illus
trated advertisements for ‘fancy goods’ stores, wig makers. fabric and silk suppliers,
and restaurants. In the description section on the last of these attractions, the guide sug
gested that the ‘Chinese restaurant is the most popular haven of visitors to Chinatown’,
but noted that there ‘is a certain sameness about these places. The cashier’s counters,
the bare wooden tables and hard stools, the dishes, chop-sticks [sic] or forks . . . the gay
decorations of coloured papers, lanterns, flags etc., make all Chinese restaurants looks
alike’.24 The guide provided some menu suggestions for American visitors, with a meal
of chop suey, omelette and roast chicken costing about seventy-five cents, with tea.25
These are undoubtedly hybrid dishes, with Chinese flavours adapted to American pal
ettes: more elaborate traditional dishes, such as bird’s nest soup or chicken and shark
fin soup, would cost the diner one to two dollars, and ‘sometimes more’.26 The Chinese
restaurant would become a frequent subject in paintings by Ashcan artists: as Marga
rita Karasoulas noted in a discussion of Sloan’s Chinese Restaurant (1909, oil on can
vas, Memorial Art Gallery), the Chinese restaurant offered ‘multisensory experiences
of racial others’ to tourists and locals, as well as being ‘a key site for the negotiation of
issues pertaining to racial difference’.27 As is to be expected from a finished oil rather
than a brief sketch, Sloan’s representation of the restaurant interior is undoubtedly
more developed than that of Yeats, incorporating a stronger narrative about immigrant
life in the city, the presence of women in these spaces, and the politics of food. This
once again speaks to Yeats as a visitor, passing through these complex spaces, rather
than a New Yorker and the fleeting impressions he was capturing in his sketchbooks.
The Guide of Chinatown also advertised and described an evening at the Chinese
Opera House, located at 6 and 7 Doyer Street, offering an introduction to the traditions
of Chinese theatre, including the absence of sets, female impersonation, and musical
instruments. Yeats completed four sketches of Chinese theatre, and although he did not
name the Doyer Street establishment, there are some architectural similarities with the
photographs published in the Guide, and it seems plausible that this was the venue he
attended. Of the four sketches, one is a double-page scene, showing the stage and audi
ence, seated in stalls and boxes, with the artist noting the ‘American ladies and Japa
nese men in box’ in the upper left-hand corner. On the stage, four performers gather
68 Kathryn Milligan
Figure 5.5 Jack Butler Yeats, Chinese Theatre, 1904 (ink, graphite, and watercolour).
lin, 2021
at a table: to the fore, a couple (one in female dress) appears to talk, while the figures
behind hold instruments (Figure 5.5). The Guide explained to its readers that women
did not perform in Chinese theatre; instead, men made themselves up in ‘pigments
especially imported for them’ and that in advance of performing they ‘admire them
selves before the mirrors . . . giving touches here and there of pigments . . . with cloth
pads and incessantly smoking cigarettes’.28 Yeats gives a further view of this practice
in a one-page sketch showing ‘the heroine acted by a man’.29 As in the larger sketch,
Yeats identifies the female impersonator through their skin tone, using the blank page
to suggest a painted white face, the paleness accentuated by rich red lips. Undoubtedly,
Yeats’s depictions of Chinese New Yorkers play to racial stereotypes, drawing on the
conventions seen in many contemporary press illustrations. In his repeated depiction
of Chinese people in New York, Yeats reduces their physical features (such as their
eyes and skin colour) to crude shorthand, identifying them as separate from other New
Yorkers through their plain blue clothing and broad-brimmed straw hats, and on occa
sion, cue hairstyles and long smoking pipes.30 This is evident not only in the scenes of
the Chinese theatre but also in sketches of the ‘Charlie Jim’ laundry, a Chinese porter,
and a Chinatown street scene showing two men smoking outside a building.31 These
aspects of New York sketches underline Yeats’s repeated perception of racial difference
among the people of Manhattan, marking them as different from himself, while also
playing into a sense of voyeurism and racial spectacle.
Vaudeville, Shakespeare, and Marionettes: Yeats at New York’s

Theatres
The offering of theatrical experiences available in New York (which was certainly
not limited to the Chinese Opera House) clearly fascinated Yeats. The theatres identi
fied in the eight sketchbooks evocatively reimagine the wide variety of entertainments
available in the city during this period, from Shakespeare and other plays to vaude
ville productions and ballet. As Robert M. Lewis has noted, by the 1890s, ‘vaudeville
was perceived to be the variety show best adapted to the modern city’, as it ‘was
the distilled essence of the major entertainments, lowbrow, middlebrow, and even
Seeing New York 69
highbrow’. Elements of vaudeville, such as the bill of different acts and the high-
32
low mix, were surely familiar to Yeats through his attendance at London music halls
and variety shows, though offering a range of new performers, acts, and in-jokes.
His sketches of New York venues expand and continue from his London and Dublin
scenes. A popular subject with London-based artists such as Walter Sickert and Ameri
can artists like William Glackens, the theatrical interior was a key motif of urban
painting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.33 Given Yeats’s interest
in the circus, shown in many of his sketches and later paintings, it is perhaps surpris
ing that the New York sketchbooks do not record any visit to the Barnum and Bailey
‘Greatest Show on Earth’, then running in Madison Square Garden. Perhaps Yeats’s
penchant for spectacle was fulfilled by a visit to a performance by the ‘Great Lafayette’
(Sigmund Neuberger). In April 1904, the illusionist performed at the Circle Theatre,
with ‘a company of vaudeville artists’. It is likely that Yeats attended one of these
performances, as the three sketches of Lafyette appear amidst a two-page illustration
of the Circle Theatre interior and sketches of a male double act.34 Although it doesn’t
feature in Yeats’s sketchbook, Lafayette’s show also included a ‘vitagraph’ – an early
type of silent motion picture and perhaps an opportunity for the artist to engage with
this new artistic medium.
The variety of performances included in a vaudeville show is alluded to by Yeats in
range of sketches from Tony Pastor’s 14th Street theatre, with different skits, double
acts, and singers represented. Pastor was an influential figure in vaudeville history,
starting as a performer himself before opening his own premises. Moving from the
Bowery to 14th Street, Pastor ‘balanced his traditional Bowery audience’s delight in
robust comedy with the wishes of his increasingly middle-class clientele’, an offer
ing which included matinees for women and the banning of smoking and drinking
in the auditorium.35 It is unclear whether Cottie attended these performances with
her husband, as she does not appear in any of the sketches, and there are no extant
records for how she spent her own time in the city. The sheer variety of spectacles
and entertainments at the theatre make it clear why Yeats was attracted to the venue.
A bill of fare for Pastor’s theatre in April 1904 lists comedy sketches, acrobatic acts,
toe dancing, ‘equilibrists and exponents of physical culture’, barrel jumpers, ventrilo
quists, musicians, minstrel acts, ‘card manipulators’, and ‘the American vitagraph’.36
The ‘toe dancing’ may have been similar to the scene captured by the artist in Cake
Walk at Tony Pastor’s, which shows two dancers in black and white costumes creating
complex shadows in a spotlight; this is followed by a view of two sleeping audience
members as a ‘monologist’ waxes lyrical on the stage.37 We see the theatre in its full
glory in one more finished sketch: Yeats shows a soloist – her name appears on a plac
ard to the left-hand side of the stage, with the surname ‘Kent’ visible – against a scenic
backdrop, classical columns, with the red-curtained boxes curling into the side of the
stage, and large male heads in the foreground, placing Yeats among the audience38
(Figure 5.6). A pencil note, later emphasised with pen or ink, notes that the song being
performed is ‘A Black Bird in a Gilded Cage’, perhaps a reference to Arthur J. Lamb
and Harry Von Tilzer’s ballad, A Bird in a Gilded Cage. The song recounts the situa
tion of a woman who, despite now having significant financial means, is trapped in a
loveless marriage. The sentimental nature of the ballad places it at the more emotional
end of the theatre’s offerings, as seen in the listing earlier. Pastor’s – perhaps inevitably
for the period – also included minstrel and blackface acts in its line-up. The latter of
these ‘entertainments’ remained popular in the early years of the twentieth century,
70 Kathryn Milligan
Figure 5.6 Jack Butler Yeats, Tony Pastor’s, 1904 (watercolour, ink, and graphite on paper).
lin, 2021
and from one of the sketchbooks it seems that Yeats attended a vaudeville show at the
Miner’s Theatre on the Bowery, which included a blackface act, with the stage back
drop described as ‘a cotton field’.39 Blackface shows were not new to Yeats; in fact,
one of the works that he exhibited at the Clausen Gallery captured a performance by
the ‘Christy Minstrels’ in Liverpool.40 His interest in this genre continued throughout
his career, with blackface figures appearing in later paintings such as South Pacific
(1934) and Singing ’Way Down Upon the Swanee River (1942).41
Some of the productions attended by Yeats, presumably in the company of his wife
or Quinn, were large-scale on-Broadway productions. A series of sketches record a per
formance of the Wizard of Oz at the Majestic Theatre from 21 March to 2 May 1904.
Although different from the film version known today, the three-act musical still con
tained some of its most recognisable characters. Yeats shows us the ‘Famous Tin Man’
and the Scarecrow, as well as ‘The cow named Imogen’, who replaced Toto the dog
in the novel’s stage adaptation. Yeats also attended a production of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet starring Johnston Forbes-Robertson at the Knickerbocker Theatre. Although
regarded as one of the finest actors to play the titular role, and indeed, proclaimed as
such in the advertising notices for the play’s run, Yeats regarded him as ‘a middling
dreary Hamlet’.42 The sketch containing this rather scathing comment shows the stage
as seen from the stalls, with the actor sitting on stage with an air of deep melancholy,
shrouded in his ‘nighted colour’;43 Robertson’s wife, Gertrude Elliot, is also shown
Seeing New York 71
in her role as Ophelia. Unimpressed, perhaps, by the performance on stage, Yeats
44
also sketched some of the people to be seen in the Knickerbocker Theatre, including a
black attendant serving ‘ice water in the theatre’ and a uniformed policeman leaning
on a partition.45 Falling somewhere between the sketch comedy of Pastor’s and this
high-brow production was an evening spent at the Dewey Theatre, where Yeats saw
and recorded the ‘Merry Maidens Burlesque’ show, described in his notes as a bal
let. Newspaper reviews from their 1904 tours to other American cities show that the
company performed a variety of longer-form dramatic and musical pieces, along with
other entertainments such as acrobats and bands.46
In addition to these well-known venues, and like his interest in the Chinese theatre,
Yeats sought out and recorded a form of entertainment linked to another migrant
community in the city: the Italian (or more accurately, Sicilian) marionette theatre.
The sketchbooks show that he attended two such performances: the first on Elizabeth
Street in Manhattan, and the second at an unknown location in Brooklyn. The for
mer of these, identified by the manuscript note ‘Italian Marionettes Elizabeth Street
New York’, is likely to have been the theatre of Sicilian mechanic Antonio Parisi, who
operated the Marionette Theatre at 258 Elizabeth Street. According to contemporary
newspaper records, Parisi’s performances were largely based on Carolingian tales,
extemporised by the proprietor, and filled with adventurous knights and noisy bat
tle scenes. A report of a performance in 1908 described how the marionettes have
‘a smashing old tournament in full armor [sic], while all the Parisi family assem
bled behind the scenes, stamping their feet to make the noise of battle’.47 The fare at
the unnamed Brooklyn theatre seems to have been similar. A colourful sketch of the
theatre’s exterior (‘outside the Sicilian marionette theatre’) shows several advertising
vignettes, presumably scenes from different productions, while an interior view places
Yeats among a predominantly male audience. Attending the marionette theatres in
Manhattan and Brooklyn must surely have resonated with a key interest of Yeats’s
during these opening years of the twentieth century. As extant manuscripts, publica
tions, and cut-out figures in the Yeats Archive show, he was deeply invested in writ
ing, producing, and performing a scaled-down version of a marionette show for the
children of Strete, the Yeats’s local village in Devon. With tales of adventuring pirates,
Caribbean islands, falling comets, and model ships, Yeats’s plays for miniature theatre
show the same bravura and excitement as the Italian tales retold in New York.48
Conclusion: Yeats as an Urban Observer

While the sketches of New York’s night and performance life offer a lively and varied
insight into Yeats’s time in the city, most of the sketches relate to vignettes seen on
his rambles around its streets. This includes views of buildings, for example, at the
docks, as well as shop fronts and signs, interesting people, and general notices or eye-
catching graphics. Perhaps aware of its chequered history and lively streetscape, as
well as its proximity to many of the theatres he visited, it is not surprising then that
the Bowery appears across several of the sketchbooks. In one shop window, Yeats
records a display of oleographs, a type of textured print made to resemble an oil
painting. The prints, although loosely sketched, show landscape and portrait scenes
and are stacked haphazardly in the window. On the following pages different aspects
of the Bowery’s visual and material culture are presented: a street vendor, bundled up
in coat and astrakhan hat, offers an array of ‘picture buttons’, or badges; a jeweller
72 Kathryn Milligan
sells ‘a ball of fire single stone diamond stud’, or for just ten cents shoppers could also
purchase a ‘roughly made plaster of Paris’ statue of the Virgin and Child, encased
in a glass dome.49 These small yet evocative images of everyday life on the streets of
New York chime with Yeats’s other urban sketches. Indeed, his representation of the
American city differs only in its geography and architecture, and seen alongside those
showing Dublin and London, the New York sketchbooks further reveal his general
interest in meticulously observing urban life. Unlike the former two cities, the New
York streetscape did not find its way into his later oil paintings in any meaningful
way – save for The Belle of Chinatown (1943, oil on canvas, private collection) and
The Public Letter Writer (exhibited 1958, oil on canvas, private collection) – both
made several decades after his visit to America. Perhaps the disappointment of the
exhibition at the Clausen Gallery (which, in addition to poor sales, received no critical
attention from the New York press) dulled Yeats’s memories of his time in the city or
gave little impetus for him to revisit it in his explicitly urban paintings of the 1920s.
Like the street life he depicted, Yeats’s sketchbooks (and his archive) are replete with
‘things’: tangible materials that speak to the material accumulation and variety that
comes with life in a busy urban centre. Yeats’s interest in capturing this richly textured
world is not unproblematic. His participation in the culture of ‘slumming’ and his
representation of race are emblematic of societal attitudes towards migration, new
communities, and racial difference which persist today. When added to Yeats’s urban
oeuvre, alongside his depictions of London and Dublin, the New York sketchbooks
enrich our understanding of Yeats as an artist of the urban scene, as a flâneur and
observer, and show, as Sickert would later comment, his commitment to depicting
‘Life above everything’.50
Notes
1. The Yeats Archive at the National Gallery of Ireland (hereafter cited as NGI Yeats Archive)
holds 204 of Jack B. Yeats’s sketchbooks, with approximately 7000 sketches and 1000
manuscript pages. These have been fully catalogued, and a full finding aid is available.
Sincere thanks are due to Leah Benson and Mary Clare O’Brien of the NGI Library &
Archives, who ensured I could access materials from the Yeats Archive during successive
COVID-19 lockdowns.
2. For more information on Quinn, see Ysanne Holt, “New York, London, Ireland: Collec
tor John Quinn’s Transatlantic Network, c.1900–1917,” Visual Culture Britain 14, no. 1
(2013), 55–67.
3. Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Biography (Baltimore, MD: Barnes and Noble Books, 1989),
85–86.
4. Rebecca Zurier, Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School (Berkeley, CA,
Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 2006), 91.
5. Ibid, 45–49.
6. Ibid, 23. See also Sarah Newman, “George Bellows’s New York and the Spectacular Real
ity of the City,” American Art 18, no. 3 (2004), 92.
7. Edward W. Wolner, “George Bellows, Georg Simmel, and Modernizing New York,”
American Art 29, no. 1 (2015), 109.
8. See Robert Gordon, “John Sloan and John Butler Yeats: Records of a Friendship,” Art
Journal 32, no. 3 (1973), 289–296.
9. For more on Yeats’s London and Dublin sketches see, Kathryn Milligan, Painting Dub
lin, 1886–1949: Visualising a Changing City (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2020), 97–103.
10. For more on ‘slumming’, see Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian
London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), and Chad Heap, Slumming:
Seeing New York 73
Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940 (Chicago, IL and Lon
don: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
11. “Atlantic Ocean, Dartmouth Regatta,” March, August 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/68 and ‘Atlantic
and London, Bill Bailey’, March – [?] September 1904, Y1/JY/1/69, NGI Yeats Archive.
12. Two sepia photographs, March 1904, Y1/JY/7/3/76, NGI Yeats Archive.
13. “Atlantic Ocean, Dartmouth Regatta,” March, August 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/68/36;
Y1/1/1/68/37, NGI Yeats Archive.
14. Atlantic Ocean, Dartmouth Regatta’, March, August 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/68/42; Y1/
JY/1/1/68/43, NGI Yeats Archive.
15. See Nicholas Allen, Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled (Oxford: Oxford Uni
versity Press, 2020), 76–110.
16. “New York,” March – April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/71–73, NGI Yeats Archive.
17. “New York,” March – April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/31–44, NGI Yeats Archive.
18. “New York,” March – April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/39, NGI Yeats Archive.
19. “New York,” March – April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/43 and Y1/JY/1/1/73/48/, NGI Yeats
Archive.
20. “New York,” March – April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/34, NGI Yeats Archive.
21. Cromwell Childe, New York: A Guide in Comprehensive Essays (New York: Brooklyn
Daily Eagle, 1903), 22–23.
22. Letter from John Quinn to George Russell, May 2, 1904, quoted in Elisabeth Ansel,
“I don’t regret going to New York a bit’: Transnationaler Kulturtransfer am Beispiel der
New York – Reise des irischen Künstlers Jack B. Yeats (1871–1957), in Künstlerreisen:
Fallbeispiele vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, Andreas Tacke, Birgit Ulrike Münch,
Markwart Herzog, Sylvia Heudecker, Thomas Schauerte, eds. (Petersberg: Michael Imhof
Verlag, 2020), 215.
23. “New York, Quinn 2,” March–April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/70/14, NGI Yeats Archive.
24. Guide of China Town and Souvenir Programme (New York: Charles F. Gong, 1903), 12.
Y1/JY/22/6, NGI Yeats Archive.
25. Guide to China Town, 12.
26. Ibid.
27. Margarita Karasoulas, “Tasting the Sights: John Sloan’s Chinese Restaurant and Immi
grant New York,” Delaware Art Museum, YouTube Video, 2:37 and 2:53, November 3,
2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrlPAkIUH-E.
28. Guide to China Town, 9–10.
29. “New York,” March–April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/72/44, NGI Yeats Archive.
30. See, for example, Floyd Cheung, “Anxious and Ambivalent Representations: Nineteenth-
Century Images of Chinese American Men,” The Journal of American Culture 30, no. 3
(2007), 293–309; Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Phila
delphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999).
31. See “New York,” March–April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/71/11; Y1/JY/1/1/49; and “New York –
Strete,” March, August–September 1902, Y1/JY/1/174/79, NGI Yeats Archive.
32. Robert M. Lewis, From Travelling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America,
1830–1910 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 315.
33. See, for example, Laurel Weintraub, “Vaudeville in American Art: Two Case Studies,”
Prospects 24 (1999), 339–375 and David Peters Corbett, “Camden Town and Ashcan:
Difference, Similarity, and the ‘Anglo-American’ in the Work of Walter Sickert and John
Sloan,” Art History 34, no. 4 (2011), 774–795.
34. “Theatrical Incidents and News Notes,” New York Tribune, April 17, 1904, 8. See also
“New York,” March–April 1904, Y1/JY/1/72/10; Y1/JY/1/1/72/8–14, NGI Yeats Archive.
35. Lewis, From Travelling Show to Vaudeville, 315–316.
36. “Theatrical Incidents and News Notes,” New York Tribune, April 10, 1904, 8.
37. “New York,” March–April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/55–56, NGI Yeats Archive.
39. “New York,” March–April 1904, Y1/JY/1/1/73/4; Y1/JY/1/1/73, NGI Yeats Archive.
40. Purchased by Quinn from the Clausen exhibition, this sketch was recently sold at auction.
See Jack B. Yeats, “In a Liverpool Christy Minstrels’ Show, Singing ‘The Irish Emigrant’,”
Christie’s, The Irish Sale, May 14, 2004, Lot 153, www.christies.com/en/lot-4275951.
74 Kathryn Milligan
41. For more on Yeats’s interest in blackface performance see John Brannigan, Race in Modern
Irish Literature and Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 127–129.
43. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publishing
Group, 1985), 12. Accessed October 18, 2021. ProQuest Ebook Central.
46. See “At St Paul Theatres,” The St. Paul Globe, February 8, 1904, 4; “Kernan’s Lyceum
Theater,” The Evening Star, October 25, 1904, 16. ‘New York’, March–April 1904, Y1/
JY/1/1/73/61–64, NGI Yeats Archive.
47. “Hope for Parisi of the Marionettes,” New York Times, April 21, 1908, 6.
48. See “Children’s Literature by Jack Butler Yeats,” Y1/JY/2/1/1–10 and “Jack Butler Yeats’s
Collection of Miniature Theatre Plays,” Y1/JY/21/1–71, NGI Yeats Archive.
50. Letter from Walter Sickert to Jack B. Yeats, c. January 1924, Y1/JY/1/1/157/123, NGI
Yeats Archive.
Works Cited
Allen, Nicholas. Ireland, Literature, and the Coast: Seatangled. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2020.
Ansel, Elisabeth. “I Don’t Regret Going to New York a Bit’: Transnationaler Kulturtransfer
am Beispiel der New York – Reise des irischen Künstlers Jack B. Yeats (1871–1957).” In
Künstlerreisen: Fallbeispiele vom Mittlealter bis zur Gegenwart. Andreas Tacke, Birgit Ulrike
Münch, Markwart Herzog, Sylvia Heudecker, Thomas Schauerte, eds. 212–225. Petersberg:
Michael Imhof Verlag, 2020.
Brannigan, John. Race in Modern Irish Literature and Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univer
sity Press, 2009.
Cheung, Floyd. “Anxious and Ambivalent Representations: Nineteenth-Century Images of Chi
nese American Men.” The Journal of American Culture 30, no. 3 (2007): 293–309.
Childe, Cromwell. New York: A Guide in Comprehensive Essays. New York: Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, 1903.
Corbett, David Peters. “Camden Town and Ashcan: Difference, Similarity, and the ‘Anglo-
American’ in the Work of Walter Sickert and John Sloan.” Art History 34, no. 4 (2011): 774–795.
Gordon, Robert. “John Sloan and John Butler Yeats: Records of a Friendship.” Art Journal 32,
no. 3 (1973): 289–296.
Heap, Chad. Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885–1940. Chi
cago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Holt, Ysanne. “New York, London, Ireland: Collector John Quinn’s Transatlantic Network,
c.1900–1917.” Visual Culture Britain 14, no. 1 (2013): 55–67.
Karasoulas, Margarita. “Tasting the Sights: John Sloan’s Chinese Restaurant and Immigrant
New York.” Delaware Art Museum, YouTube Video, 2:37 and 2:53, 3 November 2017,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrlPAkIUH-E.
Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton, NJ: Prince
ton University Press, 2006.
Lee, Robert G. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Uni
versity Press, 1999.
Lewis, Robert M. From Travelling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830–
1910. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Milligan, Kathryn. Painting Dublin, 1886–1949: Visualising a Changing City. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2020.
Pyle, Hilary. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography. Baltimore, MD: Barnes and Noble Books, 1989.
Seeing New York 75
Weintraub, Laurel. “Vaudeville in American Art: Two Case Studies.” Prospects 24 (1999):
339–375.
Wolner, Edward W. “George Bellows, Georg Simmel, and Modernizing New York.” American
Art 29, no. 1 (2015): 106–121.
Zurier, Rebecca. Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School. Berkeley, CA, Los
Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press, 2006.
6 ‘This New Life of Painting’
Morris Graves in Ireland, 1954–1964
Danielle M. Knapp
American painter Morris Graves (1910–2001) lived most of his life in Washington’s
Puget Sound region and northern California, yet his decade based in Ireland, from
1954 to 1964, was a bridge between the spiritual seeking of his early career and
his eventual retreat into nature and painting at his final home, “The Lake.” A study
of this period and Graves’s motivations, influences, travels, homes, and social con
nections offers an expanded understanding of his art. As a self-taught artist, Graves
created works that drew from the light and palette of the Pacific Northwest. He con
templated the nature of existence through his creative expression, exploring personal
and transcendental consciousness. In 1954, frustrated by interruptions and publicity
at home – though critical attention and sales were necessary for the support of his life
style – he left for Ireland. The following decade was punctuated by international travel
and return trips to the United States, yet Ireland remained an anchor. Graves trans
lated his experiences there into depictions of animal and plant life, personal interpre
tations of Irish lore, observations of the sky, and particular moods – both atmospheric
and internal. His impressions of Ireland and a period of experimentation outside the
United States connect his mystical works made in Washington before 1954 and the
later flower paintings created after 1964 at his last home in California.
Graves made his home in several places over this decade in Ireland, including County
Cork, County Waterford, Dublin, and finally at Woodtown Manor, a large country
estate outside the capital. Each location provided artistic and personal stimulation.
Although never a landscape painter in any traditional sense, Graves incorporated the
ambiance of the countryside into his creative practice. He expected “this new life of
painting in Ireland,” as he gleefully described it to a friend soon after he arrived in the
south of the country, to provide the perfect conditions for fully realizing his artistic
vision.1 Instead, it was a period of wanderlust and experimentation that ultimately
positioned Graves to find his true peace in California.
The first two decades of Graves’s artistic career in the United States delivered a
stream of critical attention to his sensitive visions of the natural and metaphysical
worlds.2 By 1942, when Graves was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s Ameri
cans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States and selected by contemporary art dealer Marian
Willard Johnson for a solo show at New York’s prestigious Willard Gallery, he was a
nationally recognized name.3 His painted animals, still lifes, and transformed objects
engaged his interests in symbolism, world culture, philosophy, and transcendental con
sciousness. Birds were especially significant; throughout the 1940s, Graves’s winged
subjects slipped into moonlight, transfigured into bronze, strained at the length of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-7
‘This New Life of Painting’ 77
winter, peered into the void, or represented consciousness itself. He often depicted
them as blind or nursing a broken wing, symbolic of the struggle of one’s existence.
Graves’s intertwined attentions on the outer and inner worlds set him apart from
the aims of the core group of Abstract Expressionists in New York at mid-century. For
Graves, pure abstraction did not offer the same symbolic weight without a figurative
counterpoint. Fellow Northwest painter Kenneth Callahan remarked years later in his
review column for The Seattle Daily Times that “one of the reasons Graves’ work is
appreciated by a very large and diversified audience throughout America is his ability
to couple rare decorative beauty with mystic symbolism.”4 Callahan further described
him as “a real artist, one of the few contemporary occidental painters who have had
the penetrating vision and sympathetic familiarity with birds to make others see their
beauty, grace, elegance, purity of form, [cruelty] and stupidity. This side of his art
alone makes a remarkable contribution.”
In 1953, Life magazine featured Guy Anderson, Callahan, Graves, and Mark Tobey
in an article naming them “The Mystic Painters of the Northwest,” presenting these
artists and their interests in the artistic and spiritual traditions of Asia to a wide Amer
ican audience.5 Though the four had known one another personally for over a decade,
their individual art making was not connected to any formal, collective movement. The
article nevertheless reinforced these impressions and cemented an association between
them, while painting a public image of Graves as a “bearded recluse.” Indeed, Graves
had refused to be interviewed for the piece and nearly declined being photographed
for his section of the six-page spread. The coverage offered by the high-profile nature
of this popular magazine was at odds with his deeply personal motivations for mak
ing art. The public persona of the artist as a hermit, however, was paradoxical to
Graves’s personality among friends, family, and those he respected. He thrived on the
attention of his admirers within desired social circles; yet as a creative he needed these
interactions to happen on his own terms, lest they distract from his work. Above all,
he chafed at others’ expectations of him.
Disturbed by the level of attention that Life’s coverage invited and finding daily life at
his property in the woods of Snohomish County, Washington, increasingly interrupted
by the sounds of suburban development, Graves sought a change. He decided to rent
out his custom-built home called Careläden6 and seek artistic refuge abroad. Graves
had previously visited Europe in 1949, spending a month in England and three months
in France; he had made paintings at Chartres Cathedral, only to destroy most of them
upon his return to Seattle. A much longer stay in a new country, Graves believed,
would provide the perfect circumstances for meaningful work. His choice of Ireland
was fueled by both pragmatism – as Graves intended to find an affordable property to
purchase and renovate to his specifications and thought that the manor houses of the
Irish countryside would offer great possibilities on his budget – and a sense of connec
tion he had to the land. Yet the strongest motivation was his yearning idealism, depend
ent on his vision of Ireland as a near-magical escape from the modern world.
Graves sent his partner Richard Svare and close friend Dorothy Schumacher ahead
of him with the goal of locating a rental house that would meet Graves’s need to be
“as far from this mechanized century as Ireland can provide.”7 Svare, an accomplished
multilingual performer and teacher, intended to take on the role of personal assistant
and secretary to the artist abroad. Graves considered Schumacher’s and Svare’s com
panionship vital in this endeavor, writing, as he prepared for his departure, that
78 Danielle M. Knapp
there, in the new environment, supported by the friendship of Dorothy and Rich
ard, [I will] find for a time within these new walls, a renewed capability to think
my thoughts, find my peace of mind, and couple them with every new – one could
say, meditative – impulse to paint.8
The group had not yet decided how long they might stay in Ireland, but Graves
expected the trip to last at least one year.
At mid-century, Ireland was buoyed to modernist art by the creation of the Com
mittee of Living Art in 1943, the Advisory Committee on Cultural Relations in 1948,
and the Arts Council of the Republic of Ireland in 1951. The annual Irish Exhibition
of Living Art provided post-war Irish audiences with access to the works of major
contemporary artists from their own country and throughout Europe and the United
States. The Ireland that Graves prepared to enter was well-versed in modernism,
and contemporary Irish art was gaining a level of international interest. But Graves’s
expectation was to be far removed from the competition, egos, and annoyances of the
art world that plagued him in the United States.
Prior to arriving on Irish soil in late 1954, Graves spent five weeks in Japan. He was
captivated by the country and its culture after earlier trips to Tokyo, Kobe, and Yoko
hama and five months of language studies at the University of Hawaii in 1947.9 His
interests included ink brush painting, traditional paper mounting, and Noh masks.
To Graves’s mind, the distinctive sensibility he observed in Japanese art represented a
cultural acceptance of nature, rather than the resistance that Graves saw as emblem
atic in American life.10 He ordered large quantities of handmade Japanese and Chinese
papers and supplies to be shipped to his new home in Ireland.
Graves, Svare, and Schumacher settled first at Innish Beg (“small island,” alter
nately spelled Inish Beg), on the south-west coast, fifty-six miles from the city of Cork.
Graves was charmed by his eclectically furnished turn-of-the-century rental house. He
was pleased to have such distance from “the noise of America”11 and “confusing crush
of life at home”12 and swooned in a letter to friend Dale Keller about it being
a dream house to dream in, but more, a house pervaded by the kind of calm quiet
absolutely essential for me to sort my many, many impressions of Japan and col
lect my forces to paint in this strange new security of Innish Beg.13
Not all was new to him: although 4500 miles removed from Puget Sound, the Irish
climate felt deeply familiar to Graves, who likened it to that of Washington State. To
be surrounded by lush greenery and in proximity to the coastline as he had been at
Careläden, but free of the encroaching noise of jet traffic, brought Graves significantly
closer to his desired life.
Once in Ireland, Graves’s long-standing interest in mysticism and his consideration
of his recent experience in Japan manifested in sensitively rendered compositions.
A new series, “Hibernation,” featured a variety of small mammals with their heads
serenely nestled into their curled bodies. Although he had explored this subject matter
in earlier years (evidenced by Sleeping Fox,14 a watercolor in warm hues that Graves
painted in 1936), by the time of his arrival in Ireland the act of hibernation was espe
cially appealing on a personal level. Hibernation was more than a physiological neces
sity; in Graves’s mind, it represented a transcendental escape from worldly concerns.
The restful animals, encased in “sacred eggs,” are simultaneously cocooned in the
Figure 6.1 Morris Graves (American, 1910–2001), Hibernating Raccoon, 1954 (ink and wash
on paper, 16 × 24 inches), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon;
Nancy Wilson Ross Collection; 1986:113.
Source: Photography by Jonathan B. Smith. Reprinted with permission from The Morris Graves Foundation.
earth and floating, moonlike, above it. American novelist and Buddhist scholar Nancy
Wilson Ross, a long-time friend of the artist, received Hibernating Raccoon (Fig
ure 6.1) from Graves. This ink wash painting bears Graves’s label of “Ireland 1954”
with an inscription to Wilson Ross and her husband, playwright Stanley Young. Cer
tainly, the significance of the curled raccoon’s mandala-like form, a visual representa
tion of an enlightened state in nature and of Graves’s own yearning for a hibernation
of his own, was not lost on Wilson Ross.
The spiritual meaning of Hibernating Raccoon is evident, yet Graves’s choice of
animal in this painting disrupts a possible reading of the “Hibernation” series as refer
encing the artist’s new home in Ireland. While many of Graves’s hibernating mammals
are indistinct, far more are recognizable as raccoons, European polecats, or minks: all
species that, despite looking perfectly at home in these cozy scenes, do not hibernate
and are not native to Ireland. Minks arrived in breeding programs in the 1950s and
only became widespread from the early 1960s. A related creature, the Irish stoat, has
a long history in the country and was far more likely to have been observed by Graves
on site. Raccoons, however, had no such presence in Ireland when Graves lived there.
He regularly incorporated their characteristic black masks and ringed tails, such com
mon sights in Washington State, into his “Hibernation” scenes. In 1956, the American
poet Jack Spicer saw some of these works on display in New York City and responded
with his short poem Hibernation – After Morris Graves, concluding that “The Future
chills the sky above the chamber / The Past gnaws through the earth below the bed /
But here the naked Present lies as warmly / As if rested in the lap of God.”15 At Inish
Beg, Graves initially seemed to have found the physical distance from what ailed him
in the United States, which in turn gave him the emotional and mental distance he had
desperately needed in order to create the perfect environment to make his art, but he
continued to use visual markers of that earlier life at his discretion.
Graves’s interest in an unseen animal world extended to even more playful, imagina
tive scenes. He envisioned that the small creatures who scurried around the bushes of
his property after dark were imbued with Irish “magic.” Graves described his manifes
tation of one such supernatural “hedgerow” creature, whose cloudlike form on bird
legs wears a stern expression on its mammalian face, as a spirit of the night.16 He and
friends entertained themselves over dinner with conversations about leprechauns and
other imagined characters, conjuring up a sense of magic that bolstered the appeal of
County Cork among them. Another painting from that year, titled Pooka – Life Size,
referenced the mischievous shapeshifters from Irish folklore that brought either good
luck or terrible misfortune to those who encountered them. Schumacher, now Graves’s
housemate, referred to this collection of works as “marvelous fantasy-animals that
come out of the Irish stone walls.”17 Yet some of these also provided commentary on
the prevalence of Roman Catholicism in Ireland. His sumi ink drawing of a Mouse
Helping a Hedgerow Animal Carry a Prie-Dieu (1954), in the collection of the Seattle
Art Museum, demonstrates Graves’s curiosity about the Catholic religion’s tight grasp
on the country. As described on the museum website, the hedgerow represents “the
spirit of Ireland,” but the animal carries a prayer desk on its back and “is led by the
tail by a much smaller mouse, a metaphor for Rome.”18
In these same years, surrounded by natural beauty, Graves returned to the subject of
flowers that he had first painted a decade earlier. He also gardened at all of his homes.
Theodore F. Wolff addressed the artist’s significant period of growth between these
earlier works and the mid-career flower paintings:
Only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did flowers begin to acquire somewhat
more specific identities as flowers in Graves’s paintings and cease to serve primar
ily as convenient coloristic or conceptual devices. Even so, the flowers he painted
during that period and into the very early 1970s remained only marginally more
individualized and identifiable than those of the previous decades. Attractive as
they are, Flowers, 1957, and Spring Flower, 1960, for example, are of interest to
us today primarily because they represent a vital step forward for Graves in his
evolution from painter of the ineffable and unseen to that of the tangible and vis
ible. Both paintings were among the first to indicate that a decisive reshuffling of
Graves’s creative priorities was taking place.19
Graves kept goats and waterfowl in the yards of his homes when space allowed. He
later described his numerous drawings of geese as notations to convey the birds’ move
ment.20 These charmingly honest portraits of his pets captured the animals’ charac
ter with all their natural drama and humor. They are reminiscent of sketches made
years earlier during his drawing sessions at the zoos in Los Angeles, San Diego, and
the Bronx. Unlike in “Hibernation” and “Hedgerow Creatures,” the subjects of these
Figure 6.2 Morris Graves, Hero, 1955 (oil on masonite, 33 × 48 inches), Private Collection.
Source: Photography by Jonathan B. Smith. Reprinted with permission from The Morris Graves Foundation..
works are animals that Graves observed directly. In a 1955 letter sent to his New York
dealer, Marian Willard, Graves wrote of one new animal painting with which he was
particularly satisfied and which became emblematic of his Irish experience.21 The work,
titled Hero (Figure 6.2), and a painting of a doe from the same year, show Graves’s con
fident touch of the brush.22 The heroic billy in Hero stands with one foot on an orb in
a proud and authoritative gesture and a nod to the sculptural traditions of Roman and
Chinese art. His expression hints at a smile, in a show of anthropomorphized humor
that brings to mind the more playful images from the hedgerow creature drawings.
Graves left the rear left hoof unfinished, but the visual representation of the goat’s spirit
is complete. Writer Selden Rodman discussed Hero with Graves for a book project
when the men met in 1956, during Graves’s trip to New York. The painter described
his work as both autobiographical and a commentary on his new country, specifically
those personal characteristics of stubbornness and humor Graves felt he and the people
of Ireland both shared.23 Without the personality implied by a title such as Hero, the
elegant nanny in Irish Goat (1955) (Figure 6.3) is understood to be painted exactly as
Graves observed her, down to the hobble connecting her two left feet.
Graves and Svare relocated to the fully furnished six-bedroom Camphire Cottage
on the park-like property of Lady Esmé Dobbs, 125 miles to the south of Dublin, in
October 1955. The cheaper rent allowed Graves to shore up resources to pursue his
Figure 6.3 Morris Graves, Irish Goat, 1955 (oil on canvas, 38 × 52 inches), Jordan Schnitzer
Museum of Art, University of Oregon; Van Duyn Art Museum Fund Purchase/Other
Sources; 2013:15.1.
ultimate goal, the purchase of a countryside property in County Waterford on the

River Blackwater. He soon discovered Strancally Castle, a castellated manor house
that sparked his Gothic imagination and sense of romance. For months, Graves made
repeated inquiries into the possible purchase of Strancally, obsessed over its potential
to fulfill his grandest vision. By early 1956 his hopes of a sale were diminished due to
the Land Commission and other roadblocks.24 The early shine of Irish living seemed to
wear thin for Graves at times as he struggled to achieve his dream of finding the right
property at which to establish a long-term home and devote himself fully to painting.
Graves and Svare remained at Camphire Cottage only through the spring. They
briefly visited Washington that summer to take care of financial matters and to assess
the state of Careläden. A decade earlier, when jet traffic and construction sounds first
disturbed Graves’s sense of peace there, he had expressed his frustration through a
new series of “Machine Age Noise” paintings. Bird Maddened by Sounds of Machin
ery in the Air, 1944, in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
depicts a ruffled bird gazing away from an ominous, otherworldly form that streaks
across a desolate sky. A number of his “Hibernation” works from 1954 also refer
enced the jet age; Graves embellished those animals’ above-ground surroundings with
frenzies of lines and dots. Finding the situation in the Careläden neighborhood to
have only worsened by 1956, Graves invested more energy into this subject when he
returned to Ireland. The new “Machine Age Noise” works that Graves made in Ire
land, which he described as having “spat out,”25 moved away from recognizable ani
mal forms entirely. Underneath splatters of paint and rhythmic, horizontal bands of
red and black, Graves gave only hints of plant life. The energy of his lines suggests the
intensity of his anger towards the militarization, noise, and aggression he saw inherent
in industrialization. Irish audiences saw one of these paintings, Machine Age Noise V,
in the major exhibition Art USA Now at Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art
(now Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane) in 1964. Another from this series, Spring
with Machine Age Noise, was purchased for that collection in the same year.26
Graves’s paintings from these early years in Ireland typically sold well with Ameri
can clients.27 He rarely showed his work in Ireland, instead shipping it to the Willard
Gallery in New York City or the Waddington Gallery in London and participating in
a number of American museum exhibitions. Reaction to his work among critics was
sometimes mixed, with curator and writer James Thrall Soby notably unimpressed by
the oils from Ireland that he saw at Graves’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of
Art in 1956. However, poet Kenneth Rexroth wrote glowingly of Graves for the Win
ter 1955 issue of Perspectives Magazine. His piece, “The Visionary Painting of Mor
ris Graves,” spoke of the artist’s extraordinary singularity among his contemporaries
and how Graves was a “citizen of the world,” but Rexroth made no mention of the
relocation to Ireland.28 At that time, it was likely unclear to anyone following Graves’s
activities whether the move would prove to be any sort of a more permanent change.
Despite the recognition for his work, Graves frequently found himself short on
funds and short on time for the works he hoped to make. Willard urged him to focus
his efforts on painting and impressed upon him that this was his only hope for steady
income: “You really do come up with pressing financial problems with great regular
ity,” she deplored in March 1957.
You are laboring under that star, apparently, and when one material need and
home is completed, it must be left for another. Months go by in this and your ener
gies are depleted by extraneous things and painting gets only what is left over.29
In October of that year, Graves finally sold Careläden and felt more committed than ever
to making Ireland a permanent home. His large oil painting 1st Movement (Allegro)
Bach, Brandenburg Concerto 5 in D Minor from 1958 feels hopeful and bright compared
to the somber mood of the concurrent “Machine Age Noise” series.30 The use of white
lines to impose visual structure were suggestive of the “white writing” that appeared
in his and Tobey’s earlier works, yet more wholly abstract than was typically seen in
Graves’s compositions (his 1943 watercolor painting Surf Reflected Upon Higher Space,
in the collection of the Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, is
another notable earlier exception). As such, this work stands out as a complete departure
from representational imagery during this period. Its palette and uniformity imply the
structure of music that exists in contrast to the cacophony of machine-age noise.
In September 1958 Graves fulfilled his greatest wish for his life in Ireland with the
purchase of Woodtown Manor, an eighteenth-century mansion farmhouse surrounded
by ponds, just fifteen minutes outside of Dublin. Svare described,
Graves and I caught our first sight of Woodtown Manor, its house and gardens
reflecting a dispirited and sullen aspect, grievously unloved for many generations.
We somehow knew that we could bring alive this sleeping beauty, and though
beset by our initial romanticized vision, we had few illusions of how daunting a
task it would be.31
Graves met with architects to determine the building’s structural viability and assem
bled a team of hired help for its repairs. Despite a long list of much-needed updates,
Woodtown Manor was structurally sound, and Graves hoped to restore elements of
the surrounding acreage in homage to its previous existence as a working farm. While
awaiting the addition of plumbing, electricity, and heating, Graves and Svare rented
two floors of a Georgian-era house in Fitzwilliam Square and shopped in Dublin for
elegant period furniture with which to furnish Woodtown. In spring 1959, the home
was ready for occupancy. It seemed that with the long-awaited move into Woodtown
Manor, the stars would have finally aligned for Graves to realize his vision of the
perfect life of painting. However, within two months he expressed deep frustrations
with the renovation process and a long list of prejudices against the Irish repair people
in a letter to Willard and her husband, Dan Johnson. He lamented that the project
might never be adequately finished.32 Despite setbacks, Graves continued his work
on the home and received many visitors from the United States, including his mother,
his brother Wallace, close friends Jan Thompson and Richard Gilkey from Washing
ton (whom Graves had playfully nicknamed “the otters”), and the poet and former
Careläden renter Theodore Roethke.
Among the Irish artists in Graves’s orbit at Woodtown was Patrick Scott, whom
Graves met in Dublin during consultations on renovation project ideas. Though work
ing as an architect at the time (a position he left by 1960 to devote his full attention
to art), Scott was already one of the country’s most promising abstract painters. He,
like Graves, was self-taught, had an interest in Zen Buddhism, had traveled to Japan
and China (and most recently to Venice and Ravenna, which stirred his interest in
using gold paint), and processed life events through his art. Scott’s interest in Zen
moved him deeper into pure abstraction, an area of artistic exploration that did not
serve Graves’s own needs as completely. Peter Murray, former director of the Craw
ford Art Gallery in Cork, remarked on the strong connection between the two artists’
works, identifying “Scott’s ‘sun motif’ paintings reveal a debt to the American artist’s
works.”33 Murray noted a shortlist of other Irish artists with whom Graves social
ized at Woodtown Manor, including portrait painter Hilda Roberts of the nearby
Woodtown House and her studio tenant, the Czech-born sculptor Gerda Frömel. The
Irish poet John Montague’s first book of poetry, Poisoned Lands (1961), included
Woodtown Manor – for Morris Graves, a reflection on his own time spent there with
the artist. This poem captures the home as one might have seen it through Graves’s
charming drawings of Irish fauna, with references to imaginary animals, coiled foxes,
and baby birds.
At Woodtown, Graves kept a telescope and looked to the heavens over the bright
lights of Dublin’s cityscape. His appreciation of the night sky extended to possibili
ties beyond this planet. In the early 1960s, he was inspired to create objects to aid in
humankind’s exploration of space. For years, he had worked on furniture designs as
a passion project, but this was new territory for Graves. Days after astronaut John
Glenn’s orbit of Earth in 1962, Graves qualified his new works as “sculptures” [as
marked in quotations personally by Graves] and imagined their purpose as connectors
between science and technology and the arts and philosophy. The series of Instruments
Figure 6.4 Morris Graves, detail, Instruments for a Celestial Navigation #2, 1961–1962 (glass,
brass, schist, and paper, 261/2 × 14 × 5 inches), Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art,
University of Oregon; Development Fund Purchase, Friends of the Museum, and Dr.
and Mrs. Carlisle Moore; 1969:13.
for a New Navigation (also known as Celestial Navigation) would require a skilled
hand beyond his own capability for their fabrication from metal, glass, mica, and
semiprecious stones. The example in the collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum
of Art (Figure 6.4) boasts a gold-flecked square under glass in a brass frame. Key
hole forms were impressed into the surface. Their shape reflects that of a metal piece
attached to the smooth blue and white stone at center.
Svare later recounted how his partner
had never been as excited as he was when he began to work on the Instruments.
He was totally involved and committed . . . He was continually frustrated in locat
ing just the right color, quality, surface . . . and, finally, the ideal craftsman to help
him realize the Instruments.34
The table-top pieces were, in purpose and materials, seemingly far removed from
Graves’s works on canvas and paper. Yet they represented Graves’s continued search
to find unity between human existence and the unknown. He initially directed so
much attention to this project that his painting again fell by the wayside, much to the
continued irritation of Willard. When gallerist Victor Waddington, through whom
Graves had sold works in London, viewed the sculptures, Waddington’s under
whelmed response to the Instruments deflated their maker entirely. Finally, Graves
abandoned his attempts at realizing the Instruments as originally envisioned, having
lost his joy for the project; the works were dissembled and packed away, not to be
exhibited together until 1999.35
Graves’s wanderlust continued. His trips early in this decade included New York
(where he enjoyed attention from an admiring social circle that included Arthur
Miller, Truman Capote, Mark Rothko, and Joseph Campbell) and New Zealand
in 1960, Israel in 1962, and Australia and India in 1963. Around this time, it had
become clear to him that his expectations of Woodtown were never going to match
the reality. In spring of 1964, he put the manor house up for sale and wrote to Wil
lard and Johnson,
If it sells it will sell in the next month or two and then I will learn a great lesson
about myself. It will be that I either am a painter and will clear my life a way to it
now after shedding Ireland and this too-domestic environment of Woodtown – or –
I will, to myself, be proven to be not an artist but a house-fusser and wanderer-
about longing for a hidden and secretive shelter (with garden) and never settling
for an “imperfect” (?) one . . . It’s in the balance.36
He secured a buyer for Woodtown in April and, one year later, signed the papers to
finalize his purchase of the land in Eureka, California, where he would build his for
ever home at “The Lake.”
Graves’s “new life” in Ireland proved to be one of more than painting. It was a
formative period of transition and experimentation. During those first years at Inish
Beg and Camphire Cottage, Graves re-established the spiritual and personal signifi
cance of animal imagery in new works. The creatures in his art of this period (be they
hibernating from the world, emblematic of Graves’s perception of Irish magic, or char
acters drawn from life) reveal how he processed this major mid-career move amidst
his continuing search for the perfect conditions for painting. His sense of familiarity
with the environment and climate of Ireland, so redolent of the United States’ own
Pacific Northwest coast, connected these two periods of his life. The natural world –
both his appreciation of it and his concern for it as notably expressed in the “Machine
Age Noise” series of the late 1950s – remained Graves’s primary subject matter and
positioned him for his later focus on flower paintings. The self-imposed boundaries
between Graves and the Irish art scene at large allowed him the intellectual space
to pursue a new creative direction, as demonstrated by his Instruments for Celestial
Navigation, while making room in his life for his interests in gardening and home
renovations and for friends, neighboring artists, and American visitors. His desire
to achieve harmony among all these led to understandable periods of frustration,
especially as his idealization of life at Woodtown Manor was challenged by reality.
Yet the clarity of vision that Graves developed in Ireland ultimately directed him in
attaining his desired “life of painting” in California, which he enjoyed for the nearly
four decades to follow.
Notes
1. Morris Graves to Dale Keller, Innish Beg, Ireland, November 7, 1954, quoted in Lawrence
Fong and Vicki Halper, eds., Morris Graves: Selected Letters (Seattle, WA: University of
Washington Press, 2013), 162. My interest in Graves’s time in Ireland began in 2010,
when Lawrence Fong (then curator of American and regional art at the Jordan Schnitzer
Museum of Art, University of Oregon) was on sabbatical for his research on Graves’s
papers. I am deeply grateful to him for the guidance he has provided for over a decade
and especially during my preparation of this essay and to Robert and Desirée Yarber of
the Morris Graves Foundation for their support during my research on Graves’s time in
Ireland and permission to present Graves’s art and letters in this essay.
2. In her seminal biographical essay on Graves, Seattle art critic Deloris Tarzan Ament posi
tioned Graves’s painting Moor Swan (1933) for its significance in his early career. Deloris
Tarzan Ament, Iridescent Light: The Emergence of Northwest Art (Seattle, WA: University
of Washington Press, 2002), 111. This book is one of several studies of Graves and his
work that were either approved by the artist in his lifetime or posthumously endorsed by
The Morris Graves Foundation. A complete list is available at https://morrisgravesfounda
tion.org/resources/.
3. Americans 1942: 18 Artists from 9 States was presented at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City from January 21 through March 8, 1942. This was the second time
that work by Graves had been selected by curator Dorothy C. Miller (later head of the
Department of Painting and Sculpture) for exhibition by the MoMA; in 1940, two of his
tempera and wax paintings, Message #3 and Message #6, were presented in 35 Under 35
and Mystery and Sentiment, respectively.
4. Kenneth Callahan, “The Visual Arts: Graves’ Show Is Impressive,” The Seattle Daily
Times, May 30, 1955, 36.
5. “Mystic Painters of the Pacific Northwest,” Life Magazine, September 28, 1953, 88. The
article was published without a byline. Seattle gallerist Zoë Dusanne, strategically promot
ing the depth of talent in Washington State’s contemporary art scene, secured this publicity
through her friend, New York–based art critic Winthrop Sargent and his colleague, Life
arts editor Dorothy Seiberling.
6. Graves’s first tenants at Careläden were the poet Theodore Roethke and his wife Beatrice.
He maintained a correspondence with them while in Ireland, much of which is catalogued
in the Morris Graves Papers, Collection 326, at the University of Oregon Special Collec
tions & Archives, Eugene, Oregon.
7. Morris Graves to Marian Willard, Careläden, Edmonds, Washington, August 18, 1954,
quoted in Fong and Halper, eds., Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 214.
8. Fong and Halper, 214–215.
9. Graves landed in Hawaii when his entry into Japan for a Guggenheim Fellowship was
denied due to his previous refusal of military service during World War II. In 1942, upon
notification of his draft into the U.S. Army, Graves had registered as a conscientious objec
tor. However, paperwork issues prevented the approval of his request. Graves refused to
take the oath of allegiance and attempted to leave, causing his immediate transfer to the
stockade at Ft. Lewis and then at Camp Roberts, California. This experience was deeply
traumatic for Graves.
10. In a statement on Graves’s work accompanying the Dublin Municipal Gallery’s exhibition
of “Art USA Now” in 1964, Graves wrote, “In Japan I at once had the feeling that this
was the right way to do everything.” Graves, quoted in Lee Nordness Allen S. Weller, Art:
USA: Now. Vol. 1. Studio Book (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 199.
11. Morris Graves to Wallace Graves and Family, Dublin, Ireland, March 17, 1956, in Fong
and Halper, eds., Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 168.
12. Morris Graves to Richard Gilkey, Dublin, Ireland, March 19, 1956, in Fong and Halper, 169.
13. Morris Graves to Dale Keller, Inish Beg, Ireland, November 7, 1954, in Fong and Halper,
162.
14. Sleeping Fox (watercolor on paper, 131/2 × 171/2 inches) is in the collection of the Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR. This museum holds nearly
550 works by Graves, the majority of which are works on paper that came to the collec
tion through the Graves at Oregon Project in 1968 and pre-date his eventual move to “The
Lake” near Eureka, California.
15. Excerpt of “Hibernation – After Morris Graves,” from Jack Spicer. My Vocabulary Did
This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University
Press, 2008), 56. © 2008 by the Estate of Jack Spicer. Reprinted with permission.
16. Morris Graves, The Drawings of Morris Graves, with Comments by the Artist, ed. Ida B.
Rubin (New York City, NY: The Drawing Society, Inc., 1974), 112. When this book was
published with Graves’s quote in 1974, Night Hedgerow was listed as a watercolor on
paper. It has been in the collection of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden since
1966 and is titled Night Hedgerow Animal and identified as a pastel and charcoal drawing
in their public database. A similar composition with the same title, but made with ink on
paper, is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum and demonstrative of Graves’s interest
in making variations on these imagined creatures.
17. Dorothy Schumacher. “Letter to Jan Thompson, Innish Beg, Ireland, January 11, 1955,”
in Morris Graves: Selected Letters, Lawrence Fong and Vicki Halper, eds. (Seattle, WA:
University of Washington Press, 2013), 62.
18. See https://art.seattleartmuseum.org/objects/28074/mouse-helping-a-hedgerow-animal
carry-a-priedieu?ctx=ef0a1e3f-d388-478d-93ba-cf73135c5df6, accessed September 10,
2021.
19. Thomas F. Wolff, Morris Graves: Flower Paintings, with an introduction by John Yau
(Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1994), 25.
20. A selection of Graves’s drawings of geese and his commentary on these works appear in
Morris Graves, The Drawings of Morris Graves, with Comments by the Artist, Ida B.
Rubin, ed. (New York City, NY: The Drawing Society, Inc., 1974).
21. Morris Graves to Marian Willard, Inish Beg, Ireland, August 30, 1955, in Fong and
Halper, eds., Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 283.
22. Irish Goat (oil on canvas, 38 × 52 inches) was acquired by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum
of Art at the University of Oregon in 2013. It was previously held by the Schmidt Bingham
Gallery, New York City, which traveled Irish Goat to four American museums in the exhi
bition “Morris Graves: Reconciling Inner & Outer Realities” between 1992 and 1993.
23. Selden Rodman recounts his conversation with Graves in Conversations with Artists (New
York: The Devon-Adair Co., 1957), 9–10.
24. Magdalen Perceval Maxwell, “Letter to Morris Graves, sent from Tallow, Co. Waterford,”
January 18 [1956]. Morris Graves Papers, Collection 326, Box 124, Folder 5 (“1956 Ire
land”), Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene,
Oregon.
25. Morris Graves to Marian Willard, Woodtown Manor, Ireland, October 28 [1958], Fong
and Halper, eds., Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 182–183.
26. Logan Sisley, acting head of collections, Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane was of inval
uable assistance in confirming the details of permanent collection works and Graves’s
exhibition history at this institution.
27. American filmmaker John Huston and his wife, ballerina Enrica “Ricki” Soma, owned
St. Clerans, a Georgian manor house in the County Galway town of Craughwell and had
come to know Graves and his friends. Shortly after, Svare, Gilkey, and Thompson spent
a vacation weekend at the couple’s home (Graves stayed behind to work at Woodtown
Manor). In September 1958, the artist wrote to Willard with excitement about Huston’s
strong interest in Hero. Huston purchased the work from the gallery and had it shipped
from New York back to Ireland. It was later acquired to another private collection.
28. Kenneth Rexroth, “The Visionary Painting of Morris Graves,” Perspectives, no. 10 (Win
ter 1955), 58–66.
29. Marian Willard to Morris Graves, New York, March 8, 1957, in Fong and Halper, eds.
Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 239.
30. This work and Hero, both owned by John Huston at the time, were included in the exhi
bition Paintings and Sculpture (1945–65) from Private Collections in Ireland, Municipal
Gallery of Modern Art, July 1–31, 1965.
31. Richard Svare, Morris Graves: His Houses, His Gardens (Port Townsend, WA: Process
Media; Seattle, WA: Marrowstone Press; La Conner, WA: Museum of Northwest Art
MoNA, 2013), 50. Svare describes the extent of projects at the house and Graves’s range
of experiences with the restoration process.
32. Morris Graves to Marian Willard, Woodtown Manor, Ireland, October 28 [1958], in Fong
and Halper, eds., Morris Graves: Selected Letters,181.
33. Peter Murray, “Hibernian Odyssey,” Irish Arts Review 33, no. 1 (Spring 2016), 123.
34. Richard Svare, “Letter to Ray Kass, July 29, 1982.” Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 307.
Svare, meanwhile, was at a decision point in his own life and permanently departed Wood-
town Manor to pursue his performance interests in Oslo and Stockholm.
35. Despite the end of Graves’s sculpture project, his interest in space exploration continued.
Graves’s Instruments were finally shown at Schmidt-Bingham Gallery, New York City, in
2000 and The Hearst Art Gallery at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, in 2001.
36. Letter from Morris Graves to Marian Willard and Dan Johnson, Woodtown Manor, Ire
land, March 27, 1964, in Fong and Halper, Morris Graves: Selected Letters, 220.
Works Cited
Graves, Morris and John Cage. The Drawings of Morris Graves: With Comments. Boston, MA:
Published for the Drawing Society by New York Graphic Society, 1974.
Halper, Vicki and Lawrence Fong (eds). Morris Graves: Selected Letters. Seattle, WA: University
of Washington Press, 2013.
Morris Graves Papers, Collection 326, Special Collections & University Archives. Eugene, OR:
University of Oregon Libraries.
Morris Graves; Retrospective Exhibition May 21–June 29, 1948. San Francisco, CA: California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1948.
Murray, Peter. “Hibernian Odyssey.” Irish Arts Review 33, no. 1 (Spring 2016).
“Mystic Painters of the Pacific Northwest.” Life Magazine (September 28, 1953): 84–89.
Nordness, Lee, and Allen S. Weller. Art: USA: Now. Vol. 1. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
Rexroth, Kenneth. “The Visionary Painting of Morris Graves.” Perspectives no. 10 (Winter
1955): 58–66.
Rodman, Selden. Conversations with Artists. New York: Devin-Adair, 1957.
Spicer, Jack, Peter Gizzi, Kevin Killian (eds), and Bemis/Flaherty Collection of Gay Poetry. My
Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer. Wesleyan Poetry. Middle
town, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008.
Svare, Richard, William O’Daly, Deborah Mangold, and Galen Garwood. Morris Graves: His
Houses, His Gardens: A Definitive Look at the Houses and Gardens of the Reclusive North
west Painter. Port Townsend, WA, Seattle, WA and La Conner, WA: Museum of Northwest
Art (MoNA): Process Media; Marrowstone Press, 2013.
Wolff, Theodore F. and Morris Graves. Morris Graves: Flower Paintings. Seattle, WA: Univer
sity of Washington Press, 1994.
7 Ireland’s ‘Strayed Angel’
George W. Russell (AE) – From
Dublin to New York, 1904–1934
Éimear O’Connor
In his book, Changing Winds (1917), St. John Greer Ervine asked whether there
‘was anyone on earth less like the typical Ulsterman than George Russell [AE], who
preached mysticism and better business?’ Indeed, Russell’s life was a ‘radical divide
between two aspects: the ‘strayed angel’ (as Susan and Elizabeth Yeats called him),
artist, poet, spiritualist, and visionary; and the practical man: agricultural econo
mist, organiser in the Irish co-operative movement, journalist and newspaper editor.’1
Although his role was somewhat overlooked until recently, through his work on both
aspects of the ‘radical divide’, Russell was a crucial link in the network of cultural
connections between Ireland and America before the onset of the Second World War.
He had an extensive network of male and female friends and acquaintances among the
Irish-American expatriate community – writers, politicians, lawyers, artists – whom he
enjoyed visiting and with whom he frequently corresponded.2 Powerfully positioned
as the editor of The Irish Homestead, organ of the Irish Agricultural Organisations
Society (IAOS), he was a resolute advocate of economic, religious, and social equality
and a concomitant quality of life for all in Ireland and America.3 First published as
a poet while still in his twenties, he was an inveterate letter writer, a peacemaker, a
mediator, and a self-proclaimed visionary. Russell was also a trained artist. Influential
Irish-American lawyer and art collector John Quinn (1870–1924) began to purchase
paintings from the artist during his initial visit to Ireland in 1902.4 This essay focuses
on Russell’s largely unplanned career as a visual artist and the moments in which it
intersected with the American art scene. It considers Quinn’s interest in his work,
examples of which he loaned to the Armory exhibition in New York in 1913, and
displays of his paintings in New York by gallerists Helen Hackett and Patric Farrell.
Their focus on Irish art in general, and on Russell in particular, was noteworthy for
creating and sustaining the market for Irish art in New York in the 1920s and 1930s.
George William Russell (1867–1935), interrogative theosophist, innate pacifist,
and a congenial raconteur, was born the youngest of three children in Lurgan, Co.
Armagh, and raised from the age of ten in Dublin.5 As it was to turn out:
The place of his birth had a peculiar significance in the life of AE, for in later years
he strove to heal the traditional breach between North and South Ireland. As an
Ulsterman, he understood the attitude of the North; and as a Dubliner by adop
tion, he was able to sympathize with the Southern point of view.6
Russell showed early promise as both a writer and painter; he briefly attended even
ing classes in the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) in the spring of 1880
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-8
Ireland’s ‘Strayed Angel’ 91
while only thirteen years of age. He was so gifted at school, ‘winning prizes for
7
mathematics, French, Classics, English and handwriting,’ that he was nicknamed ‘the
genius’ by his fellow students.8 In 1883 Russell returned to night classes at the DMSA.
He left school in 1884, the year in which he met William Butler Yeats, then also a
student at the DMSA. The two went on to have a respectful, if rather fractious, friend
ship for the rest of their lives, and it was Yeats who introduced his friend to theoso
phy. In 1885 Russell left the DMSA and began to attend evening classes in the Royal
Hibernian Academy, and although not enamoured of the teaching, it was while there
that he began to have visions of his ‘immortal self’ and ‘companions who shared his
immortality.’9 These visions, which occurred throughout his life, found expression in
Russell’s paintings in which faerie beings and celestial giants appear amid brooding
forests or by the sea. He found creative inspiration in the far north of Donegal, where
the sea met the sky in an otherworldly array of colour, anchored only by the earthiness
of the fine yellow sand. While still an art student Russell heard a ‘whisper’ of the word
‘Aön,’ and in 1888 he began to use the diphthong in honour of the sound of his first
‘mystic’ whisper. While he ‘preferred the joined form . . . he fell into the habit of using
the separated letters’ to denote his spirit ‘incarnated in human form.’10
After a brief stint working in Guinness’s brewery in the late 1880s, by the 1890s
Russell was – to use his own term – ‘trapped’ in Pims, a well-known drapery shop in
George’s Street on Dublin’s south side.11 While he continued to work there as a clerk,
his first book, Homeward: Songs by the War, was published in Dublin in 1894 and in
New York the following year, thereby establishing him in the public realm in Ireland
and America. Russell left Pims in 1897 and took up a position with the IAOS, which
focused on mutual, inter-denominational co-operation as a form of ‘national charac
ter building.’12 His initial job was to travel around Ireland, often on bicycle, helping
to set up co-operative banks, which later became part of the Irish system of credit
unions.13 In 1905, by then a well-established author, Russell became editor of the Irish
Homestead; he continued in the role when it evolved into the Irish Statesman in 1914
and until its demise in 1930.14
Meanwhile, Russell held his first major exhibition, showing sixty-three paintings in
the Leinster Hall in Molesworth Street, Dublin, in September 1904, alongside work
by Constance and Casimir Markievicz.15 Nicknamed the ‘Donegal dauber’16 by his
erstwhile friend George Moore, he ‘would return from his annual holidays in Donegal
with at least thirty paintings’ featuring children playing on sunlit beaches or amid
wondrous forests, or images of ghostly, glowing, gentle spirits rising high above the
landscape, as if caretaking every living being below.17 Russell painted to relax and to
find peace from a busy life; he frequently repeated themes, his titles were often non
existent, and his paintings were rarely dated. He was inspired by mystic revelations,
conjoined with a profound knowledge of Celtic Irish mysticism.
Of the thirty-seven of Russell’s works that sold, Hugh Lane purchased four, two
of which, The Winged Horse (1904, Figure 7.1) and The Stone Carriers (1904), were
among those he donated to his municipal gallery in Dublin. Russell, in the meantime,
‘continued to exhibit on an annual basis in Dublin up to 1915,’ after which ‘he held no
public exhibitions in Ireland apart from informal viewings for friends in Donegal . . .
and in his studio in Dublin.’18
In the interim, John Quinn purchased Russell’s work during his first visit to Ireland
in 1902, and the two became good friends.19 Quinn was raised in Tiffin, Ohio, but his
parents were emigrants from Cork and Dublin, and like many Irish expatriate families,
92 Éimear O’Connor
Figure 7.1 George Russell, Winged Horse, 1904 (oil on board).

Source: Collection and image © Hugh Lane Gallery (Reg. No. 28).
they remained close to their Irish roots. A successful lawyer at a young age, he visited
Ireland three times between 1902 and 1904, establishing friendships and professional
relationships that would last throughout his life. He organised American copyright
for many Irish writers and playwrights, including Russell, as well as arranging lec
ture tours, fundraisers, and exhibitions for Irish personalities, including Patrick Pearse,
Jack B. Yeats, and Hugh Lane. As a financier and legal advisor behind the infamous
Armory exhibition in 1913, Quinn lent several works from his collection to the show,
including two by Russell – The Bather and a sketch for The Waders.20 While the Irish
display at the Armory Exhibition received some notice from art critics, it also brought
Russell the visual artist, as opposed to the poet and public speaker on behalf of co
operation, to the attention of visitors. Furthermore, Quinn remained an admirer of
Russell’s work; he amassed a personal collection of sixty-one paintings over the follow
ing years, thereby creating and sustaining an unplanned visual arts career in New York
and, indeed, an associated income stream for the artist until Quinn’s death in 1924.21
Meanwhile, Dutch-born New Yorker, Helen Hackett (née Plechner), had been train
ing as a gallerist since 1919 with Irish-born emigrant, bookshop owner, and gallerist,
E. Byrne Hackett.22 The couple married in 1924, divorced in 1926, and two years
later Helen Hackett opened her eponymous gallery at 9 East 57th Street, New York.23
Already knowledgeable about Irish art, Hackett readily agreed to an idea for a major
exhibition of contemporary Irish art, which was proposed to her by New York–based
literary agent, Madeline Boyd (née Reynier) (1886–1972).24 In her unpublished mem
oir, written many years later, Hackett recalled:
The project of holding this initial showing in America was suggested back in 1928
by Madeline Boyd, wife of the late, distinguished Irishman of arts and letters,
Ernest Boyd. The idea grew out of a challenging statement made to Mrs Boyd at
a dinner one evening to the effect that while Ireland was famous for its fine writ
ers, there were practically no artists (practitioners of the so-called ‘fine arts’) . . .
Madeline Boyd knew differently. . .
Because of my marriage to the late E. Byrne Hackett, a native of Kilkenny, Pres
ident of the Brick Row Book Shops, and brother of Francis Hackett, the writer,
I had previously visited Ireland . . . Mrs Boyd knew that I was sympathetic to
all things pertaining to Ireland and the Irish. [She] went back to Ireland, per
sonally selected the sixty-one items, including oils, watercolours, and drawings
by twenty-three artists and the auspicious opening at the Hackett Galleries on
March 24, 1929 was the result. The undertaking took almost one whole year of
careful preparation, planning, and study.25
The exhibition, which she dubbed the ‘revival’ of Irish art, was a major critical success
for Hackett. Opened on 25 March 1929 by the newly appointed Minister Plenipoten
tiary and Envoy Extraordinary of the Irish Free State to the United States, Michael
MacWhite, the display served as a visual expression of the consolidation of ‘existing
ties between Irish-America and Ireland’ prior to the onset of the Second World War.26
Highlighting the nature and extent of the networks of relationships involved in the gal
lery, the ‘revival’ show opened under the patronage of artist and president of the Royal
Hibernian Academy, Dermod O’Brien (1865–1945), and Dr. Walter Starkie (1894–
1976), Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. Many of those involved on the American side
had Irish connections, among whom were Lindsay Crawford, the Irish Free State trade
commissioner to New York, and Mrs. Cornelius Sullivan, the wife of Justice Cornelius
Sullivan, who later purchased six paintings by John Butler Yeats from the executors
of John Quinn’s estate, which he donated to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1926.
Published material on the exhibition provides an important source of information
about it. Russell wrote a commentary on the exhibition for the New York Times in
which he focused on Ireland as ‘a poor country suffering from a long neglect of educa
tion,’ so much so that artists required ‘courage’ and ‘devotion’ to their careers amid the
dearth of facilities. For Russell, the artists involved in the exhibition with the Hackett
Gallery were ‘leading figures in modern Irish art,’ not just for their talent but also for
their absolute commitment to their work.27 Ernest Boyd wrote the foreword to the cat
alogue. His choice of words suggested that, to date, a school of Irish art did not exist:
Oil painting is an art comparatively modern, and it came late into Ireland at a
time when the Gaelic spirit was suffering obscuration . . . there have been fine
Irish painters but little to link them together, no common character . . . we cannot
speak of an Irish School . . . a picture by Jack B. Yeats or by Keating may suggest
a national character, but a swallow or two does not make an artistic summer.28
But significantly, Boyd proposed that Hackett’s exhibition was, in fact, illustrative of
‘the emergence of an Irish group with distinct national character’ – in other words, a
new post-Treaty Irish art replete with, and analogous to, a newly attained ‘Irishness.’29
With such comments Boyd was picking up on an important issue, one that came to
dominate the discussion about what actually constituted the ‘Irishness’ of Irish art for
many years to come and well-illustrated, for example, in Russell’s critical response to
Mainie Jellett’s modernist painting, Decoration, exhibited with the Dublin Painters in
1923, which he described as ‘a late victim to cubism in some sub-section of this artistic
malaria.’30 Another exile to New York, Padraic Colum (1881–1972), originally from
Longford, penned a long and informative article, presumably with his Irish-American
readers in mind, about the art and artists whose work was on show at the Hackett
Gallery for the New York Herald Tribune:
The movement that was initiated in Irish literature thirty years ago is being
repeated in Irish painting: the collection of pictures to be shown in the exhibition,
which will open on the twenty-fifth of this month at the Helen Hackett gallery
in New York, lets us see that Irish painters have discovered a significance in their
own countryside, in their own folk. It was this discovery that brought about the
literary movement.31
Perhaps deliberately so as to appeal to Irish-American nostalgic images of the ‘emer

ald isle,’ the exhibition featured a ‘predominance of Irish landscapes depicting the
familiar mountains and bogs of the rural regions.’32 Another reviewer, clearly writing
to appeal to Irish America, noted the work on exhibition was ‘a voice from a new
quarter . . . that arrived in the Emerald Isle at a time when the Gaelic spirit was suf
fering obscuration.’33
Meanwhile, Colum took the opportunity of the exhibition to tell his Irish-American
readers a little more about Russell:
On this side [New York] AE is thought of as a poet and a philosopher, not as a

painter. But he has painted all his life – or at least as long as he has been writ
ing . . . I have heard more illuminating talk about pictures from him than from
any other man.34
Russell’s work was generally well received in Hackett’s ‘revival’ exhibition, although it
was noted that ‘none of his extraordinary faery pictures, and those reflecting his deep
interest in Eastern philosophy were sent.’ Those paintings were, the writer felt, ‘more
difficult’ but ‘very characterful.’35 The fact that Russell did not send the paintings men
tioned signals something of his attitude to his visual arts career which, according to his
friend, John Eglinton, he regarded as a ‘minor activity of his life.’36
Hackett’s ‘revival’ of Irish art garnered an extraordinary amount of interest among
audiences in New York and further afield. Invigorated by the critical and financial suc
cess of her exhibition, Hackett arranged to return to Ireland in the summer of 1929
in search of artists whose work would appeal to her buyers. Years later she wrote of
the trip: ‘It was a memorable, unforgettable tour and I kept quite a complete journal
which I hope to publish one day under the title ‘Ireland Revisited’.’37
Escorted by her friend, Marion [Donahue] Edwards, an American journalist
who would become Countess of Carrick the year after this trip in 1930, and with
a list of addresses provided by Dermod O’Brien, Hackett crisscrossed the country,
visiting the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, the National Gallery of Ireland and the
Municipal Gallery (now the Hugh Lane Gallery) in Dublin, and the Ulster Museum
in Belfast. She met with, and selected work by, several artists for her gallery: Charles
Lamb (1893–1964), William Conor (1881–1968), Seán Keating (1889–1977), Frank
McKelvey (1895–1974), Jack B. Yeats (1871–1957), Paul Henry (1877–1958),
Micheál MacLiammóir (1899–1978), Lilian Davidson (1879–1954), Letitia Hamilton
(1878–1964), Hans Iten (1874–1930), and Beatrice Elvery (Mrs. Gordon Campbell)
(1883–1970), among many others. But the person that Hackett most wanted to see
was George Russell, whom she remembered meeting in Dublin many years previously.
His summer studio was a tiny, isolated cottage in north-west Donegal from where he
could see ‘seven seas between the hills.’38
On Sunday 21 July 1929 Hackett and her companion drove to the north-west coast
of Donegal, where they booked into a local hotel. The following morning they set out
early to find Russell:
[in] the wildest loneliest and loveliest country I know, a country of hills and hol
lows, of lakes and woods, of cliffs, mountain rivers, inlets of sea, sands, ruined
castles and memories of the beginning of the world.39
Hackett’s description of the day is fascinating for its detail:
Started out to find “AE” (Mr George Russell). It wasn’t easy. After several hours,
we discovered him, care of Mrs Law, Marble Hill, remote, far remote from the
world. Everything in it reflected culture and discrimination . . . three paintings by
AE in his effective ‘dark’ manner. One of them I should like to steal. AE showed
us afterwards just where he’d painted it.
We followed AE as he led us to his tiny studio cottage, through shaded glen,
through the boreen, a twisting, winding path, made by the cows, miles it seemed,
AE peering through the forest, lifting twigs and branches to find his wee house.
And there it was, tucked away, completely hidden.
There were eight or ten unfinished canvases, sketched here, to be finished later
in Dublin. Some of his sunlight beach scenes, some of the darker woodland ones
with the light playing through the trees, most of them with slender fairy figures in
graceful outline.
To listen to AE is to hear monastery bells, softly pealing. It is twilight and all
else is still and the low reverberations sooth and caress you. The mere sound of his
voice carries you off to lands unknown. I became entranced with the music of it;
I forgot to listen to what he is saying. And AE is always interesting.
The hour of leave taking came all too soon. It was a thrilling hour, an Olympian
one, unforgettable.40
During her visit Hackett chose enough paintings for a one-person show, although she
did not describe the process in her journal. Writing to his friend, New York–based
lawyer Richard Campbell, the following September, all Russell said of the exhibition
was ‘the Pictures are on their way to Mrs Hackett. I have to take the risk along with
others who are also sending pictures to her – she seems a nice woman anyhow.’41
It was not that Russell did not like Hackett or that he was arrogant or concerned
about exhibiting in a gallery run by a woman. He was a lifelong believer in equality.
His vagueness about the exhibition had more to do with the requirement to focus on
his daily working life at the helm of The Irish Statesman, which was, by then, under
severe financial duress. There were personal matters on his mind too; his wife, Vio
let, had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Therefore, without Quinn since 1924,
Russell appears to have been happy enough to let Hackett to get on with the job of
exhibiting and selling his work. At the same time, he really did not take himself seri
ously as a painter, evidenced in a comment written about his own work, published
in the New York Times on the occasion of the initial ‘revival’ exhibition of Irish art:
Some of my own pictures are in this exhibition. They are the artistic recreations
of a writer who slipped into painting when he was 40, because when he closed his
eyes he saw pictures. He could never have dared to exhibit his work but that col
lectors like Sir Hugh Lane and John Quinn found something personal in it. They
are all painted either from memory or imagination, without the use of models,
more to please himself than to please others, and he asks pardon for the compan
ionship of his fantasies with the work of artists who have studied their craft and
have technical accomplishment as well as character and imagination.42
Russell’s solo exhibition opened with Hackett in October 1929. Notwithstanding his
popularity among the public and critics in Dublin and New York, for Ruth Green Har
ris, art critic for the New York Times, who was clearly au fait with his poetry, his paint
ings seemed difficult to interpret on their own and without recourse to his written work:
Child or not, the lilt of AE’s poetry takes all the world dancing with it. Even
though his paintings tell the same story as his verse, they miss the ability to set
a pace, and it is far harder to get into their rhythm. . . One can imagine George
William Russell, who writes like a master, painting like a child with stiffened mus
cles – his tongue between his lips. He flicks on another spot of sun or moonbeam
because there is a lot of light paint left mixed on his palette. After all the dark
green forest has been painted, and the running girls with streaming hair, it is easy
and irresistible to flick on the lights. “A shadowy tumult stirs the dusky air” –
“The lights danced over the mountains” – “Moth wings of vapour and flame.”
Thanks to the words, one is able to make discoveries about the pictures.43
Such comment would not have bothered Russell. He had far more regard for his work
as a poet. Indeed, he may well have been pleased by Harris’s remarks.
The exhibition was deemed a success by Hackett, although, as far as can be ascer
tained, Russell had no comment to make about it in letters to friends at the time.
Afterwards, and regardless of the 1929 Wall Street crash, Hackett continued her sup
port of Irish art, possibly because it sold well. From February through to the begin
ning of March 1930 she hosted another group exhibition entitled Irish Painters in
which she featured an extensive range of work by twelve Irish artists: Russell, James
Humbert Craig (1877–1944), Paul Henry, Charles Lamb, Frank McKelvey, Estella
Solomons (1882–1968), Micheál MacLiammóir, Hilda Roberts (1901–1982), Seán
Keating, Maurice MacGonigal, Jack B. Yeats, and New York–based Irish artist Patrick
Tuohy (1894–1930). One reviewer wrote that the best-known of the artists was ‘AE’
who had three paintings in the show, in which the colours used ‘checked the flight of
his imagination’ and pulled his ‘faeries down to an earth where they belong only by
necessity of nature.’ The same reviewer wrote that a portrait of Russell, painted by
Hilda Roberts, told more about the man ‘than we learn from his paintings. Under the
brow of a thinking man, furrowed and somewhat anxious with his thoughts, the eyes
bend upon us the steady unseeing gaze of the mystic, quite remarkably rendered’.44
Notwithstanding his visual arts career in New York and his relationship with politi
cians and friends in America, Russell had other issues on his mind; by early 1930 The
Irish Statesman was in serious financial difficulty, largely the result of a court case
against the publication, which brought it to an end.45 The last issue appeared on 12
April 1930. It was the close of an era that had begun for Russell twenty-five years ear
lier when he took on the role as editor of The Irish Homestead and ‘during the most
critical period of modern Irish history, . . . succeeded . . . in becoming the outstand
ing moral influence in Irish journalism.’46 Now aged sixty-three, Russell felt that the
publication had ‘done its work.’ In a letter to Irish-American Judge Richard Campbell
he stated his desire to ‘retire and to visit America again before settling down to write
some books in Ireland.’47 Recognising that a ‘New Ireland’ was growing up, Russell
wrote of himself in the third person in the final issue:
He [AE] belongs to a movement which began at the latter end of the last century
and which has by now almost spent its force. A New Ireland is growing up with
its own ideals of a culture, a social order, and a civilization. It is only right that
those who belong to the new era should be its propagandists.48
Many regretted the end of an era, one that had forged ‘a bridge between the old
traditional world of Yeats and Lady Gregory, and the young experimentalists and
firebrands of the Republic.’49 Russell’s friends, led by Oliver St. John Gogarty and
J.M. Hone, organized a private petition, and on 3 September 1930, James McNeill,
governor general of the Irish Free State, presented him with the proceeds of the appeal:
a cheque for £800 as a ‘reward for services rendered to the State.’ By then his wife
Violet was terminally ill with cancer. A few days after the presentation of the cheque at
the IAOS headquarters on Merrion Square in Dublin, Russell sailed for New York to
undertake a long lecture tour in the hope of earning enough money for treatment for
his wife’s illness.50 His lectures were about co-operation and other agricultural topics,
which ‘resonated’ in what was by then ‘an economically ravaged America.’51
Meanwhile, Patric Farrell opened his Irish Art Rooms at the Hotel Barbizon on
63rd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York in October 1930. Then well known
as a member of the Irish Guild Players in the city, Farrell was a co-founder with eleven
others of the Irish Theatre Headquarters in Lower Manhattan. American-born of Irish
descent, he possessed an innate flair for publicity and was quick to see the benefits of
exhibiting the work of Irish artists. Farrell was well connected and gathered many
then well-known people who were Irish, of Irish descent, or interested in all things
Ireland around his Irish Art Rooms. His list of patrons and sponsors included Michael
MacWhite; Ernest Boyd; the Irish-born actor, formerly of the Abbey Theatre, Dudley
Digges (1879–1947); and dramatist Lennox Robinson (1886–1958), while the floor
committee chairman was the Carlow-born expatriate, actor, and international polo
player Aidan Roark (1905–1984), and Dungarvan-born immigrant artist Michael
Power O’Malley (1870–1946) was a director. Although reporting a year later, when
the new venture had time to settle into the arts scene, press coverage stated that the
Irish Theatre and Art Rooms aimed to ‘contribute the culture and arts of old and new
Ireland to the American scene.’52
A month earlier, in September 1930, Russell had begun his strenuous lecture tour of
America. Having travelled through New York and on to Chicago and California, he
returned to New York in December 1930 for a brief stop-over during which he gave a
lecture at Columbia University Institute of Arts and Science. Aware that Russell would
be in town, Farrell availed himself of the opportunity to hang an exhibition of fifteen
paintings by the artist. The show opened on 12 January 1931 with Russell in attend
ance. During his speech at the formal launch of the exhibition Michael MacWhite,
whom Russell knew socially, spoke of the artist as ‘a prophet who is honoured even
in his own country,’53 reiterating that Ireland had merely ‘lent him’ to America for the
moment in the hope that he wouldn’t ‘stay too long,’ as there was a ‘need’ for him ‘at
home.’54 In the knowledge that there were ‘Republicans and Free Staters’ in attendance,
Russell, in his speech, invoked ‘the pagan Irish doctrine as outlined in the old sagas;
that one should love one’s enemies.’55 He was strongly of the opinion that the minority
traditions from north and south of Ireland should be treated fairly and with respect, a
matter to which he referred in The Irish Statesman after Ireland’s Civil War in 1923:
By determined friendliness, by just treatment of those in the Free State, who before
the Treaty had shared political opinions of the majority in the northern area, by
study and sympathetic understanding of the economic basis on which industry is
carried on in north east Ulster, the writer believes the psychological barriers to
unity may be removed.56
For his part, Farrell, conscious of the sensitive political situation in his gallery that
day, told the assembled crowd that the afternoon’s ceremonies had been a great suc
cess for several reasons, not least that ‘leading northern Irelanders’ were present in the
room ‘on friendly enough terms with a couple of Dublin gunmen.’57
Russell, a prolific letter writer, did not refer to his exhibition with Patric Farrell
in his January 1931 letter to Sir Horace Plunkett, founder of the IAOS or, indeed,
in letters to friends and acquaintances over the following few months.58 He was far
more concerned with the ins and outs of his hectic lecture schedule that took him over
thousands of miles across America. When he arrived back to Ireland in May 1931,
Russell repaired to his little studio in Donegal to recuperate. Writing to his friend,
the American poet Vachel Lindsay, he revealed something of his need for solitude and
how the act of painting helped him to ‘empty’ his ‘mind’:
I amuse myself painting. I had eight months in your country, and feel empty after
talking all the time, and came here to fill the empty psyche . . . I see nobody. I read
nothing. I eat griddle bread, drink buttermilk, sit by the turf fire, and walk over
the hills and sands, and try to empty my mind so that Mother Earth may come
into it and talk to me a little.59
Russell made no known comment when, in December 1931, Patric Farrell announced
him as an ‘honorary director’ during the opening of an exhibition of Irish art in his
gallery.60 At the same time Farrell proclaimed the metamorphosis of the Irish Art
Rooms into the grandiloquently titled ‘Museum of Irish Art’ at the Barbizon Hotel. It
was simply a name change, with a new advertising twist; the exhibition was, accord
ing to Farrell, ‘the first showing of Royal Hibernian Academicians’ in New York.61
Helen Hackett closed her gallery on her second marriage, to Alvar Möller, for
mer Swedish Consul to Bombay, in 1935. Her ‘revival’ exhibition was, according
to herself, the most successful show in the life of the gallery. Patric Farrell reduced
his business, but was still in operation in a small way by the onset of World War II.
Meanwhile, Russell’s wife died on 3 February 1932. Russell continued to write, but
disillusioned by recent political changes, he sold his house in Dublin and moved to
England in 1933.62 He returned to New York in November 1934 at the invitation of
the Department of Agriculture, who wanted advice about ‘rural policies.’63 Although
he met the president during that trip, he was far more impressed by how ‘stranded
artists’ in the United States were officially supported ‘to decorate schools and public
buildings.’ Writing to his friend, Joseph O’Neill in Ireland, Russell said, ‘I wish I was
a stranded American artist to take part in this.’64 Russell took seriously ill during that
trip and had to return suddenly to England.
Initially diagnosed with stomach trouble, the eventual diagnosis was terminal.
Knowing that the end was near, Russell penned many goodbye letters, including a
touching note to his American friend Lucy Wallace Porter, an American photographer
and wife of archaeologist and art historian Arthur Kingsley Porter, whom he got to
know on their arrival to Donegal in the summer of 1930. Their friendship was based
on a mutual love of the area, and Russell had been a frequent visitor to their summer
home at Glenveagh Castle prior to Arthur’s disappearance off the coast of a local
island in 1933. Russell did not return to Glenveagh Castle, but he stayed in touch with
Lucy. It is poignant, therefore, that among his final words to her were ‘I had hoped to
get to Donegal this summer.’65
Ireland’s ‘strayed angel,’ a ‘generous but shrewd mentor, and a figure poignantly
at odds with an Ireland which increasingly ignored him,’ died a month later, on 17
July 1935.66 His principles, his publications, and his paintings – however much he felt
that he was not a painter – brought him acclaim in Ireland and in America. Yet ‘inter
est in his work dwindled after his death, so much so that in the 1950s it has been said
that a painting of his could not be sold even when a coal scuttle was added to the lot.’67
The galleries with whom he exhibited closed in the 1930s, and the market to America
for Irish art closed with the onset of the Second World War. However, through exhibi
tions, research, and publications, Russell’s myriad of accomplishments are again gain
ing esteem among modern-day audiences in Ireland and in America.
Notes
1. C.M. Barry, “Mysticism and Better Business: George William Russell (AE),” Irish Phi
losophy Resources, April 10, 2015, unpaginated, www.irishphilosophy.com/2015/04/10/
russell-ae/, accessed October 5, 2020. Ervine (1883–1971), was born in Belfast, and was
considered the most prominent Ulster writer of the early twentieth century.
2. Alan Denson (ed.), Letters from AE (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1961).
3. Founded in 1894 by Horace Curzon Plunkett (1854–1932).
4. Quinn took over the legal aspects of Russell’s American copyright in 1903. See, Russell to
Quinn, May 17, 1903, in Denson, 48.
5. Russell’s sister, Mary Elizabeth died at eighteen. His brother, Thomas, predeceased him by
a few years. See Henry Summerfield, That Myriad Minded Man. A Biography of George
W. Russell (Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Littlefield ©Colin Smythe Ltd, 1975), 3.
6. Francis Merchant, A.E.: An Irish Promethean: A Study of the Contribution of George Wil
liam Russell to World Culture (Columbia: Benedict College Press, 1954), 1.
7. Summerfield, 6.
8. Ibid, 6 and 7.
9. Ibid, 12.
10. Ibid, 31.
11. Ibid, 9.
12. Ibid, 88.
13. For a history of co-operative banks and credit unions see, Irish Credit Unions: A Success
Story in www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/irish-credit-unions
a-success-story-31/, accessed October 5, 2020.
14. For a comprehensive list of publications by George Russell, see ‘The George Russell
Collection at Colby College,’ https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=
1456&context=cq, accessed October 5, 2020.
15. Diana Beale, “Landscape and Faery,” December 1, 2004, unpaginated, www.thefreelibrary.
com/Landscapes+and+faery%3A+in+1904+the+Irish+symbolist+writer+and+art
ist . . .-a0126194865, accessed March 28, 2021, also reproduced as “Time to Give AE His
Due,” The Irish Times, August 23, 2004, www.irishtimes.com/culture/time-to-give-ae-his
due-1.1154481, accessed March 28, 2021).
16. Monk Gibbon, “Introduction,” in Letters from AE, Alan Denson, ed. (New York: Abe
lard-Schuman, 1961), x.
17. Beale, “Landscape and Faery.” Beale quotes Thomas Bodkin in A Memoir of George W.
Russell, John Eglinton, ed. (London: Macmillan & Co, 1937), 57–68.
18. Beale, “Landscape and Faery.”
19. Quinn commissioned a portrait of Russell from John Butler Yeats in 1903 (National Gal
lery of Ireland).
20. John Quinn to Lily Yeats, February 8, 1913, reel 42, in the John Quinn Memorial Col
lection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox
and Tilden Foundations. See also Róisín Kennedy’s contribution to this anthology, “Irish
Art and the Armory Show.”
21. John Quinn 1870–1924: Collection Paintings, Water Colors, Drawings and Sculpture
(New York: Pidgeon Hill Press, 1926), in the John Quinn Memorial Collection, Manu
scripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox and Tilden
Foundations.
22. Edmund, otherwise E. Byrne Hackett, was an emigrant to New York from Kilkenny in the
1890s.
23. See Éimear O’Connor, Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora. Chicago, Dublin, New York
1893–1939: Culture, Connections, and Controversies (Kildare: Irish Academic Press,
2020), 167–247.
24. Married to Ernest Boyd. For further information on Ernest Boyd, see, for example, www.
ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/b/Boyd_E/life.htm, accessed August 7, 2019.
25. Helen Hackett, typed manuscript, post-1953, unpublished, unpaginated, Hackett Kelly
Papers (HKP), private collection, Washington, D.C.
26. The Michael MacWhite Papers, UCD archives, www.ucd.ie/archives/t4media/p0194
macwhite-michael-descriptive-catalogue.pdf, xxi, accessed September 25, 2020.
27. AE, “Leading Figures in Modern Irish Art,” New York Times, March 24, 1929, 143.
28. “Catalogue of Contemporary Irish Art, First American Exhibition at the Helen Hackett
Gallery, 9 East 57th Street, New York, 1929,” Frick Art Reference Library, New York.
29. “Catalogue of Contemporary Irish Art . . .”
30. Russell to John Quinn, April 5, 1923, quoted from Denson, Letters from AE, 163, and
S.B. Kennedy, Irish Art and Modernism (Minneapolis, MN: Institute for Irish Studies), 38.
Kennedy quotes George Russell, ‘The Dublin Painters’, Irish Statesman, October 27, 1923,
206.
31. Padraic Colum, “Old Erin Poses for Her Portrait,” New York Herald Tribune, March, 17,
1929, SM16.
32. Author unknown, “Envoy Opens Show of Irish Art Here,” New York Times, March 25,
1929, 20.
33. Lula Merrick, “From among Exhibiting Painters,” The Spur, May 1, 1929, 160.
34. Colum, “Old Erin Poses for Her Portrait.”
35. Edward Alden Jewell, “Welcoming the Irish,” New York Times, March 31, 1929, 112.
36. John Eglinton, A Memoir of AE George William Russell (London: Coracle Press (reprint),
2008), 65.
37. Helen Hackett, HKP.
38. Denson, 183.
39. AE to Miss L. R. Bernstein, June 11, 1929 in Denson, 182–184. Russell was delayed getting
to Donegal owing to his conferral with a D.Litt. from Trinity College Dublin on 2 July.
40. Helen Hackett, HKP.
41. Russell to Richard Campbell, September 13, 1929, in Denson, 185.
42. AE, “Leading Figures in Modern Irish Art,” New York Times, March 24, 1929, 143.
43. Ruth Green Harris, “AE and Other Artists,” New York Times, October 27, 1929, X13.
44. Elisabeth Luther Cary, “The Irish Painters,” New York Times, March 2, 1930, 146.
45. Dr Donal O’Sullivan published a negative review of Londubh an Chairn, a book of
Gaelic songs edited by Seamus Clandillon. High cost libel action ensued. See Summerfield,
245–246.
46. P. Hogan, Letter, “The Irish Statesman,” The Irish Statesman 14, no. 6 (April 12, 1930),
103–104, quoted in Shovlin, 37 and fn. 66, 37. Patrick Hogan was the Minister for
Agriculture.
47. Summerfield, 250, and fn. 191, references D. Ms. 496, February 20, 1930.
48. AE, “The Triumph of Politics Advocated,” The Irish Statesman 14, no. 6 (April 12, 1930),
112, quoted in Frank Shovlin, The Irish Literary Periodical (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2003), 37, fn. 65.
49. Hubert Butler, Escape from the Anthill, foreword, Maurice Craig (Gigginstown Mullingar:
The Lilliput Press, 1985), 122, quoted in Shovlin, 38 and fn. 69, 38.
50. Summerfield, 253, and fn. 2, 330, quotes AE’s Letters to Mínanlábáin edited by Lucy
Kingsley Porter (New York: Macmillan Company, 1937), 9.
51. Dan Mulhall, “AE in the US: A Tale of Mutual Admiration,” The Irish Times, May 14,
2020,unpaginatedwww.irishtimes.com/culture/books/ae-in-the-us-a-tale-of-mutual-admiration
1.4251606, accessed August 28, 2021.
52. “Irish Theatre Ask Shaw to Come Here, Patric Farrell Says Playwright Is Likely to Accept
Invitation to Visit in Fall,” New York Times, January 12, 1931, 2.
53. “Irish Theatre Ask Shaw to Come Here.”
54. Unknown, “AE’s Paintings Are Placed on Exhibit,” New York Herald Tribune, Janu
ary 12, 1931, 15. Danish-born Paula MacWhite (1896–1981) was a well-known artist in
the United States and further afield. Given Michael MacWhite’s extensive political career
and Paula’s career as an artist, it seems likely that the couple may have known Russell well
prior to his exhibitions in New York.
56. AE, “A Confession of Faith,” The Irish Statesman 1, no. 1 (September 15, 1923), 3, 4,
quoted in Shovlin, 18 and fn. 11, 18.
58. For further information on Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett, see for example, www.dib.
ie>biography>plunkett-sir-horace-curzon-a7386, accessed August 28, 2021.
59. Summerfield, 261.
60. “First Permanent Museum of Irish Art Opens Here: Production of Shaw Play Features
Inaugural at Barbizon,” New York Herald Tribune, December 14, 1931, 17.
61. “Irish Art to Be Shown: Museum Will Be Opened on Sunday at the Barbizon,” New York
Times, December 11, 1931, 30.
62. Russell was not an admirer of Eamon De Valera’s treatment of Irish farmers. See Russell
to Arthur Kingsley Porter, May 25, 1932, in Kingsley Porter, 46.
63. Eglinton, 273.
64. Eglinton, 276. Lucy Kingsley Porter was considered ‘one of the most influential women
photographers in the field of art history in the twentieth century,’ https://harvardfine
artslib.tumblr.com/post/176693894145/camera-woman-along-the-medieval-pilgrimage
roads, accessed August 28, 2021. For more on Arthur Kingsley Porter, see Lynda Mulvin’s
essay in this anthology.
65. Russell to Lucy Kingsley Porter in Kingsley Porter, 101.
66. C.M. Barry, “Mysticism and Better Business.”
67. Beale, “Landscape and Faery.”
Works cited
Books
Bodkin, Thomas. A Memoir of George W. Russell. John Eglinton, ed. London: Macmillan &
Co, 1937.
Butler, Hubert. Escape from the Anthill, forward Maurice Craig. Gigginstown Mullingar: The
Lilliput Press, 1985.
Denson, Alan, ed. Letters from AE. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1961.
Eglinton, John. A Memoir of AE George William Russell. London: Coracle Press (reprint),
2008).
Kennedy, S.B. Irish Art and Modernism. Minneapolis, MN: Institute for Irish Studies, 1991.
Kingsley Porter, Lucy, ed. AE’s Letters to Mínanlábáin. New York: Macmillan Company, 1937.
Merchant, Francis. A. E.: An Irish Promethean: A Study of the Contribution of George William
Russell to World Culture. Columbia: Benedict College Press, 1954.
O’Connor, Éimear. Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora. Chicago, Dublin, New York 1893–
1939: Culture, Connections, and Controversies. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2020.
Shovlin, Frank. The Irish Literary Periodical. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
Summerfield, Henry. That Myriad Minded Man. A Biography of George W. Russell. Totowa,
NJ: Rowan and Littlefield ©Colin Smythe Ltd, 1975.
Web Resources
Barry, C.M. ‘Mysticism and Better Business: George William Russell (AE)’, in Irish Philoso
phy Resources, April 10, 2015, unpaginated, https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2015/04/10/
russell-ae/
Beale, Diana. “Landscape and Faery.” https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Landscapes+and+faery
%3A+in+1904+the+Irish+symbolist+writer+and+artist. . .-a0126194865
“Irish Credit Unions: A Success Story.” https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary
history/irish-credit-unions-a-success-story-31/
Mulhall, Dan. “AE in the US: A Tale of Mutual Admiration.” https://www.irishtimes.com/
culture/books/ae-in-the-us-a-tale-of-mutual-admiration-1.4251606
“The George Russell Collection at Colby College.” https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.
cgi?article=1456&context=cq
Newspaper articles
New York Herald Tribun

Colum, Padraic. “Old Erin Poses for Her Portrait’, in New York Herald Tribune, March 17,
1929, SM16.
Author unknown. “AE’s Paintings Are Placed on Exhibit’, in New York Herald Tribune, Janu
ary 12, 1931, 15.
Author unknown. “First Permanent Museum of Irish Art Opens Here: Production of Shaw Play
Features Inaugural at Barbizon’, in New York Herald Tribune, December 14, 1931, 17.
New York Times

AE. “Leading Figures in Modern Irish Art,” in New York Times, March 24, 1929, 143.
Unknown author. “Envoy Opens Show of Irish Art Here,” in New York Times, March 25,
1929, 20.
Alden Jewell, Edward. “Welcoming the Irish,” in New York Times, March 31, 1929, 112.
Green Harris, Ruth. “AE and Other Artists,” in New York Times, October 27, 1929, X13.
“Irish Theatre Ask Shaw to Come Here, Patric Farrell Says Playwright Is Likely to Accept Invi
tation to Visit in fall,” in New York Times, January 12, 1931, 2.
Luther Cary, Elisabeth. “The Irish Painters,” in New York Times, March 2, 1930, 146.
Author unknown. “Irish Art to be Shown: Museum Will Be Opened on Sunday at the Barbi
zon,” in New York Times, December 11, 1931, 30.
The Irish Statesman

AE. “A Confession of Faith,” in The Irish Statesman 1, no. 1 (September 15, 1923): 3, 4.
AE. “The Triumph of Politics Advocated,” in The Irish Statesman 14, no. 6 (April 12, 1930),
112.
Hogan, P. “The Irish Statesman,” in The Irish Statesman 14, no. 6 (April 12, 1930), 103–104.
Russell, George. “The Dublin Painters,” in Irish Statesman 1, no. 2 (October 27, 1923), 206.
The Spur
Merrick, Lula. “From Among Exhibiting Painters,” in The Spur, May 1, 1929, 160.
Catalogues and private papers

Boyd, Ernest. www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/b/Boyd_E/life.htm
“Catalogue of Contemporary Irish Art, First American Exhibition at the Helen Hackett Gallery,
9 East 57th Street, New York, 1929,” New York: Frick Art Reference Library, Unpaginated.
Helen Hackett, typed manuscript, post-1953, unpublished, unpaginated. Hackett Kelly Papers
(HKP), Private Collection, Washington, DC.
John Quinn 1870–1924: Collection Paintings, Water Colors, Drawings and Sculpture. New
York: Pidgeon Hill Press, 1926, in the John Quinn Memorial Collection, Manuscripts and
Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox and Tilden Foundations.
The Michael MacWhite Papers, UCD archives. www.ucd.ie/archives/t4media/p0194-macwhite
michael-descriptive-catalogue.pdf
8 Dorothea Lange in Ireland
Anthropology and Image
James R. Swensen
By the early 1950s, American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) wanted to

do something big. After years of being sidelined by serious and life-threatening illnesses,
the famed documentary photographer was ready and eager to return to the field. Dur
ing the Great Depression, she established a reputation for her ability to capture the
plight and dignity of her subjects. Now, in what was a very different world follow
ing World War II, she wanted to get back into photography and out again into the
world. This essay examines Lange’s most important venture outside the United States
into the world beyond: her photographic documentation of western Ireland, which she
made for Life magazine in 1954 (Figure 8.1). Accustomed to photographing that which
was close and familiar, Lange desired to stretch herself as a photographer by work
ing in an environment that was completely new. For this series Lange did not travel
abroad unprepared, but benefited from American anthropologist Conrad Arensberg’s
in-depth study of County Clare. Indeed, the details and themes outlined in his book,
The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (1937), shaped the photographs that
Lange made in Ireland. Although Arensberg’s text is frequently cited as an important
influence, the specific ways that it affected and enhanced Lange’s work have not been
explored. Indeed, the interplay between these two interpretations of the same place
presents an opportunity to examine the strengths and weaknesses of Lange’s coverage.
Formerly a portrait photographer to San Francisco’s elite, Lange began taking her
camera out onto the streets in 1933 as the Great Depression became more agonizingly
visible and harder to ignore. Early independent successes, like the photograph White
Angel Bread Line (1933), were followed by a long string of noteworthy images of
displaced rural populations made under Roy Stryker and the Farm Security Adminis
tration (FSA), a New Deal agency. The most famous of these photographs, Migrant
Mother, Nipomo California (1936), is emblematic of the Depression, as well as Lange’s
ability to straightforwardly record her subjects while preserving and highlighting their
humanity and dignity.
Lange’s success in the thirties and early forties was replaced by sickness and stagna
tion. Due to one debilitating illness after another, the photographer was incapable of
carrying out lengthy assignments from 1945 to 1952. Added to her troubles was her
concern for her eldest son Daniel Dixon, a self-described “incorrigible truant,” who
struggled under the weight of well-known artist parents.1 Earlier in his life he dropped
out of school, lived on the street, and stole and pawned his mother’s cameras.2 After
a brief and unsuccessful stint in the army and a return to the streets, Daniel began the
process of turning his life around.3 Desiring to assist her son, Lange pursued many
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-9
Dorothea Lange in Ireland 105
Figure 8.1 Dorothea Lange, John and Anne O’Halloran Prepare to Milk Cows Together on
Their Farm at Mount Callan [Hallorans in the Field], 1954 (gelatin silver print).
Source: Gift of Paul S. Taylor, © The Dorothea Lange Collection, the Oakland Museum of California.
avenues, including collaboration with the talented young man who she saw as one of
her “best understanders.”4
Despite being physically slowed by illness, Lange brimmed with ideas and opinions
and turned to Dixon, who aspired to be a writer. In 1952 Lange and Dixon published
their first collaboration, an article in Aperture magazine titled, “Photographing the
Familiar,” which advocated turning one’s camera toward more intimate subjects as a
way of seeing the world anew. Believing that photography had become detached from
life in the aftermath of war and depression, Dixon and Lange advocated that photog
raphers forgo the “different” and return to the “common” as a source of inspiration.5
They implored their peers to see and feel “the familiar” and to look for beauty that
was found in the seemingly commonplace.6
Two years later Dixon and Lange, along with her second husband, the sociologist
Paul S. Taylor, and her friend, photographer Ansel Adams, put their ideas to the test
by photographing once-isolated Mormon towns in southern Utah. Having worked in
the area for many years, both Lange and Adams found this to be familiar territory.
In preparation for the series, Lange studied a number of books and consulted her vast
network of friends, which included well-known historians, sociologists, and writers
106 James R. Swensen
who knew the area well.7 Lange noted that her tendency was to educate herself in a
“scrappy, choppy, unorthodox way.”8 Indeed, her methods were very different from
her peers like Adams, who disdained Lange’s “sociological cerebrations.”9 Yet Lange’s
unique preparations gave her a deeper understanding of the people and places she pho
tographed and profoundly shaped their documentation of the small Mormon towns.
The sponsor of Adams and Lange’s collaboration was Life magazine. While the
well-known photographers had serious reservations about working for the weekly
photo-magazine, they realized that it represented an opportunity to jumpstart their
flagging careers. Even though Lange saw Life projects as “speculative,” she was not
immune to the recognition and exposure that came through working for the maga
zine.10 At the time, Life reached a phenomenal weekly audience of roughly 22 million
readers.11 Although Adams and Lange resented relinquishing artistic control to the
magazine’s editors, they realized that there was no force equal to it in photography.
Life, on the other hand, was eager to have two of the most famous photographers in
the world create content for their pages. Despite lofty expectations, hundreds of pho
tographs, and a ten-page feature that appeared in Life in the September 6, 1954, issue,
the collaboration turned out “sour” for both photographers.12
Undaunted by the challenges of working for Life and its editors, Lange and Dixon
pursued another project with the magazine before their “Three Mormon Towns”
story hit newsstands. Persuasive and persistent as ever, Lange and her son proposed a
feature story on rural Ireland, which Life accepted along with an offer to pay their way
and all expenses. This was a more generous offer than they had received the previous
year and was eagerly accepted by the duo. By September 1954 they were off to the
“Emerald Island.” They would spend nearly six weeks there, with most of their time
in the west of Ireland, and County Clare in particular. Daniel Dixon was then twenty-
eight years old, his mother fifty-nine.
In their collaboration Lange’s role was to make photographs, and Dixon recalled
that he was to “act as researcher, assistant, and possible writer of captions and text.”13
Yet he wrote nothing down, which must have frustrated his mother, who was known
to make copious notes while working in the field. Rather, he insisted, his role was to
observe and gather “impressions.”14 The mother/son, photographer/writer effort was
quite different from Lange’s previous collaborations. Most notable was the absence
of Paul Taylor. For nearly two decades Lange and Taylor formed one of the most
dynamic and productive collaborations of their generation.15 From 1952, Taylor pro
vided physical support to his often-ailing wife and acted as a diplomat with human
subjects. Although Taylor made a brief visit to Ireland, this was Lange’s project, and
therefore she was responsible for its successes or its failures.
Just as she had done one year earlier, Lange turned to the writings of others to help her
contextualize how she might experience the country and what she would photograph.
To understand Ireland, she turned primarily to one source: Arensberg’s book The Irish
Countryman. Lange did not know Arensberg, and the two never met. However, the
text, a “slender book” with green covers matching the color of the island, was central
to her work.16 It was based on lectures Arensberg published in 1937 that originated in
his PhD dissertation at Harvard University.17 For this work, the anthropologist con
ducted two years of embedded field research in County Clare, which provided an ideal
locale for him to study the blending of Gaelic and modern traditions. Upon its publica
tion, Arensberg’s book was widely praised for the ways in which it expanded the field
of anthropology. One reviewer noted that although his work was done “among our
own people,” it demonstrated that “county Clare not less than the South Sea Islands is
thoroughly deserving of anthropological study.”18 Yet displaying reservations inherent
to the field of anthropology, Arensberg acknowledged his limitations in providing a
“full-sized study of the human being within a specific setting.”19 That, he believed, was
the art of the novelist. Reading these words, Lange must have believed that she could
create “an adequate” and actual “picture of the countryman’s way of life.”20
Despite her research, Lange’s desire to work in Ireland contradicted what she and
Dixon wrote two years earlier. She had never traveled outside of the United States, let
alone photographed in a foreign country. This was far from the familiar she espoused.
Utah they knew; Ireland was a completely foreign land for both of them. Lange was
hesitant and admitted that she “[g]enerally, [did not] work very well . . . in completely
foreign countries.”21 Furthermore, she insisted that it was difficult to work “when you
are surrounded with the unfamiliar.”22 What are you “doing with a camera when you
stand in a strange country surrounded by people you don’t know?” she once asked
John Szarkowski, “I mean that’s a fair question.”23 Lange and Dixon, however, were
eager to work in a new environment despite professing that photographers hold close
to the familiar. There may have been some anxiety, but Lange understood that it was
necessary to be “turned loose in a region” to “see what is really there.”24 Only then
could she look for “something new.”25
Ireland, however, may not have been as completely unfamiliar or foreign as it at
first seemed. Lange possessed a deep interest in the Republic, cultivated in part by
Irish friends, including her patron, Dublin-born American collector Albert Bender,
whom Lange called a “professional Irishman.”26 Her interest in the country was also
enhanced by her contact with Arensberg’s text. According to Dixon, his mother read
the book many times in preparation for their trip.27 An additional appeal of Ireland,
moreover, may have been in its affinities to places and people she already knew. Lange
believed that different worlds could be “familiar to each other.”28 Despite her urban
upbringing, she was drawn to and understood farm families and spent much of her
public career photographing rural life, particularly for the FSA. This work took her to
a diverse array of agricultural communities across the United States. In fundamental
ways, Lange could argue, recording rural Ireland was not that dissimilar to the work
that she already completed in locales as disparate as Arizona and Alabama.
Photographing in Ireland also enabled Lange to continue exploring larger themes
that were not exclusive to either side of the Atlantic. Lange’s subject matter was always
human beings, and she was particularly adept at documenting individuals anywhere
through detail and gesture.29 She often focused on hands, backs, and the human face,
which was, for her, “the universal language.”30 Seeking out the universal in her sub
jects, however, often predisposed her to see Ireland in general terms and as a place
defined by tradition. As her biographer Linda Gordan pointed out, Lange was driven
by the pursuit of a “nostalgia for an imaginary past.”31 At home in the West, she
lamented what was lost in the transformation of a “New California.”32 The desire to
record the visage of the past fading into a modern world brought her to the small pio
neer towns of Utah and then to Ireland, where she searched out an older, slower, and,
for her, more picturesque and perfect world. In Ireland she would photograph families
still connected to the land and a way of life that she felt was vanishing in America.33
When Lange and Dixon arrived in Ireland, they sought to expand their knowledge
beyond Arensberg’s text. In Dublin, they solicited the advice of Séamus Ó Duilearga,
the director of the Irish Folklore Commission. This visit revealed that Lange and Dixon
were eager to receive additional insight into western Ireland. Ó Duilearga’s assistance
also reflected his interest in using a diverse array of researchers to actively gather folk
traditions across the Republic before they were lost.34 It is not known exactly what
advice Ó Duilearga gave the Americans, but for one who argued that the nation “can
ill afford to let pass unrecorded and unappreciated the spirit of Ireland,” any attempt
at documenting aspects of the country would be welcomed.35 Indeed, one year later
when American anthropologist and photographer Robert Cresswell visited the com
mission, he was advised to go west, where he spent fifteen months creating a similar
portrayal of Irish country life in the small town of Kinvara in County Galway.36
Lange and Dixon spent six weeks in Ireland, mostly in County Clare. They arrived
in the county on September 4 and made the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis their base
of operation from which they scoured the countryside looking for subject matter.
Dixon drove and researched, and Lange looked, searched, and photographed. In Ire
land, Lange experienced a renewed vitality and enthusiasm. Whereas the summer heat
of Utah slowed her, the cold and rain seemed to invigorate the older photographer.
She was buoyant, and her “energy seemed endless and her interest infinite,” Dixon
recounted.37 He continued, “We worked on the farms, in the cottages, at the fairs,
in the markets, in the shops, along the streets, in the churches and schools.”38 Dixon
also noted that Lange worked like a photojournalist by creating long strings of photo
graphic ideas rather than trying to capture the single, perfect photograph, or what she
called “the bull’s-eye technique.”39
In their undertakings Lange and Dixon were assisted by Denis Wylde, an Ennis-
based photographer. Not only did Wylde repair Lange’s cameras but he helped the
photographer integrate into the community. Wylde was the local studio photographer,
and it was reported that there was not a home in Ennis that did not have a “com
munion, confirmation or wedding taken by Denis.”40 In his interaction with Lange,
Wylde learned like others before him that the photographer was kind and patient with
her subjects but determined in her work.41 In one of his own photographs he captured
Lange dangling out of his studio window to photograph pedestrians on the street
below. Wylde also reported that the older photographer would climb a tree, stand on
the car, or return to a particular location day after day to get the right shot.42
Lange’s primary lens to the countryside, however, was The Irish Countryman, and
there are many ways in which Arensberg’s text directly and indirectly influenced her
treatment of rural Ireland. As she worked in the towns and during her slow drives
through the countryside, her marked copy of the text acted as her guide.43 It did more
than provide the photographer with ideas and details that found their way into her work.
According to Martina Cleary, it predetermined what Lange anticipated and searched
for.44 Moreover, the text also planted preconceived notions of what Ireland should look
and feel like, which clouded Lange’s documentation. This had been true in Utah, where
she photographed certain communities in a way that did not reflect current realities.45
In Ireland her photographs often reflected her thoughts of how the country should be
represented. In his book, Arensberg warned that “it is a rash undertaking for any man,
however ripe in experience he may be, to attempt the interpretation of a nation’s folk.”46
Yet an interpretation of Ireland was exactly what Lange hoped to create.
Much like Arensberg’s text, which focuses on Irish farming families, Lange’s series
emphasized “the community created by village life and family farming.”47 By and
large, Lange eschewed “shooting scripts,” but she made lists of subjects and catego
ries derived from the book, which she wanted to capture in her pursuit of “a portrait
of the country itself, its population, its customs, its mores, its atmosphere, [and] the
texture of its life.”48 Her lists contained items like “the milk cow as the center around
which this economy thrives; the bicycle and the raincoat; the farmer and his tools –
spade, flail, and scythe; the fire and the pot.” She jotted down categories such as “con
gregations: the church, the creamer, the fair . . . what one sees as work goes on; work
in the hay yard.” Lange also produced categories, or larger themes, that she wanted
to document, like emigration and “the temperament and the weather.”49 Speaking of
weather, Lange professed that she wanted to “make the article entirely a picture of
Ireland in the rain, every one of them in the rain.”50 Even before arriving, she clearly
understood that rain is an essential part of Irish life.
“To understand the local past,” Arensberg wrote, “one must first know the local
present.”51 During her work in Clare, Lange spent her time observing and capturing a
“local present” as she saw it. She crisscrossed the county along hedged roads and dirt
tracks that took her to small farms where she spent time getting to know her subjects.
Arensberg noted that “the arrival of a stranger in a west country Irish town was still
an event.”52 This was certainly true of Lange, who stood out. Wearing horn-rimmed
glasses and a light beret cocked to one side, she worked with her Graflex camera in the
fields alongside farmers gathering hay and tending their flocks. Despite her foreign
ness, Lange gained access into people’s homes and communities through the help of
Wylde and her practiced ability to gain the trust of her subjects.
As revealed in her photographs, County Clare was bustling but poor and, like much
of the rest of Ireland, mostly rural.53 For decades farmers in western Ireland had been
represented as destitute and backward. In one elaborately illustrated late nineteenth-
century photo-book targeted at American audiences, tenant farmers in County Clare
were shown losing their farms and “miserable hovels” to oppressive landlords.54 It was
noted in the text accompanying the photographs that “the Irish cabin of the poorest
class” was not “a picturesque object.”55 By the 1950s the texture and forms of rural life
enticed modernists like Lange, who was eager to celebrate what she saw as a simpler,
better life. Rustic forms were now visually appealing, especially when tinted with nos
talgia. White-washed stone homes with thatched roofs were not only picturesque but
became an appealing backdrop in front of which she often recorded Irish countryfolk.
To help flesh out a sense of what rural Ireland should look like, Lange went to places
of work and play. In her fieldnotes she described the local creamery as “the symbol of
Eire [Ireland] in the 1950s.”56 She attended open-air markets in Ennistymon, Ennis,
Sixmilebridge, and Tubber. Indeed, some of her best work was made in the markets,
recording a lively mixture of livestock, buyers, and sellers mingling on rain-soaked
streets.57 Dixon remembered that his mother “moved between them easily and natu
rally, snapping here and there.”58 Lange also went to a hurling match where she pho
tographed the dark, tweed backs of spectators, which highlighted nervous hands or
the beautifully locked gestures of a father and his inquisitive, fresh-faced child.
Arensberg saw Ireland as “a land of surprises,” which, for his research, he sys
tematically broke down into “four Irelands”:59 the “mystic land of the past”; the
“full-blooded . . . Ireland of the merry and happy-go-lucky present”; “a more serious
Ireland,” a “grimmer land”; and, finally, “the Ireland of the Faith, The Island of Saints
and Scholars.” Clearly Arensberg’s reductive types failed to capture fully the complex
ity and depth of Irish life. In fact, they conform to lingering stereotypes of the Irish.
From Lange’s photographic record and her familiarity with the text, it seems clear that
Arensberg’s categorizations resonated with her. Applying broad gestures, moreover,
worked well within her short timeline and conformed to how she saw and represented
life in County Clare.
Repeatedly in her work Lange emphasized Ireland as a place of primordial powers.
On one occasion she photographed a haggard old man walking along a quiet road.
She later commented: “That’s pure Ireland. He was just made out of that wet, limey
soil. Made out of it.”60 A mystical Ireland is also found in her images of the Irish
landscape, in which she emphasized life emerging from hard, unforgiving limestone.
She also photographed stone ruins that they encountered, which stand as bleak, yet
evocative, reminders of a lost past. Ruins captivated American photographers and
audiences who were not accustomed to experiencing ancient structures in the United
States and the depth of history they represent.
Of Arensberg’s four types, Lange seems to have found particular affinities with the
“full-blooded . . . Ireland of the merry and happy-go-lucky present.”61 This was the
“Irish mood” that dominated her work.62 Years earlier, during her tenure with the FSA,
Lange was known for her documentation of bleak circumstances and people in despair.
Although the focus of Stryker’s team would eventually shift away from what was ailing
rural America, Lange presented subjects who had little reason to smile for her camera.
There were more smiling faces in her photographs of Utah, but nowhere in her oeuvre
is there the underlying joviality that exists in her work in Ireland. Seeing Ireland as
a place of happy citizenry was widespread, and Lange was not alone in presenting a
rosier side of western Ireland and perpetuating this enduring type. When Henri Cartier-
Bresson worked in County Kerry for Harper’s Bazaar in 1952, he documented grin
ning farmers in pubs. Cresswell, too, recorded a simpler, more carefree Ireland, and
Wylde was literally in the business of capturing smiling faces.
Everywhere Lange went she photographed smiling Irish men and women who grin
despite their poverty and position. Notwithstanding the cold, an infectious warmth is
evident in this series. She found merry subjects in their homes; at the markets – “the
jovial man”; and in the shops – the kindly, welcoming expression of shopkeeper Bridget
Wylde, who “makes her living selling small things . . . in a store founded by her father
some 65 years ago.”63 The “happy-go-lucky present” is particularly evident in Lange’s
photographs of Irish children and youth, which Lange saw as the “incarnations of the
past and prophecies of the future.”64 They smile despite the rain and jubilantly run
unshod along dirt roads. Two figures, both known by name, illustrate this type best.
Bridie O’Halloran was ten years old when Lange photographed her in 1954. Wearing
clean potato sacks to work that reveal both her family’s poverty and their self-respect,
the young schoolgirl beams for the camera without reserve (Figure 8.2).65 Dixon pro
vides more information: “red-headed Bridie O’Halloran . . . learns her lessons in Gaelic
and mixes it with English in everyday talk. She is quick, bright but shy with strangers,
answering all questions in whispers with many a respectful ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’.”66
The other figure representing “merry” Ireland was Michael Kenneally. Lange and
Dixon visited Kenneally and his elderly mother, Nora, repeatedly at their fourth-
generation family farm on Mount Callan, ten miles west of Ennis. According to Ken
neally, “Any time she was passing and saw me working in the fields, she would come
up and start clicking away. In the beginning I would stop and have a chat. But after
a while I’d take no notice and keep working.”67 There was something in the ease and
deportment of the young man that attracted Lange and Dixon. His sheepish grin con
firms just why his local community called him a character. As Gerry Mullins observed,
Figure 8.2 Dorothea Lange, Ten-year-old Bridie O’Halloran [Children], 1954 (gelatin silver
print).
this may also be the reason why subsequent photographers were also lured to the
puckish Kenneally until his death in 2009.68
In many ways, Lange’s bright portrayal of Ireland’s positive present overshadows
the “grimmer” Ireland noted by Arensberg. There are dark skies, chaotic markets,
and constant evidence of a challenging existence, but they are not as present as the
cheerier side of Irish life. Her photograph of Paddy Reynolds enjoying a smoke at the
market in Ennistymon shows an individual known to be hard-living, landless, and
alone.69 Upon closer examination the man, who Lange believed to have emerged out
of the “wet, limey soil,” is haggard and downtrodden and bears a “shameful witness”
for his family of crippling poverty and deprivation.70 Lange photographed jovial cattle
dealers in a pub, but despite her aversion to alcohol, she did not emphasize the visible
effects caused by excessive drinking. In part, this might have been too personal for her,
since her collaborator spent nearly every night “roistering” in one of Ennis’s sixty-five
pubs. Sometimes spending all night with a pint, Dixon clearly understood that “a
warm welcome waits within an Ennis pub.”71 Although exposed to poverty and other
societal challenges, Lange was not prepared to go where others like Gerry Andrews
Figure 8.3 Dorothea Lange, Catherine and Anne O’Halloran, 1954 (gelatin silver print).
would go in showing the poverty and hardscrabble existence in the west of Ireland.72
In general Lange chose “tranquil scenes” over the “rough upheavals.”73
Yet Lange did tackle one of the most obvious points of rupture in Irish society – emi
gration, one of her outlined categories. She understood human migrations and spent
the best part of her career documenting Americans on the move – particularly those
fleeing the poverty and destitution of the Great Depression in search of a better exist
ence in California.74 Lange noted that “1 of 3 boys and girls will be living outside of
Ireland if they live to the age of 50.”75 Despite decreased immigration after WWII, tens
of thousands of Irish youths still emigrated to the United States, which was reported to
be the “land of the free and a paradise of the poor Irish.”76 To illustrate the “exporting
of Irishmen,” Lange photographed Catherine and Anne O’Halloran (Figure 8.3), who
were preparing to seek “their fortunes still farther west” in America.77 She learned
of their desire to emigrate by visiting Wylde’s studio to inquire about those who had
recently requested passport photographs. In this carefully created image, Lange linked
the well-dressed girls who stand close together in their clean and ordered home, which
provides a contrasting view of migration’s “huddled masses.” Yet the contrasting fea
tures of the two sisters and the light in which they were photographed captures the
realities and exuberance of the adventure and misadventure the young women were
sure to experience as they left home in search of a better life.
The portraits of the O’Hallorans, alongside those of Nora Kenneally and others,
illustrate an important departure from Arensberg’s text. In 1937 one reviewer criti
cized Arensberg for ignoring “women and girls.”78 They suggested, furthermore, that
adding a female student or researcher onto the project would add a needed female per
spective. Lange was always keen to highlight the work of women. Across her career she
presented women as strong and essential figures in a community. Lange’s photographs
of Irish women continue the important theme of her work. The departure of the young
O’Halloran girls, however, suggests the rupture that happens with the loss of women.
The final type found in Arensberg’s text was “the Ireland of the Faith.” Ireland’s
deeply rooted connection to Catholicism was evident to outsiders and marked a clear
separation from the United States and parts of Europe. Indeed, the visible markers of
the church and its traditions, including pilgrimages and priests, play a sizeable role
in the nation’s broader persona.79 During his work on the island Cartier-Bresson was
clearly attracted to the visual possibilities of religious processions and the picturesque
accoutrements of nuns. Cresswell, too, was lured to the processions and other visible
signs of the faith.
In “Banner” County Lange found a people still strongly rooted to tradition and to the
Catholic Church. As Colleen McDannell noted, Lange was one of the “unchurched”
humanists who saw themselves as “modern, progressive people who valued inquiry
[and] freedom.”80 However, in Ireland she entered their churches and looked for their
religion in public and private devotion. In pursuit of “congregations” and “churches,”
she photographed the faithful walking to worship along country roads, sometimes
having to travel more than eight miles to attend services. She documented the devout
standing quietly outside of Sunday Mass in the rain so that the women and children
would not be wet (Figure 8.4). Her photograph of Father Carthage, a Franciscan friar,
striding in front of her hotel, reveals a tradition that was not rooted out by Elizabeth
or Cromwell.81 For Lange, this was still “The Island of Saints” and a “people full of
the faith that is forever the mark of the Irish.”82
In reality, Ireland can never be just one of Arensberg’s types; it is an admixture of
all four and more. “If we are to make an attempt at a whole view,” Arensberg wrote,
“we must see the country whole.”83 Lange, too, was not limited by these types. She
knew it as a land of contrasts and contradictions, but the romance of the place always
seemed to win out. “Ireland is always contrary, you know,” Lange opined, “But once
in a while, the whole earth smiles for a minute, and then it’s different.”84 This was also
true of Dixon, who believed that Ireland was more poetry than precision.85
Overall, Lange created a general atmosphere of Ireland. It was a “mood,” a portrait
of symbols and not specifics. In this it played into modernism’s tendency to generalize
and to give deference to the author. This may explain why the mother-and-son col
laboration did not collect the names or clearances from their subjects as they worked.
According to Mullins, “names and places were not as important as each picture was
representative of scenes in other parts of the country.”86 They were, in other words,
Irish types more than individuals.87 “In these things,” Lange insisted, “you don’t
approach individuals as individuals. You’re thinking on a different level.”88
Working on this level may have helped Lange create a generalized portrait, but
it did not work within the pragmatics of photojournalism. Furthermore, Lange did
not like obtaining releases from her subjects, as it “implied her motives were not in
her subject’s interest.”89 Life, however, demanded this information, especially after
an incident one year earlier when a woman from southern Utah threatened to sue the
magazine because she did not like the way she was represented.90 Life was not apt to
Figure 8.4 Dorothea Lange, Standing Out in the Rain While the Women and Children Attend
Mass at St. Mary’s, 1954 (gelatin silver print).
repeat this mistake and sent Wylde and Beatrice Dobie, a Life journalist stationed in
London, across County Clare securing names and clearances.
In the end, Lange returned home with what she called “a big harvest of pictures,”
numbering more than 2,400 negatives.91 This output represented one of the most pro
ductive periods of her career. Understandably this was far more than Life could ever
print in its magazine. The Life team of “flinty and practical” editors and layout design
ers, under the direction of Ray Mackland, whittled down the number of photographs
into a manageable feature that ran in the March 21, 1955, issue, published within days
of St. Patrick’s Day.92 In all, only twenty-one images were selected for the feature that ran
on nine pages. The editors also cut down and greatly modified Dixon’s text to the degree
that it did not offer him a by-line. Understandably both Lange and Dixon were dis
pleased by the final result. From their experiences the previous year, however, they knew
the process and that their vision would ultimately be curbed by the demands of Life.93
The story, mingled among ads for automobiles, alcohol, and television sets, was
touted as Lange’s sympathetic look “at the parent stock of a far-flung race as it lives on
calmly amid the culture of a bygone day.”94 Readers, the text continued, were intro
duced to a “wild and rugged country” that “tests a man’s best.”95 On the surface the
photographs support the notion of a rosy Ireland. It emphasized a pastoral romance
and largely ignored many of the island’s devastating realities. According to Gordon,
“Nothing roughed up her misty, romanticized take, not the arduous labor, the pov
erty, or the emigration of so many County Clare’s young to the United States.”96
A closer inspection of the text, however, brought a shadow to the work. There was
some reference to the “grimmer land.” The text accompanying Lange’s “jovial” mar
ket man sloshing around in his wellingtons in the mud informed readers of a rabbit-
killing disease called myxomatosis that spread to Ireland and was forcing foxes to kill
more sheep. Immigration was also a central theme in the article. The lead photograph
of the boy with his creel at the Ennis market was accompanied with the words: “He
is of the seed stock, the rural people of the towns and countryside who for 100 years
and more have been exporting Irishmen.” Yet in this story buoyancy always balanced
real-world problems; the caption concluded, “His people live to the ancient Irish ways
and a visitor finds them, as the following pages show, humorous, direct and gener
ous – good ancestors to have.”97
In general, reactions to the story were mixed, judging from the letters to the editor
two weeks later. One reader, Earl Monahan, a member of the Ancient Order of Hiber
nians in Rochester, found it to be “an insult to all Irish.”98 A second named John Yeat
man who had visited Ireland believed that Lange’s work brought the people of Ennis
“to life.” Another letter, from Lange’s friend, the photographer Minor White, added
more nuisance. He wrote, “Dorothea Lange has achieved a rare balance between the
observer-photographer, who leaves the reader too far from the subject, and the surgeon-
photographer, who affects the reader as an invader of privacy.”99 White’s remarks high
light the delicate balance between the humanist and anthropological underpinnings of
Lange’s work and how, like Arensberg before her, she employed observation and dis
cernment – the broad swathe and the finest brush stroke – to more fully understand and
appreciate Ireland and its inhabitants. She was, Dixon argues, “an honorable witness to
their lives.”100 Writing directly to Lange, White remarked that the story pleased him very
much and that “it seems to me that you met the various people in a person-to-person
basis. I feel that I am touching these people, that I am a friend among friends.”101
Lange did feel that she was among friends and maintained contact with many of
those she photographed back in the “plain country.” As she had done elsewhere, she
kept a list of those with whom she came into contact under the header: “photos to
send and people to go back to.”102 She remained interested in Ireland until her death
a decade later in 1965. Traveling abroad also opened Lange’s eyes. “I see the different
perspective, and I see us in a different relationship than I did when I was working just
within the country,” she recounted. “This was the world.”103 In spite of mounting ill
nesses, Lange accompanied Paul Taylor around the world from 1958 to 1962, photo
graphing more “exotic” locales like Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which continued
to stretch her notion of the familiar.
Although Lange is most remembered for her work among poor migrants and rural
families during the Great Depression, her work abroad deserves greater attention.
This is particularly true of her documentation of western Ireland, her first opportu
nity to work outside of the United States, and her ongoing collaboration with her
son Daniel Dixon. This opportunity allowed the aging Lange to extend herself as a
photographer by expanding the world she knew. Her documentation of her “pure
Ireland” was shaped by her study of Arensberg’s work that provided a window for the
photographer to see, understand, and document the Irish and their world. It was this
world – a mixture of joy, hardship, and faith – and an Ireland of types and contradic
tions that ultimately found its way into the pages of Life magazine and from there into
the homes of millions of Americans.
Notes
1. Daniel Dixon, “Older and Wiser,’ an Autobituary [sic],” Unpublished Obituary (accessed
July 27, 2009). Daniel Dixon and his brother John E. Dixon were the sons of Dorothea
Lange and Maynard Dixon, an important and well-known painter of the Western land
scape. For more on Daniel Dixon and his life see Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life
Beyond Limits (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 309–310; James R. Swensen, In a Rug
ged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration
(Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2018), 46–47.
2. Dixon, “Older and Wiser.”
3. Gordon, 369.
4. Dorothea Lange to John Szarkowski, letter April 28, 1965 printed in Sarah Hermanson
Meister, Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures (New York: The Museum of Modern Art,
2020), 154.
5. Dorothea Lange and Daniel Dixon, “Photographing the Familiar,” Aperture 1, no. 2
(1952), 13.
6. Lange and Dixon, 13.
7. See Swensen, In a Rugged Land, 29–33.
8. Dorothea Lange, The Making of a Documentary Photographer, an interview by Suzanne
Reiss (Berkeley, CA: Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of Cali
fornia, 1968), 56.
9. Ansel Adams, letter to Nancy Newhall, August 26, 1953, Nancy Newhall Archive,
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson.
10. Therese Thau Heyman, Celebrating the Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange (Oak
land, CA: Oakland Museum, 1978), 87; Milton Meltzer, Dorothea Lange: A Photogra
pher’s Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1978), 291.
11. Erika Doss, “Looking at Life: Rethinking America’s Favorite Magazine, 1936–1972,” in
Looking at Life Magazine, Erika Doss, ed. (Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 2001), 2–3. See also James L. Baughman, “Who Read Life?” in Doss,
42.
12. “Three Mormon Towns,” Life 37, no. 10 (September 6, 1953), 91–101. For more see
Swensen, In a Rugged Land.
13. Daniel Dixon, “Ireland’s Dorothea Lange,” in Dorothea Lange’s Ireland, Gerry Mullins,
ed. (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1998), 13.
14. Ibid, 13; Gordon, 370.
15. See Jan Goggans, California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the
Making of a New Deal Narrative (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).
16. Dixon, “Ireland’s,” 13.
17. Ibid, 13.
18. L.H.D.B., “Review,” Science Progress 32, no. 127 (January 1938), 612.
19. Conrad M. Arensberg, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (1937: Pros
pect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988), 105.
20. Arensberg, 105.
21. Lange quoted in Anne Whiston Spirn, Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs
and Reports from the Field (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 49.
22. Whiston Spirn, 49.
23. “Dorothea Lange Part I: Under the Trees,” KQED Television Interview, 1965.
24. Lange, Taylor interview.
26. Reiss interview, 114.
29. See Sally Stein, “Peculiar Grace: Dorothea Lange and the Testimony of the Body,” in
Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life, Elizabeth Partridge, ed. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1994), 58–64.
30. Dorothea Lange, quoted in Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning documentary,
directed by Dyanna Taylor (2014).
31. Gordon, 367.
32. See Alona Pardo, ed., Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing (London: Prestel, 2018), 195;
Gordon, 367.
33. Martina Cleary, “The Photograph as a Site of Mnemonic Return, Using the Photograph
to Preserve, Construct and Trigger Memory,” Art/Memory/Place, Irish Museum of Mod
ern Art Research Seminar (November 2015), 7.
34. Mícheál Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 1935–1970: History, Ideology, Method
ology (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2016), 19, 465–470.
35. See Séamus Ó Duilearga, “Introductory Note,” in A Handbook of Irish Folklore, Seán Ó
Súilleabháin, ed. (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1963), i.
36. See Robert Cresswell, Une Communauté Rurale de l’Irlande (Paris: Institute d’Ethnologie,
1969). For more on Cresswell’s photographs consult the Cresswell Archive at https://
kinvara.ie/old-kinvara/, accessed April 25, 2021.
37. Dixon, “Ireland’s,” 15; Meltzer, 292.
39. Ibid, 17.
40. See “Answering the Call of the Wylde,” Clare Champion (March 1, 2012), http://
clarechampion.ie/answering-the-call-of-the-wylde/, accessed October 15, 2017.
41. Gerry Mullins, Dorothea Lange’s Ireland (Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Publishers,
1998), 9.
42. Mullins, 9.
44. Cleary, 7.
45. See Swensen, In Rugged Land, 222–228.
46. Arensberg, 15.
47. Gordon, 370.
48. “Miss Lange’s Counsel: Photographer Advises Use of Picture Themes,” New York Times
(December 7, 1952), 23; Meltzer, 292.
49. Gordon, 370.
51. Arensberg, 106.
52. Ibid, 21.
53. Ibid, 49.
54. John F. Finerty, Ireland in Pictures: A Grand Collection of Over 400 Magnificent Photo
graphs of the Beauties of the Green Isle (Chicago, IL: J.S. Hyland and Co., 1898), 19, 66.
55. Finerty, 33.
56. Mullins, 8.
57. Ibid.
58. “Mother of All Photojournalism,” The Irish Times, April 30, 2005.
59. Arensberg, 31–32.
61. Arensberg, 32.
62. Lange, KQED interview.
63. “Irish Country People,” Life Magazine 38, no. 12 (March 21, 1955), 140.
64. Dixon, “Irelands,” 14.
65. Even years later Bridie’s family loathed the photograph for the way in which it empha
sized their poverty, which was “a point of local shame.” See Cleary, 10.
66. “Irish Country People,” 137.
67. Mullins, 8.
68. Ibid, 12.
69. Ibid, 93.
70. Cleary, 10.
72. See Gerry Andrews, Shaped by History: Photographs of Limerick in the 70s (Limerick:
Juniper Print, 2012).
73. Arensberg, 32.
74. See James R. Swensen, Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Docu
mentary Photography (Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 17–28.
75. Gordon, 510, n. 22.
76. Finerty, 19.
77. “Irish Country People,” 135. See also Justin Carville, “A ‘Sympathetic Look’: Documen
tary Humanism and Irish Identity in Dorothea Lange’s ‘Irish Country People,’ ” in Affect
ing Irishness: Negotiating Cultural Identity Within and Beyond the Nation, James P. Byrne,
Padraig Kirwan and Michael O’Sullivan, eds. (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), 211–212.
78. More specifically, the reviewer suggested that one of Arensberg’s “lady pupils” add a
essay titled “women and girls” L.H.D.B., 613.
79. See Chris Killip, Here Comes Everybody: Chris Killip’s Irish Photographs (London:
Thames and Hudson, 2008).
80. Colleen McDannell, Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 4.
81. See Mullins, 76.
83. Arensberg, 33.
85. Ibid, 13.
86. Mullins, 9.
87. See Cleary, 4.
88. Lange, quoted in Mullins, 11.
89. Karin Becker Ohrn, Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition (Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 175.
90. See Swensen, In a Rugged Land, 224.
92. Dixon, “Ireland’s,” 16; Meltzer, 292.
93. See Swensen, In a Rugged Land, 217–218.
94. Life Magazine 38, no. 2 (March 21, 1954): 2.
95. “Irish Country People,” 136–137.
96. Gordon, 371.
97. Arensberg, 21.
98. Earl T. Monahan, “Letters to the Editor,” Life Magazine 38, no. 15 (April 11, 1955), 33.
99. Minor White, “Letters to the Editor,” Life Magazine 38, no. 15 (April 11, 1955), 33.
100. “Mother of All Photojournalism.”
101. Minor White, quoted in Mullins, 9.
102. Mullins, 10.
103. Oral history interview with Dorothea Lange by Richard Doud, 1964 May 22. Archives
of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Works Cited
Andrews, Gerry. Shaped by History: Photographs of Limerick in the 70s. Limerick: Juniper
Print, 2012.
“Answering the Call of the Wylde.” Clare Champion (March 1, 2012). http://clarechampion.ie/
answering-the-call-of-the-wylde/ (accessed October 15, 2017).
Arensberg, Conrad M. The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study 1937. Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988.
Baughman, James L. “Who Read Life?” In Looking at Life Magazine. Erika Doss, ed. Washing
ton and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001.
Briody, Mícheál. The Irish Folklore Commission 1935–1970: History, Ideology, Methodology.
Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2016.
Carville, Justin. “A ‘Sympathetic Look’: Documentary Humanism and Irish Identity in Doro
thea Lange’s ‘Irish Country People.’ ” In Affecting Irishness: Negotiating Cultural Identity
Within and Beyond the Nation. James P. Byrne, Padraig Kirwan and Michael O’Sullivan, eds.
Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009.
Cleary, Martina. The Photograph as a Site of Mnemonic Return, Using the Photograph to Pre
serve, Construct and Trigger Memory. Art/Memory/Place, Dublin: Irish Museum of Modern
Art Research Seminar, November 2015.
Cresswell, Robert. Une Communauté Rurale de l’Irlande. Paris: Institute d’Ethnologie, 1969.
Dixon, Daniel. “Three Mormon Towns.” Life 37, no. 10 (September 6, 1953): 91–101.
Dixon, Daniel. “Ireland’s Dorothea Lange.” In Dorothea Lange’s Ireland. Gerry Mullins, ed.
Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1998.
Dixon, Daniel. “Older and Wiser,’ An Autobituary [sic].” Unpublished Obituary, 2009.
Doss, Erika. “Looking at Life: Rethinkng America’s Favorite Magazine, 1936–1972.” In Look
ing at Life Magazine. Erika Doss, ed. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press,
2001.
Finerty, John F. Ireland in Pictures: A Grand Collection of Over 400 Magnificent Photographs
of the Beauties of the Green Isle. Chicago, IL: J.S. Hyland and Co., 1898.
Goggans, Jan. California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a
New Deal Narrative. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.
Gordon, Linda. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.
Heyman, Therese Thau. Celebrating the Collection: The Work of Dorothea Lange. Oakland,
CA: Oakland Museum, 1978.
“Irish Country People.” Life Magazine 38, no. 12 (March 21, 1955): 135–143.
Killip, Chris. Here Comes Everybody: Chris Killip’s Irish Photographs. London: Thames and
Hudson, 2008.
Lange, Dorothea. “Miss Lange’s Counsel: Photographer Advises Use of Picture Themes.” New
York Times (December 7, 1952): 23.
Lange, Dorothea. Oral History Interview with Dorothea Lange by Richard Doud. Washington,
DC: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1964.
Lange, Dorothea. “Dorothea Lange, Part I: Under the Trees.” KQED Television Interview,
1965.
Lange, Dorothea. The Making of a Documentary Photographer, an interview by Suzanne Reiss.
Berkeley, CA: Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, 1968.
Lange, Dorothea. Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning. Documentary, directed by
Dyanna Taylor, 2014.
Lange, Dorothea, and Daniel Dixon. “Photographing the Familiar.” Aperture 1, no. 2 (1952):
5–15.
L.H.D.B. “Review.” Science Progress 32, no. 127 (January 1938): 612.
McDannell, Colleen. Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2004.
Meister, Sarah Hermanson. Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures. New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 2020.
Meltzer, Milton. Dorothea Lange: A Photographer’s Life. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux,
1978.
Monahan, Earl T. “Letters to the Editor.” Life Magazine 38, no. 15 (April 11, 1955): 33.
Mullins, Gerry. Dorothea Lange’s Ireland. Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1998.
Ohrn, Karin Becker. Dorothea Lange and the Documentary Tradition. Baton Rouge, LA: Loui
siana State University Press, 1980.
Ó’Súilleabháin, Seán. A Handbook of Irish Folklore. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1963.
Pardo, Alona (ed.). Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing. London: Prestel, 2018.
Spirn, Anne Whiston. Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the
Field. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Stein, Sally. “Peculiar Grace: Dorothea Lange and the Testimony of the Body.” In Dorothea
Lange: A Visual Life, Elizabeth Partridge, ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1994.
Swensen, James R. In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon
Towns Collaboration. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2018.
Swensen, James R. Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary
Photography. Norman, OK: The University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.
White, Minor. “Letters to the Editor.” Life Magazine 38, no. 15 (April 11, 1955): 33.
9 Sean Scully
Painting a Global Immigrant’s Vision
Kaitlin Thurlow
In an interview published in the 2018 exhibition catalog for the Hirshhorn Museum’s
Sean Scully: Landline, the curator, Stéphane Aquin, commented to Scully, “You wrote
a very beautiful text about the idea for these paintings coming from your time in Ire
land, looking toward the New World. They speak of sea, of ocean, of landscape.”1
Scully replied,
The idea of the horizon line has been important to me for a long time. And maybe
it’s an immigrant vision because an immigrant is always looking at the horizon
line. Because you’re looking at something you can’t see but can only imagine. And
for us humans, it also represents eternity.2
A collection of the artist’s work at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin ties his aesthetic
affiliation with Ireland, including the recent gift Landline Gray (2014). Tethering form
with color and feeling, the painting is described by the museum: “deep ocean blues
overlaid with earthy tones arouse that sensation of isolation experienced when stand
ing alone at the edge of a mighty sea, both melancholy and exhilarating.”3 Painted on
monumental canvases, Landline Gray represents unresolved negotiations of space,
where edges softly blur and clash against each other, become what he describes as “a
simmering truce.”4 This tension between the ordered structures of the painting’s com
position held together with loose layers of brushwork provides endless possibilities for
the artist to work through and repeat a series of visual problems on the painted sur
face. Through stripes, bars and blocks, Scully’s work combines a schematic of order
with rhythmic musicality and unreserved physicality.
As a transatlantic artist, Scully uses abstraction as a universal visual language to
engage with his personal story as an Irish-born artist and global citizen. A prolific
essayist and lecturer, Scully returns to personal experiences and influences to inform
how he negotiates and challenges physical and emotional borders. Although Scully is
a contemporary painter, his abstract works align with the emotional weight of mid-
century artists Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, both European-born Abstract
Expressionists and fellow immigrants. Scully’s three main compositional formats
explore edges of discomfort and unease with misaligned vectors: large paintings with
insets, uneven rectangular blocks and horizontal stripes. Each of these formats tethers
the abstract formulation to some construction of his transatlantic and global identity.
The stripes are interrupted with a figurative inset component, the blocks refer to walls
in the built environment and the horizontal stripes refer to the landscape. Scully’s
recent work composed during the coronavirus pandemic returned to the inset format
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-10
122 Kaitlin Thurlow
in the form of a black square, thus reversing the inset as object or subject by drawing
the viewer into a void in the center of the composition.
Paintings of Exile
Scully repeatedly uses the serial formats of stripes, bars and blocks created with lush,
broad and direct oil painted strokes to express personal experiences. The stark urban
environment of his early life informed his palette, which included grays, blacks, blues
and deep reds. This palette dominated his work at a time when Scully traveled from
London to the United States and eventually set up a studio in New York in the late
1970s. Though it is contemporary in feeling, he thinks about color as something deeply
influenced by the absorbing charcoal, black and red tones associated with European
painting, particularly that of Manet, Picasso and Velázquez.
Though born in Ireland in 1945, Scully has lived as a global citizen, never rooted
to one place. Recently, he has reflected more consciously on how his Irish identity
informs his aesthetic choices. At the age of four, his family emigrated from Ireland to
England. The passenger ferry carrying his family towards potential economic oppor
tunity waivered adrift in fog in the open sea. Gaston Bachelard’s description in “The
Dialectics of Inside and Outside,” an essay in The Poetics of Space, expresses the
precariousness of being in between home and the unknown, the experience felt by the
Scully family on the boat passage: “Intimate space loses its clarity, while exterior space
loses its void, void being the raw material of possibility of being.”5 This passage across
the Irish Sea, “the possibility of being,” striving for a chance at a new life in London,
brought tremendous anxiety to his parents’ state of mind. The feeling of Scully’s father
clutching him tightly in order to protect him was seared into the artist’s memory.
The sensory discomfort, ambiguity and flatness of the fog caused the passengers to be
adrift at sea and lost in a state of exile. The unknown would soon be represented in a
visual framework, one Scully would repeat and expand upon throughout his career.
Horizons, stripes and blocks would thus become a representation of a way to work
out some of these problems, yet continually fail to resolve or complete them. The insets
“challenge the hegemony of the grid with acceptance or submission to the structure.”6
Scully’s psychological state of mind during this passage is possibly another collective
emotion shared by emigrants, as the transitional nature of space and the alienation
of leaving Ireland may have left him feeling untethered to his new home. Edward
Said expresses the complexity of representing the exile’s state of mind in his essay,
“Reflections in Exile.” Within this space, the refugee, who has little or no control of
his circumstances, experiences alienation and lives in suspended animation. By keep
ing one foot culturally in Ireland and the other in England, identity becomes straddled
between the two countries. Said’s description of the exile’s state of dislocation is useful
in visualizing how the abstract shapes, blocks and bars offer a system for expressing
the artist’s discomfort. “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting,
one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to
an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that – to borrow a phrase
from music – is contrapuntal.”7 Scully and his family had entered into the space of
the exile, what Said describes as “nomadic, decentered, contrapuntal.”8 The unsettled
and decentered quality of Scully’s assertive, muddled at the edges brushwork is upheld
by the composition’s scaffolding: an implied grid provides stability. The structure of
Sean Scully 123
Figure 9.1 Sean Scully, Precious, 1987 (oil on linen, 72 × 72 in.).

Source: Private collection. Sean Scully
this play of shapes holds the composition into order without falling off balance. Scully
uses the force that rhythm and music girds in his compositions as a way to underpin
this contrapuntal phrasing.
Scully describes how this formative experience became a personal mythology and
a visual representation that he calls “insets,” which break through the placidity of
large horizontal stripes dominating the composition. In the essay, “On Mythology,
Abstraction, and Mystery,” Scully recalled the memory that inspired this composi
tional iteration resulting in his painting titled Precious (Figure 9.1).
I had been talking about my leaving Ireland with my parents and how the boat
got lost. I was thinking about this and I made a painting with a little insert inside.
I was very small when we came over from Ireland just after the war; it was dan
gerous, and the boat got lost, and I remembered it, and then I made the painting.
That word “precious” is based on something my mother said, that I was “pre
cious cargo.” So I made a painting within a painting – it’s encased, protected by a
bigger painting, a six-foot painting. So there’s personal mythology right there.”9
The dislocation felt by Scully on the passage between Ireland and England is also
one explored by Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopias, one he described in a
124 Kaitlin Thurlow
lecture given in 1967. In the essay, “Of Other Spaces,” Foucault defines heterotopias
as a series of principles used to describe spaces that fall somewhere between uto
pias and dystopias. He asserts that our relationship to space is a primary concern of
modernity and an “epoch of simultaneity . . . of juxtaposition.” In the contemporary
age, “Time and space, in a humanist world, one post-Galileoian, can be defined more
as the proximity of relations as series, trees, or grids.”10 Adding our modern modes
of networks (digital and virtual social connections) to this array, Scully’s abstractions
visualize this set of principles in universal serial formats.
Foucault suggests the vessel at sea is a prime example of a heterotopia in that it
can have both sinister and optimistic connotations depending on the circumstances.
“The ship is the heterotopia par excellence,” he writes. “In civilizations without boats,
dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of
pirates.”11 Such heterotopias are common to all immigrants who are moving through
spaces that may be determined to be either “crisis heterotopias” or “deviant hetero
topias,”12 the unforeseen spaces for immigrants who are between home and a new
settlement. For the Scullys, leaving Ireland for post-war England might have seemed
economically prudent, but only marginally so. In the monograph published in 2020 for
the exhibition Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas, an image of young Scully appears along
side his brother and parents looking optimistically out on the horizon towards their
future home in England.13 The black and white photograph taken by a journalist carries
a symbolic marker of a self-mythologized origin story of determination and resilience.
Scully is a leading example of a contemporary artist identifying as a global immi
grant who thinks of space and time as relations and connections. By using a form of
heterotopic liminality, Scully engages the horizon or stripe motif repeatedly to resolve
the space between Ireland and England and later a transatlantic passage to the United
States. Leaving behind Ireland on this ship became for Scully a reminder of his in-
betweenness and a sensation of being without a guarantee of safety or security, adrift
in stagnation. Central to the artist’s work is his placelessness, and by working through
this issue visually, Scully has worked to humanize the use of abstraction and monu
mental scale of American Abstract Expressionist painting. Historian Enda Delaney
writes of how the ubiquity of Irish emigration in the twentieth century echoes a pat
tern of leaving in search of survival and opportunity.
In eras of economic crisis, the Irish have left in their millions for new lives overseas.
In the twentieth century mass emigration reached levels during the 1940s and 1950s
that were reminiscent of the 1850s, in the aftermath of the Great Irish Famine.14
Though like other immigrants, Scully’s family found solidarity among an Irish expatri
ate community “on London’s working-class Old Kent Road.”15
Packaging and enclosing “safe cargo” becomes another aesthetic choice of com
positional discomfort. A square going against the “grain” of the striped background
disrupts the composition, a paradox that seems safely protected within the rectangu
lar bordered whole. In a review of Scully’s 2010 retrospective at the Ulster Museum,
titled “Humanising the Abstract,” scholar Des O’Rawe recognizes the use of the inset,
which he refers to as “inserts,” as symbolic representation of mobility.
Given his many travels and migrations, it is not surprising that Scully makes quite
extensive use of inserts (paintings set inside other paintings), exploring ways of
Sean Scully 125
Figure 9.2 Nick Willing, Sean Scully painting in his studio in Mooseurach.
Source: Nick Willing
accommodating smaller images inside larger ones. The inserts in Passenger Line
Pink Blue (2004), Passenger Line Red White (2004) and Window Painting (2005)
are portals, doorways into other paintings, other worlds.16
The use of insets also adds a figurative element into the composition, implying a por
trait, a head looking out on the horizon and disrupting the placidity of the horizontal
stripes. It could also be interpreted as a steamer trunk, a symbolic piece of cargo, a
minor part of a larger collective making its way toward further shores.
Scully would return to the exilic theme much later in his work in the series, Land-
line. In 2019, Scully was invited to return to the Hirschhorn Museum for a one-person
show after his mid-career retrospective for the Landline series. In this exhibition, oils
of horizontal stripes on large aluminum rectangular substrates are complemented
by smaller watercolor compositions. This contrast, a series of large and monumen
tal metallic and reflective surfaces with soft and intimate works on paper, implies
a change in direction and environment towards more self-reflection. The work is
“largely inspired by Scully’s years in Ireland, particularly his time looking out at the
sea. In these moments, he saw the layers of the world pressed into the space before
him, forming the strata that would categorize the series.” This schematic, with three
bands of color representing land, sea and sky, becomes an open, expansive framework.
The bands of color vibrate and compress along the dividing horizon line with an unre
solved tension. When a lower back injury sidelined the artist in 2012, he returned to
the studio, only able to paint in a direct side-to-side motion (Figure 9.2). Without pre
conceived drawn shapes, he painted horizontal bands of color directly to the surface.
As noted by Hirshhorn curator Patricia Hickson, the new compositions underscore
the artist’s bodily connection to form and mood. Scully explained, “Vertical stripes
126 Kaitlin Thurlow
will always convey the energy and action, like a standing tree. Horizontal stripes are
like the horizon – resting, in repose. They are tranquil.”17 Earlier work which focused
on bars and blocks that interlock into a puzzle relied on a compositional interdepend
ence. The roughly painted directness of his new work allowed him a freedom to go
beyond the boundaries of the surface’s edge. Coinciding with this body of work was
Scully’s association with some of the visual and emotional source material originating
from his Irish roots. Earth tones and blues and greens started to return his palette.
Scully attributes this change with a replacement of the dominant color gray, what he
describes as a “mental color,” as “physiological” and associated with “minimalism”
and urban space.18 Landline is the series that most tethers him to Ireland, especially
the West Coast, by connecting him with the landscape and a through line to his life in
New York. Landline is an attempt for Scully to simplify his various serial formats. The
time spent in a rural horizontal space came into a fuller spectrum. In the exhibition
catalog, Scully reflects how his new design was formed.
I was always looking at the horizon line – at the way the end of the sea touches
the beginning of the sky, the way the sky pressed down onto the sea, and the way
that line (that relationship) is painted. One day I was standing off Ireland, on the
edge of Aran Island, looking out. Next stop, America.19
Working with and against geometry in serial formats provided the visual representa
tion and structure to push against the conflicting systems of authority of his youth.
Scully attributes his convent school education to awakening a spiritual and creative
side – something he carried with him to an institutional state-run school. In an inter
view with art critic Aidan Dunne in Circa, Scully described how institutions informed
his resistance to hegemonies and later became an instrumental part of his working
practice and his philosophy as an artist.
I have no respect at all for any conventions, or for any restrictions whether reli
gious, racial or cultural. I take it on myself to make a point of knocking them over.
I have a strong resentment for these kinds of parameters, these mental parameters
that we tend to construct. An artist is a person whose job it is to make the world
free, so the artist has to be free, and that’s got something to do with me working
in different places. 20
Scully often alludes to his Irish heritage by titling paintings and print collections
after literary works and authors. In an essay for the National Gallery of Australia’s
retrospective exhibit, Body of Light, then director Brian Kennedy surmised that these
visual and literary associations provide a connection to fellow artists living in self-
exile and from the Irish diaspora.
His love of the written word is reflected in the titles of some of his works with
their references to literary sources, such as the work of Joseph Conrad and James
Joyce. He is obsessed by the spiritual dimension of things, like others who have
left Ireland and know it having grown up in communities abroad.21
These constructions grapple with the immigrant experience of being away, with sever
ing ties, intentionally or not, and with forming new configurations out of a familiar
Sean Scully 127
tableau of shapes and lines. Whether they be from living in poverty as a child, break
ing away from Ireland or from the dominant institutions of church and state, his
geometric compositions deal with how relationships can be broken and reformed.
In the early 1980s, he developed a series of floating paintings which consist of sepa
rate boards painted with stripes and attached together to form one composition. The
assemblages or joined substrates were a cubist homage to Samuel Beckett’s Molloy
and Murphy (1984). In the early 1990s, Scully illuminated James Joyce’s small volume
of poems Pomes Penyeach in an edition of monochromatic graphic etchings. Later,
the artist’s work appeared on the cover of Seamus Heaney’s Opened Ground: Selected
Poems, 1966–1996, published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Scully clearly allies with Samuel Beckett’s literary work in another aspect beyond
reconciling the disjointed life as émigré. By dealing with space and the rhythm of lan
guage in a visual representation, he manages to simplify how the complex disconnec
tion of what is expressed through language can often fail to express thought. Robert
C. Morgan described the parallel between Scully and Beckett in an essay “Physicality
and Metaphor: The Paintings of Sean Scully” from which the title of the 2021 exhibits
The Shape of Ideas is taken.
These physical actions produce an ultimate disjuncture in the piece, an imperfect

fit. The imperfect fit is crucial to flexing one’s perceptual and conceptual state of
mind. As in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the structure of the work of art is really
the thing: not so much what is spoken but what is thought, not so much what is
acted but what is hermetically performed through the intervals of language.22
Since the late 1970s, Scully has lived away from England and Ireland. He has estab
lished studio spaces in urban enclaves, first in New York City, in Barcelona, Spain,
then adding a studio in Bavaria, Germany, in order to put down roots in a more rural
setting for the first time.
Expanding Influences
At a time when conceptual art and painting in the style of hyper-realism came into
vogue in the 1970s, Scully was in a sense out of step with his peers, out of fashion with
the period. Drawn to convey emotion and elicit a more human quality to abstraction
by way of an austere, subdued palette, he felt more akin to other immigrant artists such
as Rothko and de Kooning. As he began to settle in New York, his style grew more
gestural and loose, a conscious move away from the prevailing analytical aesthetic he
saw gaining traction among his peers. An exhibit at the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art,
“Sean Scully: Works on Paper, 1975–1996,” shows how Scully’s aesthetic begins to
lean towards this more humanistic approach after he arrived in the United States. As
described on the museum’s website for the exhibition, “Coming of age during the height
of Minimalism, this American artist of Irish birth has looked for ways to reconcile the
extreme rigor of formal abstraction with the emotional power of earlier abstract art.”23
Scully’s early work was highly graphic and complex, relying on hard-edged layers
of interlocking lines masked with tape to adhere to the structure of a grid. The work
shows a high degree of confidence, complexity and precision, a result of years of train
ing in a print shop as a teen and reaching maturation as a fine art student at Croydon
College of Art and Newcastle University. In 1972, he was awarded the John Knox
128 Kaitlin Thurlow
Painting Fellowship at Harvard University, where he continued to experiment with an
Op-Art–inspired style. On his return to London, the work sold out a one-man show at
the Rowan Gallery. Yet when he returned to New York on a Harkness Fellowship in
1975, Scully worked through a dark minimalist phase. Though he could have leaned
on the style of the work offered by the graphic hard-edge paintings, his instinct was to
break free from the rigidity of tightly controlled compositions that brought him suc
cess in London. After arriving in the United States, this ambition drove him to explore
more expressive, emotional paintings, which as stated previously, was a characteristic
he shared with de Kooning and Rothko. In an essay in the Hirshhorn catalog for
Landline, Hickson describes Scully as having “European pathos and American asser
tiveness,”24 the aspects of the artist’s aesthetic that he would seek to hold in a contra
dictory balance. Beyond personal style, the artist’s temperament suited his ambition
to thrive as an immigrant in New York, remarking, “I am basically a confrontational
person, anyway. And that is what, of course has allowed me to succeed in America.”25
Scully’s serialized form of abstraction might be compared to the work of artist Eva
Hesse, another fellow immigrant coming of age in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, an art
critic who wrote extensively on Scully’s contributions to abstract painting, saw Hesse
as another breakthrough artist in terms of using geometry and repetition to transform
minimalism for a new era. Writing in The Nation, Danto remarked on Hesse’s legacy:
According to the Grove Dictionary of Art, Hesse ‘was one of the first and most
influential artists to question the austere, immobile exactitude of serial Minimal
ism.’ So she was, but the works are more than art criticism in action. She brought
what Yeats called “sensual music” into an art world that had been overtaken by
what it thought were monuments of unageing intellect.26
Hesse and Scully began to incorporate the sensuality of the material, resisting the turn
towards the conceptual and remote. Playing with notions of absurdism with disso
nance and irregularity brought a fresh perspective to abstraction.
In a 1969 trip to Morocco, Scully recalled seeing striped textiles which distilled the
use of repetitive geometry he could borrow and reinterpret at a larger scale on canvas.
The patterns and sense of rhythm he observed in Morocco also corresponded to his
interest in music, especially for rock and roll.27 Wanting to create work that was more
spiritually profound, the stripe motif emerged and eventually persisted, a way to synthe
size culture with rhythm and geometry. On other trips, he documented block and bar
patterns described as “generally frontal images of architectural surfaces such as doors,
façades and walls.”28 During his travels he paused to collect photos of the environs to
use as source material. He recalled how collecting images of walls and textiles imply the
humanness of abstraction. “When I see how the surfaces of the façades tell the story of
the passage of the human culture and the power of time, I can’t help but react.” He noted,
[the photographs] aren’t used for source images for paintings, “just the emotion.”29
Scully developed a new collection of work alluding to the architectural spaces he
observed while traveling to warmer climates, called Wall of Light. The genesis of
this series first emerged as Scully began to record the changes of ancient walls in
watercolor sketches on a trip to Zihuatanejo, Mexico. This new series of paintings
featured varied interlinking post-and-lintel style blocks and bars. It marked a depar
ture from the austere work of his early New York studio days. Wall of Light marks
a new connection to the world beyond the environs of the urban studio and a break
Sean Scully 129
from his cosmopolitan roots. This motif provided more possibilities for him to use
geometry, surface and repetition to create a more personal relationship to the built
world. A 2018 Mnuchin Gallery retrospective, Sean Scully: Wall of Light, featuring
over twenty paintings, watercolors and pastels, outlines how this body of work links
the built environment to abstraction. The range of softly textured pastels, predomi
nantly monochromatic oils, and translucent, carefully painted watercolors plays with
both monumental and intimate scale. The collection of interlinking blocks provided
a generative template of analytical and controlled puzzles of scale, unity and interde
pendence. Color plays a supporting role in these compositions either as an accented
building block or a sliver of paint emerging forth from the scaffolding underneath as
red or deep blue peak through the earthy tone of the brick. This series is also con
cerned with geography and how light shifts and changes in other climates.
The subtlety of the color rising through the Wall of Light series suggests Scully’s
interest in contemplating how cultures leave their mark behind. Curator Michael Aup
ing, in his essay “Building Light,” included in the Scully monograph The Shape of
Ideas, describes the series: “Scully’s ’80s paintings met Minimalism head-on, embrac
ing its essential architectonic qualities, but morphing into something American and
somehow less new.”30 In Mexico, Scully came away with a new architectural for
mulation. The new work clearly associated him as being a global artist linking the
ancient motifs to a modern sensibility. He noticed how the worn surfaces of ancient
architecture and the change of light cast upon it provided rich source material beyond
the familiar urban landscape of London and New York. Perhaps a break from the
colder climate provoked an awareness of how light projected on a walled surface that
prompted him to re-imagine the passage of time and his own mortality. He refers to
the period of the early 1980s as his “Druid Minimalism” phase, a way to reconcile
European abstraction with “the ancient stone buildings he had seen in the United
Kingdom.”31 In the Wall of Light series, Scully’s endeavor to show layers of time with
subtleties of color peeking through the gray-walled blocks were inspired by the sites
he observed during the Mexico trip. Auping observes,
Though the surfaces may appear austere today, many were once heavily poly
chromed. Also their facades are articulated like reliefs, which capture light and
create shadows that bring the buildings to life . . . and project spectral qualities
that change on the time of day.32
The materiality of the rich, direct handling of paint with the history of the layers
exposed connected more deliberately with the idea of the passage of time. Scully moved
to a phase of transforming Minimalism towards one linked to place and human expe
rience in history.
Scully explored the themes of Landline, where sky, sea and land converge, and Walls
of Light in new works of photography and sculpture after traveling back to Ireland. The
deceptively simple themes of blocks and stripes appear as a way to record and express
familiar content through ventures into new media. In 2006, after a series of trips to the
Aran Islands, Scully published a book of black and white photographs depicting the
stone stacks of the islands, titled Walls of Aran. The starkness of the images reflects a
representation of Ireland before colonial rule or any reference to modernity. In the exhi
bition catalog for Landline, Scully’s aluminum sculptures complement the new, more
expressive stripe paintings on display in this series. Interspersed in the galleries are the
130 Kaitlin Thurlow
metal box frames in various shades of bright, high-gloss automotive paint. Stacked to
nine feet high, the boxes are teetering and askew, yet at the same time feel compressed
and contained. A repetitive pattern of black, blue, red and yellow ultimately unifies the
stack. Their largeness, the taller than human scale, feels totem-like but not overpower
ing or intimidating. The work feels inviting and at the same time links the deliberate flat
ness and austerity of the painting to the vastness of the gallery in a playful atmosphere.
Scully’s work engages the viewer by offering glossy surfaces to observe closely enough
to see one’s reflection and circulate about and then to step back and weave through
them. The bright automotive paint harkens back to mid-century American frontiers of
highway construction and space exploration in a totemic compressed stack. Through
the media of photography and sculpture, and playing with content in an intimate scale,
Scully explored new ways of pushing his ideas about abstraction even further.
In the early 1980s, during this period of “Druid Minimalism,” Scully suffered the
loss of his son Paul, who died at age 19 in a car accident. At the same time, he became
a U.S. citizen, and, with the support of a Guggenheim and National Endowment for
the Arts Fellowship, he was allowed the time to focus and recalibrate. High-profile
invitations to participate in a series of breakthrough exhibits, including the Museum
of Modern Art in New York’s 1984 An International Survey of Recent Painters and
Sculptors, led to more recognition for him as a major artist working in the United
States. His first solo exhibition in an American museum was in 1985 at the Museum of
Art at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. In 1989, he was shortlisted as a candidate for
the Turner Prize given by the Tate Gallery, London. This confluence of circumstances
prompted a shift in outlook and reassessment of the direction of his work. Reflecting
back on this time, Scully described how his motivation to paint walls related to his ideas
about abstraction more broadly and how his earlier work of the decade dealt with inner
conflict and struggle, such as the painting Clash (1983) named after the British punk
rock group. The Wall of Light series began a process to confront his struggles and find
a pathway towards a peaceful visual resolution. In an interview with David Carrier
of the Brooklyn Rail, Scully described the motivation behind the imagery of bars and
blocks in the Walls series: “I want, and wanted to, rescue abstraction from remoteness.
So I made my abstract paintings lurch towards association. I have been giving them,
strong associational, metaphorical titles for a long time now.”33 Furthermore, Scully
saw the Wall of Light series as a personal metaphor of both permanence and fallibility.
By using the associative nature of stripes and blocks, it placed Scully free from origin or
borders to a new category of artist who pushed the minimalist or abstract expressionist.
The Shapes of Ideas and Dark Windows

The Shape of Ideas, the fifty-year retrospective organized by the Philadelphia Museum
of Art that opened at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, traces the through line
from Scully’s early graphic work of the 1970s to looser monumental compositions
of more recent years. In the preface to the exhibition monograph, Scully describes a
moment of reflection pinpointing when some of the innovations and experiments of
the 1980s led to shifts in his development. Working with joined structures, seen in
works such as Backs and Fronts (1981) and Molloy (1984, Metropolitan Museum of
Art), contributed to his evolution.
I was determined to stick to the building unit, make it do everything it hadn’t

done before, bring in everything I know, and make it expressive. I loved the idea
Sean Scully 131
Figure 9.3 Sean Scully, Dark Windows, 2020 (oil on aluminum).

Source: Sean Scully. © Sean Scully. Lisson Gallery
of relationships bordering on collapse and seeking beauty in the unlikely and the
irreconcilable, in which elements of the painting battle for survival.
In May 2021, Scully debuted new paintings, produced during the pandemic, simul
taneously at his studio and at the Lisson Gallery, both in Chelsea, New York, titled
The 12 (2020) and Dark Windows (2020), respectively.34 Returning to the inset format
in the Dark Windows series, he combines the compositions of the horizontal Landline
series. In a new version of the inset seen in Dark Windows (Figure 9.3), Scully places
a black square in the center of a series of horizontal bands of stripes. Each painting,
composed of vertical strata with hues of red and orange, a range of sea blues, grays or
earthy ochres and olive greens, is interrupted by a central charcoal void as if a portal
or garage door is rising from the lower half of the surface. The unity and serializa
tion of the composition strike a serious tenor; at the same time, the larger-than-life
scale envelopes the viewer in a state of quietness, contemplation and a feeling of
expansion. In a review in Artlyst, Jonathan Evans sees hope in Scully’s new body of
work. “This grouping, presented in its entirety for the first time, is a lyrical expan
sion of the series that endeavours to ‘integrate all the parts’ of the horizon – physical,
philosophical, poetic and pastoral.”35 Scully’s black “windows” are a conscious con
versation with early twentieth-century European painters Matisse, Mondrian, Rothko
and the non-objective black square of Kazimir Malevich. This body of work grapples
with the spiritual and the material as the horizon in each composition is floating and
undefined. Bands of varied color “simmer” and vibrate with discomfort. The black
window provides a defined portal within the frame beckoning the viewer to walk
toward the beyond. It’s as if Scully is asking us to walk a tightrope between the com
fort of the lush earthly pleasures of land and sea and what lies beyond. Clearly evident
in this body of work is the concern for the environment and an urgency to address
the human imposition on nature through climate change. However, by turning to the
132 Kaitlin Thurlow
black square, an elemental simple shape, Scully returns to geometry to find himself
and rediscover a new path. It is in the black void that he sees a light forward.
In the Lisson Gallery exhibit, Evans sees an alliance with the 101-year-old French
artist, Pierre Soulages, who paints exclusively in black.
This new body of work serves as a reappraisal or a reckoning – not simply sug
gesting that while the dark clouds hover and we remain in darkness, the blight
will soon be over, and the world will heal itself – rather the realisation that a ray
of light will always shine through the darkness or, perhaps, as was the practice of
Pierre Soulages, that light will be reflected from the black.36
Perhaps the scale of challenges offered a way to formulate – through the black square –
a depiction of global interconnectedness by looking inward in a more self-reflective
body of work. In a 2007 interview, Scully had already observed, “Nothing is abstract:
it’s still a self-portrait, a portrait of one’s condition” to describe this duality and refers
to his paintings as attempting to reach a kind of “simmering truce, where emotion and
structure, beauty and difficulty, light and darkness, rising and falling are somehow at
a point of resolution.”37
Conclusion
Reflecting on Scully as an artist, O’Rawe observes,
Scully’s successes as a modern artist are not based entirely on the distinctive style
of his repetitions, variations and juxtapositions. More often than not, what gives
his work its signature is the way in which colours, tones, textures, and boundaries
are freed from integrity and clarity by being superimposed on each other.38
Coming of age as an artist in the age of Minimalism, Scully endeavored to “rescue

abstraction from remoteness,” humanizing abstraction with a personal, spiritual
statement. In New York, Scully looked to convey emotion, associating geometric
forms with place. Driven to innovate within a common set of visual parameters, his
work expands to monumental canvases, intimate watercolors, pastels and prints and
totemic sculptures. Works in his oeuvre such as Precious Cargo, Landline, Walls of
Light and the recent Dark Windows visualize the ambivalence of the immigrant’s
search for location in a universal language. Scully carried forward the aspects of Euro
pean painting, which aligned him with the spirituality of Rothko, the palette of Degas
and Velázquez and the monumentality of de Kooning to create his own global inter
pretation of abstraction. In a recent interview with Marie Maertens, art critic and
curator at the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery in Paris, he said, “I believe that vitality is
more important than refinement.”39 Scully’s paintings transcend national boundaries
to explore the vitality of the human spirit.
Notes
1. Stéphane Aquin, “Interview with Sean Scully,” in Sean Scully: Landline, Stéphane Aquin,
ed. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2018), 18.
2. Aquin, “Interview with Sean Scully,” 18.
Sean Scully 133
3. “Sean Scully’s Gift to Dublin, October 4, 2018–November 30, 2018,” Hugh Lane Gallery,
www.hughlane.ie/news-archive/2306-sean-scullys-gift-to-dublin, accessed February 11,
2021.
4. Robert Enright, “A Dark But Vital Light: An Interview with Sean Scully,” Border Cross
ings, August 2007, https://bordercrossingsmag.com/article/a-dark-but-vital-light-an-inter
view-with-sean-scully, accessed October 17, 2021.
5. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Maria Jolas, trans. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press,
1969), 218.
6. Sean Scully, “Wall of Light: Lecture at the MET” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
April 25, 2014), video, 14:00, www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3DfrHPFtIo
7. Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni
versity Press, 2002), 186.
8. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, 186.
9. Sean Scully, “On Mythology, Abstraction, and Mystery,” American Art 18, no. 3 (Fall
2004), 84.
10. Michel Foucault and Jay Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring
1986), 23, https://doi.org/10.2307/464648
11. Foucault and Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” 27.
12. Ibid, 24–25.
13. See Timothy Rub, Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas, Timothy Rub and Amanda Srok, eds.
(Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2020), 15.
14. Enda Delaney, “Traditions of Emigration: The Irish Habit of Going Away,” The Irish
Times, February 11, 2011.
15. Brian Kennedy, “The Art of Sean Scully: A Human Spirituality” (National Gallery of Aus
tralia, 2004), https://nga.gov.au/exhibition/scully/default.cfm?MnuID=4.
16. Des O’Rawe, “Humanising the Abstract,” Fortnight 468 (December 2009–January 2010):
20–21.
17. Sean Scully, quoted in Patricia Hickson, “Land Sea Sky,” in Sean Scully: Landline, 12.
18. Sean Scully, quoted in Aquin, 23.
19. Sean Scully, quoted in Hickson, Sean Scully: Landline, 9.
20. Aidan Dunne and Sean Scully, “The Circa Interview: Sean Scully: On Being Blessed and
Damned,” Circa 81 (Autumn 1997), 18–23.
21. Kennedy, “The Art of Sean Scully: A Human Spirituality.”
22. Robert Morgan, “Physicality and Metaphor: The Paintings of Sean Scully,” Art Journal
50, no. 1 (Spring 1991), 66.
23. “Sean Scully: Works on Paper, 1975–1996 Saturday, January 8, 2000–Sunday, April 2,
2000” (Albright-Knox Art Gallery), www.albrightknox.org/art/exhibitions/sean-scully
works-paper-1975%E2%80%931996, accessed April 1, 2020.
24. Hickson, “Land Sea Sky,” in Sean Scully: Landline, 10.
25. Scully, Interview with Stéphane Aquin, Sean Scully Landline, 22.
26. Arthur C. Danto, “All About Eva,” The Nation, June, 28, 2006, www.thenation.com/
article/archive/all-about-eva/.
27. Sean Scully, Artist Talk: Sean Scully in Conversation with Marie Maertens (Thaddaeus
Ropac Gallery, July 2021), video, 15:40–38:07, https://ropac.net/video/223-artist-talk
sean-scully-in-conversation-with-marie/.
28. Hickson, “Land Sea Sky,” 10.
29. Ibid, 10.
30. Michael Auping, “Building Light,” in The Shape of Ideas, 241–247.
31. Auping, “Building Light,” 243.
32. Ibid.
33. David Carrier, “Sean Scully with David Carrier,” The Brooklyn Rail, March 2018, https://
brooklynrail.org/2018/03/art/SEAN-SCULLY-with-David-Carrier, accessed January 28,
2021.
34. See https://ocula.com/art-galleries/lisson-gallery/exhibitions/the-12-dark-windows/?collapse=true,
accessed September 17, 2021.
35. Jonathan Evans, “Review of Sean Scully, The 12/Dark Windows, Sean Scully’s Studio Lis
son Gallery,” Art Lyst, April 4, 2021.
134 Kaitlin Thurlow
36. Evans, “Review of Sean Scully.”
37. Sean Scully, quoted in Robert Enright, “A Dark But Vital Light: An Interview with Sean
Scully,” Border Crossings, 103 (August 2007), https://bordercrossingsmag.com/article/a
dark-but-vital-light-an-interview-with-sean-scully, accessed September 17, 2021.
38. Des O’Rawe, “Humanising the Abstract,” 21.
39. Sean Scully, Artist Talk: Sean Scully in Conversation with Marie Maertens, 3:57.
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https://doi.org/10.2307/464648.
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Murray, Peter. “Review of Sean Scully by David Carrier.” Irish Arts Review 21, no. 2 (Summer
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“On Mythology, Abstraction, and Mystery.” American Art 18, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 78–87. The
University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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January 2010): 20–21.
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Scully. Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2016.
“Sean Scully’s Gift to Dublin, October 4, 2018–November 30, 2018.” Hugh Lane Gallery.
www.hughlane.ie/news-archive/2306-sean-scullys-gift-to-dublin (accessed February 11,
2021).
Sean Scully 135
“Sean Scully: Wall of Light, February 28–April 14, 2018.” Mnuchin Gallery. www.
mnuchingallery.com/exhibitions/sean-scully (accessed April 7, 2021).
Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery. Artist Talk: Sean Scully in conversation with Marie Maertens,
July 2021, video, 15:40, 38:07, https://ropac.net/video/223-artist-talk-sean-scully-in
conversation-with-marie/.
“Wall of Light: Lecture at the MET.” YouTube, uploaded by The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
14:00, April 25, 2014. www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3DfrHPFtIo.
10 Transnational Solidarity
African American and Irish
Intersections in Public Art
Commemorating Frederick Douglass
Cynthia Fowler
African Americans and the Irish have shared histories of oppression and resistance to
it, albeit in response to different forces. Irish human rights activist and author Brian
Dooley has written a comprehensive study on this subject. He summarizes,
The Irish and black American struggles for power, or rights, intersected and over
lapped at crucial junctures from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The links
even predate the mid-1800s, but it is during this time that political leaders in
Ireland and black America began to realise there was something common about
their purpose, and took tentative steps to learn from each other’s approaches, and
to help each other’s efforts.1
Similarly, in his seminal book The Invention of the White Race, Theodore Allen draws
comparisons between the Irish and African Americans (as well as to American Indi
ans), based on the “super-exploitation” of their labor and their “incorporation” into
the economy “without integration.”2 For Allen, the study of these shared histories is
useful in that “the reflector of Irish history afford [sic] insights into American racial
oppression and white supremacy.”3 Most importantly, recognition of these historical
parallels becomes foundational in developing transnational solidarity that supports
resistance movements across the globe.
This essay examines the visual representation of Irish/African American transna
tional solidarity through the iconic figure of African American abolitionist Frederick
Douglass.4 As documented in his speeches and his autobiographies, Douglass drew
a strong correlation between the Irish struggle for independence and the abolitionist
movement in America. Evaluating Douglass’s perspective on Irish/African American
parallels, Dooley concludes that Douglass “remained faithful to the Irish struggle until
his death.”5 Author Tom Chaffin adds a level of complexity to our understanding of
these parallels in his book Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and
the Making of an American Visionary. He acknowledges that “Irish topics summoned
deep ambivalences” in Douglass due to issues such as the abolitionist’s antipathy for
the Roman Catholic Church and the pro-slavery racism that defined the views of
many Irish Americans.6 But in spite of these issues, Douglass continuously aligned
Ireland’s right to self-determination with the rights of African Americans to freedom.
Douglass spent almost two years traveling around Ireland and England to deliver
lectures on the abolitionist cause. From August 1845 to January 1846, he gave over
fifty lectures in Ireland to consistently crowded audiences,7 in which he often com
pared Irish and African American struggles for freedom.8 When he arrived in Ireland,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-11
Transnational Solidarity 137
Douglass was anxious to meet Ireland’s “Liberator,” Daniel O’Connell, a man he had
come to admire even before his trip based on O’Connell’s outspokenness and elo
quence in arguing for support of both Ireland’s right to self-government and the Amer
ican abolitionist movement.9 In Dublin, the two men met when Douglass attended one
of O’Connell’s lectures. Invited by the Irish statesman to share a few words with the
audience, Douglass was introduced as “the Black O’Connell of the United States.”10 It
is not surprising that Douglass would hold O’Connell in such high esteem. Like Doug
lass, O’Connell drew parallels between the Irish independence struggle and African
American struggles for freedom, comparing the conditions of Irish peasants to those of
enslaved blacks.11 As historian Bruce Nelson has summarized, “Far more than many
of his contemporaries . . . [O’Connell] was committed to the cause of racial equality,
which he understood mainly in terms of the emancipation of people of African descent
and their quest for full equality irrespective of color.”12
Irish activist and writer Don Mullan has made a significant effort to commemorate
the relationship between Douglass and O’Connell through public sculpture.13 Work
ing in collaboration with University College Cork, Mullan initially envisioned a statue
of Douglass to be located in County Cork that would be unveiled during a 2011 visit
of American President Barak Obama to Ireland. However, President Obama’s finalized
itinerary did not end up including a stop in Cork, so the unveiling did not material
ize. As Mullan explains, “When it was clear he wouldn’t be visiting Cork, the idea
evaporated.”14 In spite of the failure of the Cork project, Mullan moved forward with
his plans for the Douglass statue. He collaborated on the design of the statue with
Andrew Edwards, an English sculptor with whom he had previously worked on other
public sculpture projects.15 The sculpture was completed but unfortunately did not
find a home in Ireland. Instead, it can be found in the United States on the campus of
the University of Maryland, College Park (Figure 10.1).
The University of Maryland (UMD) was particularly interested in commemorating
Douglass on their campus because, as described by Ira Berlin, distinguished univer
sity professor of history, “No man or woman has better stood for the ideals upon
which the University was founded and the principles in which the people of Mary
land believe. Douglass stood for fairness, justice, racial, gender, sexual, and religious
equity.”16 More broadly, Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and
Humanities, described the relevance of Douglass for an educational institution in that
because Douglass’s freedom was grounded in his learning how to read, his life was
“about the relationship between freedom and education.”17 In 2010, Berlin helped
start a campaign to honor Douglass when he and another colleague “realized there
was nothing on our campus, absolutely nothing, not a building, not a room, nor a
plaque” that did so.18 The result was Frederick Douglass Square, located in front of
Hornbake Library on the university’s campus, where the statue takes center stage.19
Funding for the square was first garnered, followed by fundraising for the statue, and
the complete project was realized in 2015. Both the steel wall that frames the square
and the pathway within it include an array of quotations by Douglass. Douglass’s
international perspective is reflected in one poignant quotation along the pathway:
“The blow we strike is not merely to free a country or continent – but the whole world
from Slavery for when Slavery falls here it will fall everywhere.”
The UMD Frederick Douglass statue depicts the abolitionist delivering an impas
sioned speech. He holds his autobiography in his left hand, while his right hand ges
tures toward an imagined crowd. The statue is among several recent statues dedicated
138 Cynthia Fowler
Figure 10.1 Andrew Edwards, Frederick Douglass, 2015 (bronze statue), University of Mary
land, College Park, Maryland. Don Mullan, concept developer.
Source: Photograph by Cynthia Fowler
to Douglass in the United States, including one in Emancipation Hall of the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, D.C., and another at Rochester Institute of Technology in
New York.20 This interest in Douglass can be connected to a rising consciousness
across the United States about the black American experience as evidenced in the
Black Lives Matter movement. Indeed, a few days prior to the official dedication of
the UMD statue, students gathered in front of it in an act of solidarity with University
of Missouri students who were gaining national attention at that time for their pro
tests against racism and other social injustices.21 Mullan’s representation of Douglass
stands out for the animated, even agitated, way in which Douglass is represented, in
contrast to his representation as a reserved statesman in the other statues.
In spite of the American location of the Douglass statue, not all references to Ireland
were lost. The statue depicts Douglass at the age of twenty-seven because that was his
age when he arrived in Ireland.22 Mullan determined the composition of the statue so
that it would draw parallels between Douglass and two American presidents, Obama
and Abraham Lincoln, but also to Ireland’s O’Connell. As Mullan describes, Doug
lass’s outstretched right hand was modeled after a familiar Obama hand gesture, his
coat was based on one worn by Lincoln, and the cloak over his coat was inspired by
the cloak O’Connell wears in the statue of him on the O’Connell monument (1882)
by John Henry Foley located on O’Connell Street in Dublin’s City Center. According
to Mullan, Douglass’s billowing cloak “represents the storm of oppression he con
fronted and into which his magnificent oratory and intelligence triumphed against,”
a description of Douglass easily applied to O’Connell as well.23 To further emphasize
Douglass’s Irish connections, plants native to both Ireland and Maryland were planted
around the statue.24
While the Douglass statue has yet to be realized in Ireland, a maquette of it was
prominently displayed in 2014 at Dublin’s Iveagh House during a historic visit by the
now deceased U.S. congressperson and civil rights activist John Lewis. Lewis came
to Iveagh House to give the inaugural address for the Frederick Douglass/Daniel
O’Connell Memorial Lecture Series. Appropriately for a lecture series inspired by two
men who symbolized international solidarity, Lewis focused his address on the global
legacy of the American civil rights movement.25 In 2018, the maquette was highlighted
again as part of the exhibition, Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Black O’Connell,
organized by the Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.26
Mullan remains hopeful that his Douglass statue will eventually be realized in Ireland,
and if it is, it will be the first monument in Ireland dedicated to an African American.
In the United States, Mullan is currently working with the city of Boston to erect a
two-person sculpture of Douglass and O’Connell. He continues to collaborate with
Andrew Edwards on these projects.27
Another effort to commemorate Frederick Douglass and connect Ireland and the
United States is the Frederick Douglass mural (2001) (Figure 10.2) in New Bedford,
Massachusetts. The mural was painted by Irish artist and former Irish Republican
Army (IRA) member Danny Devenny, who is well known in Ireland for the Republican
murals he created in Belfast, most notably, one of hunger striker Bobby Sands.28 The
New Bedford mural project was realized through the efforts of Kimberly Wilson, direc
tor of the Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center at the University of Massachu
setts at Dartmouth. Inspired by a personal interest in political murals, Wilson traveled
to Belfast in 2001 to meet with Bill Rolston, who has done extensive research on both
Republican and Loyalist murals in Northern Ireland.29 Rolston introduced Wilson to
Devenny during her trip, and she soon recognized a comrade in Devenny based on
their shared vision for international solidarity. As she recalled, “We were coming from
the same place on Irish, and international, politics and anti-colonialism.”30 During her
trip, Wilson spent time with Devenny and his family, where she and Devenny “cooked
up the New Bedford mural plan.”31 Upon her return home, she mailed him informa
tion about Douglass and his relationship to New Bedford that might inspire the mural’s
content, but Devenny never received it. So, as Wilson explains, “His work was all on
the spot after meeting with local people.”32 Devenny arrived to New Bedford in Octo
ber 2001 to paint the mural, and the public was invited to drop by to meet the artist at
work and to assist him with the project.33 This community approach to mural making
has its roots in the African American mural movement that emerged in the 1960s in
response to the black liberation movement.34 The mural was commissioned on behalf
of the Labor Education Center through contributions from the Labor Center itself;
Riverside Manufacturing (now Joseph Abboud), a pro-union New Bedford clothing
manufacturer; and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.35
The central focus of the mural is a portrait of Douglass as an elder statesman.
The portrait is reminiscent of an often-reproduced photograph of Douglass taken by
140 Cynthia Fowler
Figure 10.2 Danny Devenny, Frederick Douglass, 2001 (mural), University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth Labor Education Center Mural Project, New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Source: Photograph by Cynthia Fowler
George Kendall Warren around 1879.36 A quotation by Douglass, enclosed within

this framed portrait, reads, “I had a duty to perform and that was to labor and suffer
with the oppressed in my native land.” Taken from Douglass’s second autobiography,
My Bondage and My Freedom, these words explain Douglass’s decision to return to
America after a fundraising effort provided enough money to purchase his freedom
while he was traveling abroad.37 As Douglass explained, “The same friends who had
most generously purchased my freedom, would have assisted me in establishing myself
in that country.”38 But for Douglass, his unwavering commitment to fighting for the
end of slavery required that he return home. To the left of this large portrait of Doug
lass, a second smaller one represents him standing in front of a crowded audience,
which is not surprising considering the audiences he commanded when he gave his
speeches. Significantly, he is holding the Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper that
also supported women’s rights in spite of opposition by some abolitionists that taking
this stance would dilute the abolitionist cause; the stance of the newspaper reflected
Douglass’s own support of women’s rights.39 A third portrait of Douglass, to the right
of the central portrait, balances this part of the mural’s composition.
The location of the mural in New Bedford is significant in that Douglass lived there
as a “runaway slave” from 1838 to 1843.40 At the time of his arrival, New Bedford was
one of the world’s largest whaling ports. Thus, it is not surprising to see both of these
industries represented in the mural, as well as representations of the New Bedford fish
ing industry as a whole. In the bottom right of the mural, two men fishing from a dory
can be seen hauling in their catch, a nod to smaller fishing enterprises before they were
transformed by commercial fishing with trawlers. This and vignettes within two blue
whales that dominate either side of the mural represent the New Bedford economy
by focusing on the people working in these industries, specifically highlighting the
diversity of the labor force.41 The whales are filled with portraits of people from across
the globe, many of whom had immigrated to America to work in the fishing industry,
including Portuguese, Cape Verdeans, Norwegians and, later, Guatemalans.42
By the late nineteenth century, the whaling industry was in decline and the New
Bedford economy had shifted to textile manufacture. Fittingly, the textile industry
is represented; located in the bottom right of the mural is a portrait of a Portuguese
spinner who worked in the Fall River textile mills. The composition of the portrait
was inspired by a Lewis Hine photograph of a spinner at the Cheney silk mills in Con
necticut; the reference draws visual parallels between the New Bedford spinner and
the larger group of textile workers across America.43 In remarks he made at the 2002
dedication of the mural, Devenny recognized the links between American industrial
workers and workers in Ireland. He observed,
I look at the workers of the whaling boats and I think of Irish workers forced to
endure the most horrendous hazardous [condition] on the bottom rung of the
labor force. The Portuguese textile worker beside her spindle reminds me of the
barefooted Belfast women on cold wet floors.44
Considering that the mural was commissioned by the Labor Education Center,
Douglass is appropriately depicted surrounded by labor organizers and other political
activists. Labor leaders and activists with connections to the New Bedford area are
represented, including Irish American Margaret Duggan Ryckebusch, a labor leader
and professor at Bristol Community College (upper left corner); Jewish American
Arnold M. Dubin, a union organizer who helped found the Labor Education Center in
1975 (behind Ryckebusch); Portuguese immigrant Augusto Pinto, strike captain dur
ing a 1928 strike at the textile mills, who was arrested twenty-two times on the picket
line and then deported to Portugal for his strike activities (standing with a bicycle in
right center); and Cape Verdean Frank “Parky” Grace, an active member of the New
Bedford branch of the Black Panther Party (in upper left of doorway on left side of
mural, partially obstructed by the door frame).45 Here, too, Devenny was attentive in
ensuring the representation of an ethnically diverse coalition of activists. The impor
tance of collective action is highlighted by a group of demonstrators, located at the
bottom left, that includes adults and children holding signs that read “Keep Jobs in
New Bedford.” The signs refer to a public campaign in the 1980s and 1990s to protect
jobs and challenge corporate greed. Demonstrations were organized by the United
Electrical Workers and the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
(UNITE) as part of this campaign.
Wilson recalled that “one of the main aims of the mural was to connect the Afri
can American freedom struggle to the Irish one.”46 This connection is illustrated
generally by the mural’s message of solidary among an international coalition of
workers and activists. But there are two more specific references. In the top right
of the mural is a representation of the merchant bark Catalpa, which left the port
142 Cynthia Fowler
of New Bedford in 1876 to rescue six Fenians from a British penal colony in Aus
tralia.47 The bark’s captain, George Smith Anthony of New Bedford, agreed to the
clandestine effort to rescue the prisoners. The rescue mission connects New Bedford
to the Irish struggle, although not to Douglass, since he was no longer living in New
Bedford by then.48 The dominating symbol of the strong tie between Ireland and the
American abolitionist cause is the series of interlocking links in a chain that frames
the entire mural: a chain of Celtic knots runs along the bottom half of the mural
and halfway up each side, connected to a chain symbolizing the shackles of slavery
that extends to the top half of the mural. The Celtic knot references Ireland’s his
tory prior to British colonialism, in that, as the brochure for the mural explains,
it is a defining feature of ancient Irish monuments and the celebrated medieval
manuscript, the Book of Kells.49 Unlike the “unbroken knot” of the Celtic chain,
the chains of slavery are “breakable” and, indeed, must be broken to achieve self-
determination, which Devenny makes clear by the shattered links located at the top
center of the mural. Devenny used the same symbolism of shattered links in a chain
for his iconic painting of Bobby Sands.50 In an effort to draw parallels between
the two countries beyond the symbolism in the mural itself, the Labor Education
Center circulated the essay written by Bill Rolston, titled, “Frederick Douglass:
A Man Connected to New Bedford and Belfast,” which provides a summary of
Douglass’s time in Ireland, his relationship with O’Connell and the positive recep
tion he received from the Irish people.51
In 2006, Devenny painted a version of the New Bedford mural in West Belfast for
the annual West Belfast Festival (Féile an Phobail), composed of a portrait of Douglass
in the center with text written on either side of Douglass’s image.52 Not surprisingly,
considering its location in Belfast, this mural makes a more direct reference to Doug
lass’s time in Ireland, in this case, however, through text rather than image. One of the
two passages written on the mural, presumably written by Devenny, reads, “Inspired
by two Irishmen to escape from slavery Frederick Douglass came to Ireland during the
famine. Henceforth he championed the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, and Irish
freedom.” This passage references Douglass’s meeting with two Irish laborers while he
was enslaved and before his trip to Ireland, which he recounted in his autobiography.
After voluntarily assisting them in unloading a vessel, Douglass was asked by one of
the men if he would be doomed to a life of slavery. When Douglass affirmed that was
the case, the man replied that it was a pity, and both Irishmen advised Douglass “to
run away to the north; that I should find friends there and that I should be free.”53 This
encounter had a profound impact on Douglass, who recalled, “I . . . remembered their
advice, and from that time I resolved to run away.”54
In the second passage on the mural, Devenny takes a significant turn by pointing to
the problematic history between blacks and Irish Americans. This passage paraphrases
Douglass from a speech he gave at Lincoln Hall in Washington, D.C., in response to the
overturning of the 1875 Civil Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court. It reads, “Perhaps
no class [of our fellow citizens] has carried prejudice against colour to a point more
dangerous than have the [Catholic] Irish [fellow citizens] and yet no people have been
more relentlessly oppressed on account of race and religion [than the Irish people].”55
Some of the words from the original speech, left out by Devenny on the mural and
included in brackets here, make clear that Douglass was specifically referencing Irish
Americans as the source of prejudice.56 In her book Blackness and Transatlantic Irish
Identity, Lauren Onkey argues that the passage “acknowledges similarities” between
the Irish and African Americans “but puzzles over Irish-American racism.” This 57
racism has caused divisions between Irish Americans and African Americans since the
nineteenth century and is antithetical to the call for solidarity symbolized in both the
Belfast and the New Bedford murals. But by leaving out key words, Devenny does
not make clear Douglass’s specific reference to Irish Americans. It is also important
to note that Devenny uses the quotation for purposes other than those of Douglass in
his speech. Recognizing that “color prejudice is not the only prejudice” in America,
Douglass identified religious prejudice as the “worst of all” prejudices, describing it
as a “spirit infernal [sic], against which every enlightened man should wage perpetual
war” and a form of prejudice practiced by “our Catholic Irish fellow citizens [italics
mine].” In paraphrasing Douglass, Devenny strategically eliminated Catholic from the
original quotation. Within the context of the mural, the quotation as paraphrased by
Devenny is a reminder of Douglass’s allegiance to the Irish independence movement at
the same time that he recognized the racism that strained relations with Irish Ameri
cans. But it hides Douglass’s antipathy for Catholicism, which presumably would not
have been well received among Catholics in Ireland.
Drawing parallels between solidarity movements is obviously complicated and can
run the risk of diluting unique historical conditions related to specific movements.
Scholar Amy Clukey makes this point in her analysis of the “Free Derry Corner,” a
mural in a Catholic neighborhood in Derry that is frequently reworked. At a vigil
in November 2014, the mural was altered by Ray Mond in response to the murder
of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and, more broadly, in solidar
ity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.58 Below the text “You Are Now
Entering Free Derry,” new text was added in red, which reads “Hands Up DON’T
SHOOT.” This BLM chant is accompanied by silhouettes of three figures with their
hands up; each figure is identified by the name of their homeland inscribed in white on
their t-shirts: Derry, Palestine and Ferguson. As described by one of the vigil organ
izers, “The parallels between Ferguson and Derry are obvious – ordinary unarmed
people, mainly young men, shot down by the forces of the State as they went about
their peaceful business, and their families then abandoned by the law.”59 But Clukey
emphasizes that there are important differences between Ireland’s Catholic/Protestant
divide and the American black/white divide, including the African American com
mitment to nonviolent resistance that broadly defines black resistance movements in
America.60 She also reminds the reader that racism exists in Ireland, held by both
Catholics and Protestants, when it comes to immigrants and other minorities. She
observes, “As nationalists support African American struggles for civil rights, they
bring attention to their own past and present struggles for civil rights – sometimes
in ways that misrepresent Irish and American history or that ignore their own white
privilege.”61 When it comes to public art, including the Derry mural discussed by
Clukey and the works discussed in this essay, choices are often made to construct a
clear and direct message that disallows tackling complexities associated with the issue
at hand. Devenny’s Belfast mural is notable as an attempt to grapple with such com
plexities in his alluding to Irish [American] racism, but at the same time, he dilutes the
role played by religion in perpetuating racism as Douglass perceived it. Can public art
foster more nuanced discussions? While serving in his role as the director of the Visual
Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, Irish artist and art critic Brian
O’Doherty, a transcultural artist in his own right, suggested that public art creates
“social situations” and that “we confront, or stumble across, public art with mixed
144 Cynthia Fowler
emotions.”62 These “social situations” have the potential to elicit public discourse
on the complexities not addressed within the artworks themselves. This was most
certainly the case with Devenny’s New Bedford mural in which public programming
surrounding the creation of the mural attempted to cultivate more complex dialogue.63
In his essay, “ ‘The Brothers on the Walls’: International Solidarity and Irish Politi
cal Murals,” Rolston gives a full account of the African American civil rights leaders
included in Republican murals.64 As Rolston explains, these African American leaders
are positioned with other progressive leaders “related to current anti-imperialist or lib
eration struggles outside of Europe.”65 The inclusion of civil rights leaders in Republi
can murals is not surprising, since, as Dooley describes, Irish civil rights activists had
been turning to African American activists for inspiration since the late 1960s.66 The
figure of Frederick Douglass demonstrates deeper historical roots to this transnational
solidarity. Regarding Douglass’s own evolution, historian Christine Kinealy argues
that his trip to Ireland “provided the foundation” for both his political and personal
development.67 On the political front, she explains, “Ireland’s colonial status helped
Douglass to marshal his arguments against slavery”68; on a personal level, Douglass
was transformed during his travels, arriving as an enslaved man, he “both found
himself and freed himself” as a human being in Ireland.69 Through his experiences in
Ireland, his support for the Irish struggle for independence, women’s rights and the
liberation of all oppressed people was solidified. Thus, it is more than fitting that pub
lic art promoting transnational solidarity should highlight Douglass as a key figure.
Clukey rightfully calls for murals that make “attempts at transnational solidar
ity . . . founded on a genuine desire to create more inclusive communities.”70 Deven
ny’s New Bedford mural in which Douglass is surrounded by a global labor force
and political activists of diverse backgrounds anticipates Clukey’s call. Mullan and
Edwards also answer her call in that their statue of Douglass honors a man defined
by this precise vision, and more directly in their anticipated sculptural pair of Doug
lass and O’Connell together. Recognition of Douglass’s connection to Ireland con
tinues to develop in a variety of forms. In October 2021, the Irish Film Institute
unveiled a plaque marking its building as one of the sites in which Douglass gave one
of his stirring anti-slavery orations.71 A plaque unveiled in Wexford in 2019 marks
the site of another Douglass lecture; it acknowledges his friendship with O’Connell
and reminds the viewer that Douglass credited Ireland as “the first place where he
was treated like a free man.”72 These visual markers of Douglass’s presence in Ire
land – whether commemorate plaques, murals or public sculpture – are compelling
expressions of transnational solidarity, rightfully celebrating a man who embodied
solidarity through his words and actions and refused to be marginalized in either
America or abroad.
Notes
1. Brian Dooley, Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland & Black
America (London: Pluto Press, 1998), 7.
2. Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, vol. 1. 2nd edition (London: Verso,
2012), 31.
3. Allen, 22.
4. The construction of Irish identity in relation to the black experience is an important but
separate subject from the focus of this essay on the resistance struggle. For a discussion of
this topic, see Lauren Onkey, Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity: Celtic Soul Broth
ers (London: Routledge, 2010).
5. Dooley, 17.
6. Tom Chaffin, Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and the Making of
an American Visionary (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 189.
Regarding tension between African Americans and Irish-Americans, scholar Lee Jenkins
observes, “Irish Americans were downright hostile to attempts on the part of abolitionists
to make common cause between the American slave and the Irish immigrant.” Lee Jenkins,
“Beyond the Pale: Green and Black in Cork,” in The Black and Green Atlantic: Cross-
Currents of the African and Irish Diasporas, Peter O’Neill and David Lloyd, eds. (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 174.
7. Onkey, 15.
8. As Caffin points out, Douglass was hesitant to risk alienating British abolitionists, which,
at times, tempered his outspokenness on the subject of the Great Hunger when he was in
Ireland and on Irish independence in general. Caffin, 191–194.
9. For details of Douglass’s interest in meeting O’Connell and for more on their shared views,
see Chaffin, 54–69.
10. Caffin, 63.
11. Dooley, 10.
12. Bruce Nelson, “ ‘Come Out of Such a Land, You Irishmen’: Daniel O’Connell, American
Slavery, and the Making of the ‘Irish Race’,” Éire-Ireland 42, nos. 1 and 2 (2007), 61. See
also Nini Rodgers, Ireland, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery, 1612–1865 (New York: Palgrave,
2007).
13. For an extended biography of Mullan’s work, see “About Don Mullan,” accessed Janu
ary 12, 2021, https://donmullan.org/about-don-mullan/.
14. Don Mullan, email to author, August 9, 2020.
15. For information on Edwards, see “CORNOVII Edwards,” accessed January 12, 2021,
www.cornoviiedwards.com/single-post/2015/11/25/There-Are-Superheroes.
16. Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor of History, quoted in “University of Mary
land Building a Monument to Frederick Douglass,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Educa
tion, April 28, 2015, accessed February 2, 2022, https://www.proquest.com/docview/167
6112101?accountid=11311&parentSessionId=2pKtc1qxJAIUG1TxdeN9W3zCM0VH%
2BC4vwe0QxfYXF%2BU%3D&pq-origsite=primo.
17. See UMD video on Frederick Douglass, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAY5cSpE960, accessed
September 26, 2021.
18. Autumn Arnett, “At UMD, New Frederick Douglass Square Illustrates State’s Racial Dual
ity,” Diverse Issues in Higher Education 32, no. 23 (December 17, 2015), 6.
19. In addition to contributions from the University of Maryland and many individuals and
organizations, the project was funded by the Maryland Commission on African American
History and Culture and the Maryland Historical Trust.
20. See Steven Weitzman, Frederick Douglass (2013), www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/
frederick-douglass-statue, accessed September 26, 2021; and Olivia Kim, Frederick Doug
lass (2020), www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/frederick-douglass-statue, accessed
September 26, 2021.
21. Arnett, “At UMD,” 6. For information on the protests, see Nana Naskidashvili, “Students
march through MU Student Center in Protest of Racial Injustice,” Columbia Missourian,
October 1, 2015.
22. Mullan, email to author, August 9, 2020.
23. Don Mullan and Andrew Edwards, “Frederick Douglass Monument Points of Interest,”
unpublished information sheet, shared with author by Mullan in email, August 9, 2020.
24. “University of Maryland Dedicates Frederick Douglass Square to Honor Native Son,”
UMD Right Now, November 18, 2015, https://umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/university
maryland-dedicates-frederick-douglass-square-honor-marylands-native-son
25. Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland, “Congressman John Lewis on the Legacy of
the US Civil Rights Movement,” April 2014, www.dfa.ie/our-role-policies/our-work/
casestudiesarchive/2014/april/john-lewis-iveagh-house-lecture/
26. Quinnipiac University, “Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute,” www.qu.edu/on-campus/
institutes-centers/irelands-great-hunger-institute/frederick-douglass-remembered.
html, accessed January 12, 2021.
27. Don Mullan, email to author, August 9, 2020.
146 Cynthia Fowler
28. While imprisoned for his IRA activities, Devenny began his art career as an illustrator for
a political column by Gerry Adams published in the Republican News. For information on
Devenny, see Una Bradley, “From Murals to Portraits: Ex-prisoner’s Piece to be Displayed
in Belfast City Hall,” The Irish Times, October 22, 2012, www.irishtimes.com/news/
from-murals-to-portraits-ex-prisoner-s-piece-to-be-displayed-in-belfast-city-hall-1.555721
29. For information on Rolston’s work on these murals, see his website, https://billrolston.
weebly.com, accessed January 12, 2021.
30. Kimberly Wilson, email to author, August 26, 2020.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Labor Education Center, “Frederick Douglass Mural Creation in Progress!” unpublished
announcement, n.d.
34. See Rebecca Zorach, “African American Artists and the Community Mural Movement,”
in The Routledge Companion to African American Art History, Eddie Chambers, ed.
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020); and Rebecca Zorach, Art for the People’s
Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965–1975 (Durham, NC: Duke Univer
sity Press, 2019). See also James Pringoff and Robin Dunitz, Walls of Heritage, Walls of
Pride: African American Murals (San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate, 2000).
35. Kimberly Wilson, email to author, January 19, 2021; see also, Jack Stewardson, “Mural
Pays Tribute to Abolitionist,” Southcoast Today, updated January 12, 2011, www.
southcoasttoday.com/article/20011029/News/310299995
36. During his lifetime, Douglass was very aware of the importance of photography in shift
ing away from otherwise derogatory visual representation of African Americans. See John
Stauffer et al., Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Cen
tury’s Most Photographed American (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015. To
see a reproduction of Warren’s photograph, go to: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
commons/8/84/Frederick_Douglass_by_Warren%2C_c1879.jpg, accessed July 12, 2021.
37. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan,
1855; New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 276. Citations refer to the Penguin edition.
38. Ibid, 277.
39. Douglass describes the impact on this newspaper in forming his abolitionist views. See
Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of an American Slave (1845;
USA: G&D Media, 2019), 141. Citations refers to G&D edition.
40. Michael Bonner, “Honoring Frederick Douglass: New Bedford Proud of Abolitionist
Leader’s Hometown Roots,” Providence Journal, updated February 12, 2018, www.prov
idencejournal.com/news/20180212/honoring-frederick-douglass-new-bedford-proud
of-abolitionist-leaders-hometown-roots#:~:text=There’s%20a%20mural%20on%20
a,wall%20of%20the%20downtown%20library.
41. It is worth noting that Devenny’s choice to include vignettes within the whales is reminis
cent of the choice made by sculptor John Kindness for his public sculpture The Big Fish
(1999), located in Belfast, where Devenny may have seen it. The ceramic tiles used to
make the sculpture are decorated with text and images that recount the history of Belfast.
Kindness himself spent time in New York in the early 1990s. To see the sculpture, go to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kindness#/media/File:Belfast_(064),_October_2009.
JPG, accessed October 3, 2021.
42. UMass Labor History Mural (UMass Labor Education Center, printed brochure, 2002).
43. The Hines photograph was taken in 1924. For a reproduction of this image, go to: www.
gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/young-female-worker-in-favorable-working
conditions-half-news-photo/953928466?adppopup=true, accessed July 12, 2021.
44. Danny Devenny, statement at dedication of the Frederick Douglass Labor Movement
Mural, February 17, 2002 (UMass Labor Education Center, unpublished typescript, 2002).
45. For information on Duggan Ryckebusch (1940–1998), see Margaret Ryckebusch, “Lighting
the Way: Historic Women of the Southcoast”, https://historicwomensouthcoast.org/margaret
ryckebusch, accessed January 12, 2021. There is surprisingly little information on Dubin
on the Labor Center website. See www.umassd.edu/labored/about-the-center, accessed Jan
uary 12, 2021. For information on Pinto and the 1928 strike, see Daniel Georgianna, The
Strike of ’28 (New Bedford, MA: Spinner Publications, 1993). For information on Parky
Grace, see John Doherty, “Radical ‘Legend’ Never Lost His Fire,” Southcoast Today,
updated January 12, 2011, www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20011026/news/310269998.
A essay dedicated to Grace can be found in Jama Lazorow, In Search of the Black Panther
Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement, Jama Lazorow and Yohuru Wil
liams, eds. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). Other figures in the doorway with
Grace have not been identified.
46. Wilson, email to author, August 26, 2020.
47. For the story of this rescue mission, see Sean Ó Luing, Fremantle Mission (Tralee: Anvil
Books, 1965).
48. Douglass and his family moved to Rochester, New York, in 1847, just after his return from
Ireland and England.
49. UMass Labor History Mural brochure.
50. To see the Bobby Sands mural, go to: https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/bobby
sands-was-twentyseven-years-old-when-he-died-he-spent-almost-picure-id503822241,
accessed July 12, 2021.
51. Bill Rolston, Frederick Douglass: A Man Connected to New Bedford and Belfast, Kim
berly Wilson, ed. (Labor Education Center, unpublished typescript, 2001).
52. To see a photograph of the mural, go to: www.strandartscentre.com/wp-content/
uploads/2020/09/1280px-Frederick_Douglass_mural_on_the_Solidarity_Wall_Belfast
1024x768.jpg, accessed October 29, 2021.
53. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of An American Slave, 64–65.
54. Ibid, 65.
55. For the full text of the speech, see “Proceedings of the Civil Rights Mass Meeting,” Institu
tional Repository, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, accessed January 20, 2021, https://
udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/21266. Douglass expresses similar views in his third auto
biography, Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, CT:
Park Publishing, 1881), 303.
56. The exact quotation reads: Perhaps no class of our fellow citizens has carried this prejudice
against color to a point more extreme and dangerous than have our Catholic Irish fellow
citizens, and yet no people on the face of the earth have been more relentlessly persecuted
and oppressed on account of race and religion, than the Irish people. Those interested in
Douglass’s speeches related to Ireland should refer to Christine Kinealy, ed., Frederick
Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 2018). Kinealy
includes an excellent introduction that summarizes Douglass’s time in Ireland.
57. Onkey, 12.
58. Amy Clukey, “White Troubles: The Southern Imaginary in Northern Ireland 2008–2016,”
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 73, no. 4
(Winter 2017): 61–92. For an image of the mural, go to: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c8/
c1/ee/c8c1ee19c5788073584c84689b22f51c.jpg, accessed July 12, 2021.
59. Unnamed vigil organizer, quoted in Clukey, 64.
60. Here, Clukey herself is generalizing, since some groups within the black liberation move
ment have argued for armed resistance.
61. Clukey, 62.
62. Brian O’Doherty, “Public Art and the Government: A Progress Report,” Art in America
62, no. 3 (1974), 46.
63. Kimberly Wilson, email to author, January 20, 2021. The programming included a perfor
mance by Charles Pace in an educational interpretation of Douglass performed at a union
factory, a high school, an ESOL class and at UMass.
64. For example, in 1999, a mural dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. was created and a
mural to Malcolm X in 2002. Although not the focus of this essay, American Indians
were also recognized on these murals, including Leonard Peltier in 2002. See Bill Rolston,
“ ‘The Brothers on the Walls’: International Solidarity and Irish Political Murals,” Journal
of Black Studies 39, no. 3 (January 2009), 446–470. Rolston provides a summary of the
history of political murals in Northern Ireland in “Culture, Conflict, and Murals: The Irish
Case,” in Distant Relations: Chicano, Irish, Mexican Art and Critical Writing, Trisha Ziff,
ed. (New York: Smart Art Press, 1995).
65. Rolston, “The Brothers on the Walls,” 456. For an example of a Belfast mural of Douglass
positioned within this broader international context, see https://buenosairesstreetart.com/
wp-content/uploads/2020/02/martin-luther-king-frederick-douglass-barack-obama-belfast
148 Cynthia Fowler
international-peace-wall-northern-ireland-flag-world-leaders-pacificists-political-prisoners.jpg,
accessed October 29, 2021. Unfortunately, discussion of this broader international context is
beyond the scope of this essay.
66. For example, Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin turned the keys to the city of New
York over to the Black Panthers after they were given to her by Mayor John Lindsay and
she visited Angela Davis in prison in 1971. Dooley, 66.
67. Kinealy, Frederick Douglass and Ireland, vol. 1, 71.
68. Ibid, 72.
69. Ibid, 76.
70. Clukey, 85.
71. “Frederick Douglass Honored in Dublin,” Anphoblacht, October 23, 2021, www.
anphoblacht.com/contents/28194, accessed October 29, 2021.
72. For more on the plaque, see Pádraig Byrne, “Descendent of Frederick Douglass Visits
Scene of His Wexford Speech in 1845,” Independent, August 10, 2021, www.independent.
ie/regionals/wexford/news/descendant-of-frederick-douglass-visits-scene-of-his-wexford
speech-in-1845-40734519.html, accessed October 29, 2021.
Works Cited
Allen, Theodore. The Invention of the White Race. Vol. 1. 2nd edition. London: Verso, 2012.
Arnett, Autumn. “At UMD, New Frederick Douglass Square Illustrates State’s Racial Duality.”
Diverse Issues in Higher Education 32, no. 23 (December 17, 2015): 6–7.
Chaffin, Tom. Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish Odyssey and the Making of an
American Visionary. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2014.
Clukey, Amy. “White Troubles: The Southern Imaginary in Northern Ireland 2008–2016.”
Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 73, no. 4 (Winter
2017): 61–92.
Devenny, Danny. Unpublished Statement at Dedication of the Frederick Douglass Labor Move
ment Mural. New Bedford, MA: UMass Labor Education Center Archives, 2002.
Dooley, Brian. Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland & Black Amer
ica. London: Pluto Press, 1998.
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan,
1855. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of an American Slave. 1845.
New York: G&D Media, 2019.
Kinealy, Christine (ed.). Frederick Douglass and Ireland: In His Own Words. 2 vols. London:
Routledge, 2018.
Nelson, Bruce. “ ‘Come Out of Such a Land, You Irishmen’: Daniel O’Connell, American Slav
ery, and the Making of the ‘Irish Race.’ ” Éire-Ireland 42, nos 1 and 2 (2007): 58–81.
O’Doherty, Brian. “Public Art and the Government: A Progress Report.” Art in America 62,
no. 3 (1974): 44–47.
Onkey, Lauren. Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity: Celtic Soul Brothers. London: Rout-
ledge, 2010.
Rolston, Bill. “ ‘The Brothers on the Walls’: International Solidarity and Irish Political Murals.”
Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 3 (January 2009): 446–470.
UMass Labor Education Center. Unpublished Labor History Mural Brochure. New Bedford,
MA: UMass Labor Education Center Archives, 2002.
“University of Maryland Building a Monument to Frederick Douglass.” Journal of Blacks in
Higher Education (Online) (April 28, 2015).
“University of Maryland Dedicates Frederick Douglass Square to Honor Native Son.” UMD
Right Now, November 18, 2015.
11 Kathy Prendergast
Transcultural Cartography
Yvonne Scott
“Maps . . . are works of art, mathematics, and science.”1

“Maps combine history and geography, they betray man’s transience, along with his
desire to hold down the land by controlling it.”2
“Maps enable us to contemplate at home and right before our eyes things that are fur
thest away.”3
“If transdisciplinary acts and methods are to increase, welding together European phil
osophical traditions with post-colonially-infused theories of subjectivity and location
might be a good place to start.”4
Perceptions about the place of mapping vary significantly: mapping conveys factually
sound information; it is a tool for exploitation; it is an aesthetic object. These are not
mutually exclusive, of course, and when maps are used by artists, as subject and medium,
practitioners have at their disposal the extensive metaphoric range they infer. The nature
and purposes of maps, and their material existence, have been exhaustively explored by
users and interpreters from a range of disciplines, but certain common denominators
remain. The majority of maps are seen as symbolic representations of the physical envi
ronment at some level, and numerous artists, over the last hundred years or so, have
drawn on cartography as the source of their work both for its aesthetics and its principles.5
Many artists have engaged in observations on the political and social relationships
and the hierarchies inferred or recorded by maps. Contemporary Irish artist Kathy
Prendergast (b. 1958) has, at least since her early twenties, drawn extensively, if not
exclusively, on the potential of cartography as a source for her allusive imagery. Rec
ognised as one of the most significant Irish contemporary artists, Prendergast has
represented Ireland in numerous exhibitions abroad and is included in major compre
hensive collections of Irish art. While her multimedia work often alludes to her Irish
roots and to personal experience, it has universal relevance. However, in keeping with
contemporary cultural practice, rather than offering a definitive statement, her work
engages the viewer, raises questions, and prompts debate on a range of human issues.
Within Prendergast’s substantial range, the representation of the United States, entire
or in part, or as a constituent of the terrestrial globe, has played a significant role. The
prominence of the United States in her work relates to its historical and ongoing signifi
cance as a destination for Irish migrants. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-12
150 Yvonne Scott
to the artist that every Irish family had relatives in the United States and, in addition,
American popular culture on television and film was a familiar component of Irish life.
As an art student, Prendergast spent some weeks working in the hospitality industry
in Atlantic City, and she relates anecdotes of meeting holiday-making descendants of
Irish immigrants. Migration from Ireland to the United States had intensified during
periods of famine and oppression in earlier centuries, establishing a pathway that
many subsequently followed, playing a role in the Irish imagination and experience
and the related sense of identity and heritage.
More recently, American toponymy has yielded vital material of relevance to Prender
gast’s particular conception of the relationship of humanity to inhabited land. She was
initially inspired in the 1990s by hearing a radio interview with American author Annie
Proulx, who commented on the evocative placenames in Newfoundland where she had
located her celebrated novel, The Shipping News.6 Prendergast was drawn to the emo
tional implications of placenames and their suggestion of human experience and engage
ment with the land encountered; they seemed less about settlement than “about people
moving across landscape and what they bring to it.”7 This essay considers the focus on
the United States within Prendergast’s artwork and how perceptions of that country, by
an artist from elsewhere, are mediated through the transcultural avenue of mapping.
Traditional functions of maps include military intelligence, the establishment of title
and the distribution/rental of land parcels, and assistance in wayfinding for unfamil
iar newcomers. While Prendergast’s explorations have drawn on the role of maps in
establishing entitlement, sovereignty, and power,8 a recurring interest relevant to the
present analysis relates to navigation, not least in the capacity for contemporary maps
to demonstrate, or at least to suggest, historical traces of migration, while facilitating
travel in the present.
The duality of journeying – a migrant is at once an emigrant and an immigrant – and
how it impacts perceptions of events, underpins aspects of Prendergast’s work, reflect
ing the implicit hybridity of transition. Understandably, caution has been advocated in
artwork “referencing notions of ‘the journey’ or exploration” for its potential pitfalls
regarding succeeding colonisation.9 However, a journey is a fundamental, ubiquitous,
and varied experience with motivations extending to issues of victimhood and displace
ment. The current concerns regarding migration, its catastrophic causes and impacts,
have forced a review of the traditional heroic explorer trope in western culture, replen
ished by an empathy for those whose journeys are forced by circumstances outside their
control. It is important to note that Prendergast’s interpretational viewpoint is based
principally in the perspective of the map user rather than the map maker, seeking to
understand territory, and experience of it, by its incoming migrants and travellers.
Debates have also arisen over contrasting approaches to the same circumstances:
between historical accuracy in researching cartographic history versus creative inter
pretation by cultural practitioners, each claiming to represent a kind of truth.10 Pren
dergast does not assume an entrenched position, drawing on both dimensions in her
work; she utilises actual maps – as model, as content, as material, as support. How
ever, rather than preceding her work with research to predetermine their original uses,
she appropriates maps as primary sources, for what they convey, for “what patterns
they make.”11 The recurring significance of toponymy in Prendergast’s work acknowl
edges both local practice and privileged authority in applying names to places, as
well as the significance of placenames in territorial belonging. Consequently, she has
Kathy Prendergast 151
removed or truncated the text on her cartographic imagery to various significant ends,
as the examples discussed here will demonstrate.
Prendergast’s work comprises series that are clearly based on maps of the United States,
shown either in their entirety or in part, notably, the Atlas of the Emotions series (1999)
and the Minnesota works, emerging sporadically from 2005. In addition, the artist has
produced international or globalised map-based works that included representations of
the United States, either specifically or by implication; one example which is discussed
in this essay is Washington, DC from the City Drawings series.12 With each series, Pren
dergast has worked with a selected, identifiable dimension of cartography for what it
might convey or prompt. Studies have argued that while composed of scientifically veri
fiable information, every map involves selective inclusion according to the particular
motivation behind the map’s creation.13 While the artist addresses various cartographic
products (road maps, atlases, globes) and related philosophies, of particular interest here
is the extent to which her artworks draw on, and depart from, actual maps. However
scientific their methods of production, the motivational origins of mapping are, inter
alia, based in facilitating or establishing control over valuable resources (including title,
access, sovereignty, colonisation), and national cartographic institutions are still referred
to as ‘ordnance survey’, utilising terminology for artillery. Maps are consequently associ
ated with political concerns. However, this essay considers how even when addressing
overtly political cartography, Prendergast’s interpretations, consciously or otherwise,
reveal overriding personal and local conditions. The artist has noted, perceptively, that
“what gets left out of a map is probably as interesting as what is in a map.”14 As will be
shown, the same can be said of her map-based artwork.
City Drawings: Washington, D.C.

A delicate pencil drawing by the artist of the city of Washington (Figure 11.1) is one of
numerous images of the world’s capital cities in a project that commenced in 1992. The
series was prescient in presenting a globalised perspective of the world before ‘globali
sation’ became a familiar term.15 The nature of this series as an evolving and ongoing
process is contrary also to the traditional idea of the autonomous artwork that exists as
an entity only once it is completed. Representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1995,
Prendergast showed 49 drawings from the then unfinished City Drawings, a work in
progress that earned her the prestigious Premio 2000 prize for the best young artist.
The series reflects a crucial aspect of the mapping process itself – the ongoing modi
fications in response to physical and political developments of place worldwide. Over
time, political change caused the designation of a capital to alter where new countries
emerged, and other countries were subsumed within larger political units. Thus, it
became evident to the artist that, in a sense, the series was open ended and could never
be truly finished, and while she concluded her artwork in 1997,16 it could conceivably
be reopened and extended.
Prendergast explained that a democratic process was at play in her concept for the
series.17 First, each country, of whatever scale, is represented in the artwork by a sin
gle city, each drawn on the same size support, giving them a kind of equivalence. As
Denis Cosgrove described, Prendergast’s city drawings “trace the intricate and beauti
ful street patterns in the world’s capital cities while challenging their usual hierarchy
of size and political or economic significance by removing names and indicators of
152 Yvonne Scott
Figure 11.1 Kathy Prendergast, Washington, D.C., City Drawing series, 1997 (pencil on paper,
31 × 21 cm (each)), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
Source: Image courtesy of the artist and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin
scale.”18 In reality, of course, capital cities are unequal in both territory and popula
tion. Washington, D.C., a major capital in global terms, appears as a relatively dense
network of fine lines, distilled to fit the page, compared with smaller-scale capitals that
might consequently appear more ‘airy.’ However, the political power of a capital does
not necessarily accord with the mundane facts of its territorial scale or population.
Crucially, each of the cities is depicted without any identifying text, in contrast to
traditional cartographic methods; therefore, each is recognisable by its form. The art
ist’s decision to address capital cities was prompted by their political significance.19
Appropriately, and in keeping with established cartographic practice, the Capitol and
White House are located at the centre. However, these iconic sites are miniaturised in
Prendergast’s drawing as the city is revealed as an extended organic entity, viewed as
though from a substantial height to take it all in. Each city drawing raised the ques
tion of where to finish; any map can, theoretically, continue ad infinitum, developing
according to domestic and commercial imperatives, potentially extending indefinitely
unless curtailed by geographic features like mountains and coastlines.20 The limit of
Prendergast’s Washington, DC drawing is defined by the multi-lane, peripheral ring-
road. While a major intervention in the landscape at ground level, from a distance – and
in the drawing – it appears as an elegantly etched boundary, though the delicate hair
like strands around the drawing’s edges indicate the continued urban sprawl beyond.
Despite points of comparison, each city drawing in the series conveys unique iden
tifying features, inferring a city is defined less by its labels than its character, in turn
dependent on the evolving history determining its shape. Arguably, the naming of Wash
ington’s avenues for the original members of the United States at a time of competing
colonial claims proposes a kind of territorial unity. At the same time, the names of the
city itself and of the major river on which it was established, Washington and Poto
mac, respectively, reflect the heritages of immigrant settler and of Indigenous American
identity. If names embody something of the history of a place, the practice and poli
cies of naming – who has the authority to determine names and which demographic
factors are thereby privileged – reflect the hierarchies of power. A recent policy report
published by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names recognises the significance of loca
tion naming in its opening statement: “The names of geographic features in the United
States are a valuable reflection of the history of our Nation and its changing face.”21
Toponymy, a recurring interest in Prendergast’s cartographic work as mentioned,
has been related theoretically and practically to processes of territorial acquisition and
possession. Harley has observed that “place-names have always been implicated in
the cultural identity of the people who occupy the land.”22 To remove or discount pla
cenames in the production of an artwork could therefore disguise competing cultural
origins reflected in the city toponymy, but equally, such a practice can be interpreted
as a kind of metaphorical resetting to dismantle entrenched hierarchies, in a process
returned to later in this essay.
In this series, pencil – which facilitates erasing and redrawing – is adopted rather
than the more permanent medium of ink. Aesthetically too, pencil markings appear
less distinct, seemingly vulnerable, but also more flexible. Such characteristics chime
with the representation of political entities and their boundaries, both territorial and
metaphorical, which are subject to challenge and change. Similarly, the practice of
territorial naming, which exists in layers over time, where the past may appear to
be erased or obliterated from view, could re-emerge under different conditions.23
Toponomy and boundaries, both of which are subject to transformation, are among
significant dimensions in the psychology of mapping and its representation in cultural
expression.
Atlas of the Emotions Series

Coinciding with the emergence of the Atlas of the Emotions24 series, Prendergast’s
Empty Atlas (1999), comprising a double-page opening (pages 98–99) from an edition
of The Times Concise Atlas of the World, addressed the region to the west of the Great
Lakes in the United States.25 Those pages mapped Minnesota and its neighbouring
states, but devoid of contemporary boundary lines. All text on the map was painted
over by the artist,26 anonymising the territory. As she observes, the absence of text
and boundary markers is disorientating, and the terrain becomes virtually indefinable.
Beneath the painted interventions, a ghostly residue of text can just be discerned. Like
pentimenti emerging in ‘old master’ paintings,27 the concealed past remains beneath
the surface of the present, threatening to reveal itself. Empty Atlas leads into the Atlas
of the Emotions series, while representing an early incursion into the Minnesota terri
tory to emerge subsequently in her imagery.
154 Yvonne Scott
The Atlas of the Emotions comprises three artworks in a selective process involving
a detailed database of placenames, together with commissioned maps of the United
States, modified to Prendergast’s instructions to include only names she identified that
related to emotional experience.28 The first artwork in the series, From Abandon to
Worry, An Emotional Gazetteer of the United States (1999), comprises a list of poign
ant placenames and their co-ordinates, presented in columns, distilled from a lengthy
computerised list of every named location in the country.
The significance of placenames in American geographic practice has loose parallels
with the Irish experience. A broad generalisation suggests places named by an indig
enous population are often descriptive, perhaps reflecting local natural phenomena.
Harley quotes William Cronon who observed of patterns of naming that “Indians used
ecological labels to describe how the land could be used.”29 Similarly, perhaps, the pla
cenames project, Logainm, demonstrates a tradition in Ireland for places to be named
for local geographic features.30 This accords with Prendergast’s experience. She has
observed that in her quest for regions with emotive placenames, Ireland provided only
a limited toponymic resource, and places tended to be already named with rare neces
sity for new ones. There were, of course, occasional exceptions, as artist and writer Tim
Robinson demonstrated in his mapping projects to recover names of local places known
only orally.31 It makes a relevant link that he recorded a coastal location where locals
had the final glimpse of departing migrant ships as Gleann na nDeor (Valley of Tears).32
Throughout history, settlers arriving at regions new and unfamiliar to them, errone
ously believing them to be unnamed, or disregarding the extant names given by the
indigenous population, engaged in applying identifying labels to them in their own
language. In Ireland, local placenames were anglicised in a project during the nine
teenth century that has been interpreted in the context of colonisation.33 It has been
recognised also that notable individuals involved in that project made detailed records
of placenames, both in the English and Irish languages, providing an invaluable topo
nymic record that might otherwise have been lost.34
Prendergast’s Lost map (1999) (Figure 11.2) drew on a number of factors regarding
engagement with the landscape, including the perspective of the outsider in an unfa
miliar territory and exploring their experience vicariously through imagination. She
worked from the basis that current placenames were likely to have been given some
time in the past and, as these were generally European (often anglicised), supposed
they may have originated during the process of migration across the United States. She
noted the extensive incidence of placenames containing ‘Lost’ and all that it inferred.
For desperate migrants, far from home, the word evokes a sense of irrevocable loss, of
homesickness for a place and people unlikely to ever be seen again. But it also alludes
to an underlying reality of an imposed loss to existing inhabitants. To create Lost,
the artist commissioned a copy of the map of the United States, excluding all but the
many locations that included the word ‘Lost’ in their title (Figure 11.3, detail). These
suggested the residues of memorable experiences in the past, conjuring the association
of Ireland with migration to, and across, the United States.35
A third artwork in the series, Between Love and Paradise (2002), comprises a sec
tion of the U.S. map and, as with the Lost image, excludes all placenames except
for those related to a specified emotional range. This image draws, similarly, on the
placename data, and while ‘love’ might suggest a positive, romantic focus, the image
reveals that numerous places are entitled ‘Lovers’ Leap,’ a name that infers rejection
or prohibition, and consequent tragedy. Such names prompt speculation on human
Figure 11.2 Kathy Prendergast, Lost, 1999 (digital print) (edition of 25), 85 × 132 cm.
Figure 11.3 Kathy Prendergast, detail of Lost, 1999.

experience both in reaction to the physical environment and to events that played out
there. Prendergast has wondered also whether the types of names changed across the
landscape; Paradise for example, might be more common in the early stages of the
156 Yvonne Scott
migrant’s journey, giving way perhaps to less optimistic names the farther one trav
elled in unfamiliar territory. Such investigations have not yet been undertaken, but
Prendergast highlights how the maps on which the artworks are based invite specula
tion and anticipation for what they reveal and infer, not only of the past but also of the
implicit biases regarding the narrative that maps may reflect. Prendergast recognises
how the perspective of the immigrant settler rather than the Indigenous population
would be inferred in an east-to-west direction of toponymic change.36
Lost suggests a reaction to what must have seemed to the migrants a bewilderingly
expansive, unpredictable, and shifting landscape filled with unknown dangers. The
title has intentional connotations that extend beyond the literal to embrace psycho
logical conditions that it might be assumed were provoked by the experience of nego
tiating such a vast territory. The term ‘pioneer’ is often applied to the migrant settlers
with all of its positive connotations of courage, exploration, and discovery. While in
many respects it might be seen as accurately reflecting the mindset and experience
of those arriving at a foreign environment, it also plays on debunked notions of the
heroic explorer, glossing over the trauma and desperation of migration forced by des
perate circumstances. In addition, it plays on the idea of the landscape as uncharted
territory, there for the taking – as opposed to a familiar homeland to existing popula
tions who both knew and had named their environment.
American artist Jaune Quick-to-see Smith has addressed the anomalies of nam
ing place in the United States from the perspective of Native Americans. Her evoca
tive painting State Names (2000), in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art
Museum, comprises a map of the United States, partially obscured with dripping paint,
that suggests the dissolution of certainties embodied in imposed territorial boundaries.
The states named on the image include only those with Indigenous American origins,
while those with European names are absent. Like Prendergast, Smith highlights the
arbitrariness of maps, how they apply layers that obscure phases of the past, but pre
sented from the perspective of the Indigenous rather than the immigrant population.
The term ‘indigenous’ is relevant in the history of Ireland as well as the United States.
Just as the native language in Ireland and the associated placenames were, arguably,
largely replaced by colonialist imperatives, so too were local placenames in the United
States supplanted in the languages of immigrant settlers. Ironically, circumstances in
Ireland that prompted migration may have been replicated by migrants to the United
States. Tragically displaced as a consequence of eviction, it can be presumed that some
migrants became active in the displacement of the Indigenous population in the so-
called ‘New’ World. While anglicised placenames are assumed to be applied by Euro
pean migrants, the terminology of emotion given prominence by Prendergast reflects
a more universal application of relevance to all involved. The series reflects on the
processes of migration and how engagement with the landscape invokes a response, a
desire to name, as a means of marking the territory, even if just passing through.
Minnesota Maps Series

The basis for Prendergast’s Minnesota series, the Minnesota Atlas & Gazetteer (2005
edition), provides detailed topographical maps of the entire state, region by region,
and facilitates navigation for travel, emphasising leisure pursuits and boasting exten
sive natural resources.37 It was, however, the severe grid structure imposed on the
landscape that drew the attention of the artist to the cartography of that state. Her
initial foray produced a series of works with a limited palette of colours applied to
selected maps from the Gazetteer in a chequerboard effect that emphasised the defini
tive rectangular gridwork segmenting the land.
A range of Prendergast’s cartographic imagery was shown in the Strata, Kathy Pren
dergast exhibition (2019) in Scarborough, UK, to mark the 250th anniversary of the
birth of celebrated geologist William ‘Strata’ Smith (1769–1839). Curated by Dorcas
Taylor, the show included a series of teaching maps prepared by female students of
Bedford College (founded in 1849 as the first higher education college for women in
the UK), which was subsumed into the Royal Holloway College, a constituent of the
University of London, noted for its specialisation in geography. As Prendergast had
completed a residency there early in the 2000s to develop the cartographic relevance of
her work, it was noted that her imagery represented a phase in the evolution of map
ping: from Smith’s ground-breaking map, to the work of women geographers learning
the skills of geological charting, to Prendergast’s cartographical interpretations as an
artist. A feature of cartography is the application of colour for both description and
for distinction.
As Taylor explained, the colours used in the geological maps prepared by the women
students initially emulated the subtle shades of earth and stone, but these were difficult
to decipher, as the tones were insufficiently differentiated to indicate change in geologi
cal features.38 These students were not provided with, nor did they develop, a consistent
colour key; instead, they interpreted the contours of the maps in colour as they wished.
This potential fascinated Prendergast, who recognised how colour could be used scien
tifically, socially, or aesthetically to provide images that could range from the informa
tive to the personal. The role of colour in map-making, particularly in order to facilitate
comparison, is discussed variously in texts on the psychology of visual perception.39
Prendergast’s approach to cartography is open ended, responding both to ongoing
changes in the landscape and to the methods of its cartographic recording. To present
a finite, finished image would therefore be simply a snapshot in time, and such images
could project a permanence inconsistent with her approach. Consequently, just as the
City Drawings series could be returned to and developed, additions to the artist’s work
on the Minnesota maps could be envisaged to modify both appearance and meaning.
The artist’s interpretation of the grid formation so prevalent on the Minnesota
maps as referring to land holdings has proven accurate. Geographer David Lane-
gran,40 responding to my enquiry, confirmed that “[t]he basic pattern of land holdings
and subsequent local roads was determined by the provisions and implementation
of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 – frequently called the rectangular survey.”41
As assumed by Prendergast, there was an expectation of migrant influx. Lanegran
explains, “The land was surveyed in advance of White settlement using a system of
measurement based on latitude and longitude. Boundaries were set down without
regard for topography. Settlers then acquired rectangular blocks of land with the base
unit being an acre.”42 Similarly, Edward Casey has explored the nature of The Rec
tangular Survey that took place in various U.S. states from the late eighteenth century,
first in Ohio and later in Minnesota. He notes the obsession of land surveyors regard
ing the strict geometry of the grid and the challenges of “ideolocal features” that
were “inherently recalcitrant to geometrization.” He explains that “American land
surveyors assumed that geometry could conquer the landscape.”43 Thus the policy of
rectangulation that operated as though the land were flat rather than its contoured
reality appears to be commensurate with the notorious project of ‘Manifest Destiny.’
158 Yvonne Scott
Figure 11.4 Kathy Prendergast, Road Trip 10, 2021 (gouache on paper, 39 × 54 cm/15.4 × 21.3
in. (unframed)), Private Collection.
Prendergast has been struck by the distinctive patterns, evident in the Gazetteer,
suggestive of plot holdings divided by the geometric format of the access roads. The
establishment of a road system was recognised locally as fundamental to the process of
settlement. Arthur Larsen observed some 80 years ago that “the growth of the American
nation hinged upon roads, for, until they were built and communication was improved,
settlement was retarded.”44 Lanegran expands on how this process functioned:
[t]hese local roads were normally established along property boundaries and fre
quently produced a ‘checkerboard’ pattern. This was intended to give all land
owners access to their property . . . By imposing a mathematical grid of land
ownership the survey created a landscape very different from rural areas in Europe
and elsewhere.45
Around a dozen recent images from maps in the Minnesota Atlas & Gazetteer have
formed Kathy Prendergast’s Road Trip series (Figure 11.4).46 Each artwork comprises
a painted double-page opening from that publication and presents as a collection of
dazzling abstractions, a complex, meticulous array of vibrant colours, compared with
the more limited colour range adopted in earlier examples. Most images encompass a
kind of geometric patchwork of rectangles interrupted with organic forms, a pixilated
collision that suggests at once order and chaos, intellect and emotion, culture and
nature, science and art. These images are not only about disturbing colour combina
tions, but they are also the results of Prendergast’s most recent painstaking journey
across a symbolic, cartographic landscape. Such work involves close observation and
intimate familiarity with the map, as each of the Road Trip images requires decisions
about colour juxtapositions and their impact. They are stunningly compelling, but
also intentionally jarring. More sympathetic colouring would render them comfort
able, but no such concessions are made here, obliging the viewer to contemplate what
conflicts these seek to project or resolve.
There are certain key ways that Prendergast’s images specifically retain or decisively
depart from the maps on which they are based. The Minnesota grid system demon
strates a form of development distinctly different from the history of Irish patterns
of land allocation that exhibit a more irregular system; consequently, the geometric
format in Minnesota appears exceptional to Irish observers. However, the rectangular
grid system for minor roads, with diagonal thoroughfares linking major hubs seen
in Minnesota, can be related, at least visually, to the roads’ infrastructure evident
in Prendergast’s Washington drawing. However, for an Irish artist, such a system is
something of an anomaly, begging questions of the nature both of its function and
its origins, which in this case have been inferred from the visual rather than the more
common textual resources.
Dispensing with text in the Minnesota series, as seen previously in the City Draw
ings, carries particular inferences. Harley asserts that just as naming can be read as an
act of possession, “Equally the taking away of a name is an act of dispossession.”47 The
artist’s purpose here is more speculative than decisive. She has demonstrated an aware
ness of the politics of gender, power, and exploitation at various stages – her celebrated
body maps are recognised for such connections and revelations.48 Relevant to the cur
rent analysis, her nomadic landscape Land (1991) plays on the meaning of ‘canvas,’
with a ‘tent’ – a mobile habitation – whose undulating peaks and troughs were painted
to resemble a map. Similarly, the City Drawings challenge unquestioning acceptance
of political and social hierarchies. The representation of Minnesota could be read as
a kind of renegotiation of territorial distribution, not so much to take sides or make
reparations, but to intervene in a system which is understood here only from an exter
nal perspective; maps are, inter alia, a recourse for the visitor and outsider, negotiating
unfamiliar territory. As in her other series, Prendergast suggests how claims to land are
fraught with complexities based in the gamut of demographic identity.
In his informative and thought-provoking text, Lanegran’s research alludes to a
map of Minnesota published in Colton’s Atlas of the World in 1855.49 He explains
how this map removed many non-English placenames, thereby understating the pres
ence and importance of Indigenous Americans. Harley, in his analysis of New England
cartography, describes a process that is perhaps relevant also to other regions on the
map of the United States, how “place-names have always been implicated in the cul
tural identity of the people who occupy the land.”50 He continues that “[n]aming a
place anew is a widely documented act of political possession in settlement history.”
Thus, Prendergast’s practice of removing the name suggests a kind of resetting of the
map in terms of possession and distribution. Where Tim Robinson reinstated lost
places, Prendergast, by contrast, creates a kind of tabula rasa; while emphasising the
imposed cultural ‘chequerboard’ aesthetic, together with the network of roads that
160 Yvonne Scott
etch the divisions between individual landowners, her strident colours indicate the
implicit dissonance as she leaves open the question of who such landowners should be.
Where colonialist explorations of the United States may have seen vast territory
as empty spaces devoid of cultural markers, the representation of Minnesota con
tradicts any such perception. Prendergast does not portray a nostalgic image of an
unspoiled wilderness, waiting to be tamed, but reflects contemporary realities regard
ing the intervention of competing interests, and notably that the rectangular divi
sions responded to a geometric, partitioned, and ultimately unnaturalistic notion of
landscape. The absence of text, however, infers the metaphoric renegotiation of pos
session, a recognition perhaps of the inherent anomalies and inequities, or at least an
openness to such possibilities.
Conclusion
Kathy Prendergast’s imagery explores the transcultural potential of cartography: how
recent maps reveal the layered traces of other times and places, as well as the anomalies
of demographically determined hierarchies (like gender or ethnicity). Her work refer
ences not only the hybridity of the migrant (who is both emigrant and immigrant) and
the dual cultures they embody but also the complex perspective of Hiberno-centrism
infused with imported, selective, popular culture and globalised politicisation. The time-
frames are multi-dimensional also: embodying historical migration, twentieth-century
interchange, and contemporary theoretical perspectives. As an artist, Prendergast does
not re-present literal or comprehensive maps, but by highlighting selected elements (like
road structures and plot divisions) and modifying or eliminating others (the text or
boundaries on maps), her interpretative imagery destabilises historical certainties, pro
viding a kind of tabula rasa for the renegotiation of engagement with territory. In his
interpretation of contemporary thinking about cartography, Denis Cosgrove’s observa
tions are relevant to Prendergast’s methodology: “the mapping’s record is not confined
to the archival; it includes the remembered, the imagined, the contemplated.”51
Notes
1. David A. Lanegran, Minnesota on the Map (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society
Press, 2008), 3.
2. Penelope Curtis, ed., Strongholds: New Art from Ireland (Liverpool: Tate Gallery, 1991),
9.
3. Johan Blaeu, Le Grand Atlas, Amsterdam 1663, quoted in Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma,
Geography’s Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), 94.
4. Ruth Watson, “Mapping and Contemporary Art,” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 4
(2009), 303.
5. Exhibitions with texts addressing cartography and art include Jean Robertson and Craig
McDaniel, Exploring Maps (Terre Haute: Turman Art Gallery, Indiana State University,
1992); Robert Storr, Mapping (New York: The Museum of Modern Art and H.N. Abrams,
1994); R. Silberman, World Views: Maps and Art (Minneapolis, MN: Frederick R. Weis
man Art Museum, 1999); Moritz Küng, Orbis Terrarum: Ways of World-Making (Ant
werp: Museum Planti-Moretus, 2000); [C]artography: Map-Making as Artform (Cork:
Crawford Art Gallery, 2007). See also Denis Cosgrove, “Maps, Mapping, Modernity: Art
and Cartography in the Twentieth Century,” Imago Mundi 57, no. 1 (2005), 35–54.
6. Kathy Prendergast interview with author, June 28, 2002.
7. Ibid, January 14, 2020.
8. Prendergast’s Body Maps Series (1983) draws analogies between the female body and the
mining of the landscape.
9. Watson, Mapping, 297.
10. Brian Friel, John Andrews, and Kevin Barry, “Translations and a Paper Landscape:
Between Fiction and History,” The Crane Bag 7, no. 2 (1983), 118–124.
11. Prendergast interview (2020).
12. There are further relevant examples, not discussed here, such as the U.S. works among
the Black Maps series (c. 2009), and the inferred inclusion of the United States in Eclipse
(2015).
13. Examples include J.B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, Essays in the History of Car
tography (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), with
Introduction by J.H. Andrews; Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago, IL
and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018, 3rd edn); Denis Wood, with John
Fels, The Power of Maps (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 1992).
14. Anne Mager, ed., Kathy Prendergast, Atlas (Cologne: Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, 2021),
39.
15. See Yvonne Scott, “Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks; 1995, City drawings, Kathy Pren
dergast,” Irish Times, May 28, 2016, reproduced as Yvonne Scott, “1995, City Draw
ings, Kathy Prendergast” in Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks, Fintan O’Toole, Catherine
Marshall, and Eibhear Walshe, eds (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy and Irish Times, 2016),
238–240.
16. The artwork concluded with the Art Now: Kathy Prendergast: City Drawings exhibition
Tate Britain, March–May 1997; email: Kathy Prendergast to Yvonne Scott, September 6,
2021.
18. Cosgrove, “Maps, Mapping, Modernity,” 43–44.
20. The stated territorial size of Minnesota has fluctuated, reflecting on the share of the Great
Lakes ceded to it. William E. Lass, “Enlarging Minnesota,” Minnesota History 61, no. 7
(Fall 2009), 306–311.
21. U.S. Board on Geographic Names, “Principles, Policies, and Procedures: Domestic Geo
graphic Names,” report dated January 2021, Version 2.1. https://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/
pubs/DNC_PPP_JAN_2021_V.2.1.pdf, accessed June 25, 2021.
22. J.B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore,
MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 178.
23. In Ireland, recovered former placenames in Irish are used on signposts, alongside their
anglicised versions.
24. The series has not been specifically named by the artist, but she identifies a group of three
works; this series title was applied by Catherine Nash, “Editorial, Mapping Emotion,”
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16 (1998), 1–9; and repeated in Denis
Cosgrove, “Maps, Mapping, Modernity,” 43.
25. Francis McKee (essay), Kathy Prendergast, The End and the Beginning (London and Dub
lin: Merrell Publishers and Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1999), 34–35.
26. Prendergast observes that the paint she applied was, coincidentally, identical to that in the
map, which she surmises may have been printed using the same brand of colour. Prender
gast interview with author, 31 August 2021.
27. ‘Pentimento’ refers to how elements painted over, due to a change of mind by the artist,
can re-emerge over time, like a shadow.
28. The producers of The Times atlas recommended Prendergast to the established carto
graphic company Bartholomew’s for the source material for these works. Prendergast
interview (2002).
29. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 183, refers here to William Cronon, Changes in the
Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang,
1983), 66.
30. See website: logainm.ie which provides an alphabetic list of Irish terms in placenames,
indicating links with geographic features. See also Ordnance Survey Ireland website:
162 Yvonne Scott
https://osi.ie/education/third-level-and-academic/history-of-place-names/, both accessed
August 21, 2021.
31. Artist and writer Tim Robinson reconstituted maps of selected locations in the west of
Ireland, inserting names of places elicited in conversation with local people, before such
names were lost. Tim Robinson interview with author, August 22, 2002.
32. Robinson interview with author (2002).
33. Brian Friel’s iconic play Translations (1981) addresses the renaming of locations in
nineteenth-century Ireland. Geographer, J.H. Andrews’ book, A Paper Landscape (1975),
described as meticulously researched, documents the nineteenth-century establishment of
Ordnance Survey Ireland. Andrews and Friel presented their respective positions regarding
the confict of history and fction at an Interdisciplinary Seminar at St Patrick’s College,
Maynooth, January 20, 1983. See Friel, Andrews and Barry, Translations.
34. A manuscript credited to John O’Donovan, who was employed in the project, can be con-
sulted online: www.logainm.ie/en/res/179, accessed August 21, 2021.
35. One of an edition of 25, Lost is in the collection of the Albright-Knox Museum, Bufalo,
New York. Paradoxically, it was shown there in the travelling exhibition, 0044 (PSI Con-
temporary Arts Center, New York, June 20–September 15, 1999; Albright-Knox Museum,
Bufalo, September 17–October 31, 1999), that explored the work of Irish artists based in
the United Kingdom. Other work by the artist has been acquired by art museums in the
United States, but this is the only work based on U.S. cartography.
37. DeLorme, Atlas & Gazetteer, Minnesota (Maine: Garmin Ltd., 2019).
38. Dorcas Taylor interview with Yvonne Scott, December 18, 2019. The curator generously
explained many of the aspects of this interdisciplinary exhibition.
39. Amy L. Grifn, “Cartography, Visual Perception and Cognitive Psychology,” in The Rout-
ledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography, Alexander J. Kent and Peter Vujakovic,
eds. (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018), 44–54.
40. I am grateful to Prof. David A Lanegran, John S. Holl Chair of Geography, coordinator
of Minnesota Alliance for Geographic Education, for his generous response to my email
enquiries. Email: David Lanegran to Yvonne Scott, June 25, 2021. See also David A. Lane-
gran, Minnesota on the Map, A Historical Atlas (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society
Press, 2008).
41. Lanegran email (2021).
42. Ibid.
43. Edward S. Casey, Chapter 11, “Rectangularity and Truth,” in Representing Place, Land-
scape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 213–
230. See also, Norman J.W. Thrower, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and
Society (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1996), 138.
44. Arthur J. Larsen, “Roads and the Settlement of Minnesota,” Minnesota History 21, no. 3
(September 1940), 225–244.
45. Lanegran email (2020).
46. Kathy Prendergast: Road Trip exhibition, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, May–July 2021.
47. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 179.
48. Catherine Nash, “Remapping and Renaming: New Cartographies of Identity, Gender and
Landscape in Ireland,” Feminist Review, no. 44 (1993), 39–57.
49. Lanegran, Minnesota on the Map, 52.
50. Harley, The New Nature of Maps, 178.
51. Denis Cosgrove, “Introduction: Mapping and Meaning,” in Mappings, Denis Cosgrove,
ed. (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), 2.
Works Cited
Andrews, J.H. A Paper Landscape, the Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Dub-
lin: Four Courts Press, 1975.
Blaeu, Johan. Le Grand Atlas, Amsterdam 1663, Quoted in Irit Rogof. Terra Infrma, Geogra-
phy’s Visual Culture. London: Routledge, 2000.
[C]artography: Map-Making as Artform. Cork: Crawford Art Gallery, 2007.
Casey, Edward S. Representing Place, Landscape Painting and Maps. Minneapolis, MN: Uni
versity of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Cosgrove, Denis, ed. Mappings. London: Reaktion Books, 1999.
Cosgrove, Denis. “Maps, Mapping, Modernity: Art and Cartography in the Twentieth Cen
tury.” Imago Mundi 57, no. 1 (2005): 35–54.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.
Curtis, Penelope, ed. Strongholds: New Art from Ireland. Liverpool: Tate Gallery, 1991.
DeLorme. Atlas & Gazetteer, Minnesota. Maine: Garmin Ltd., Various Editions from 2005.
Friel, Brian. Translations. London: Faber, 1981.
Friel, Friel, John Andrews and Kevin Barry. “Translations and A Paper Landscape: Between
Fiction and History.” The Crane Bag 7, no. 2 (1983): 118–124.
Griffin, Amy L. “Cartography, Visual Perception and Cognitive Psychology.” In The Routledge
Handbook of Mapping and Cartography. Alexander J. Kent and Peter Vujakovic, eds. 44–54.
Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018.
Harley, J.B. The New Nature of Maps, Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore, MD
and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Kent, Alexander J., and Peter Vujakovic, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Car
tography. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018.
Küng, Moritz. Orbis Terrarum: Ways of World-Making. Antwerp: Museum Planti-Moretus,
2000.
Lanegran, David A. Minnesota on the Map. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2008.
Larsen, Arthur J. “Roads and the Settlement of Minnesota.” Minnesota History 21, no. 3 (Sep
tember 1940): 225–244.
Lass, William E. “Enlarging Minnesota.” Minnesota History 61, no. 7 (Fall 2009): 306–311.
Mager, Anne, ed. Kathy Prendergast, Atlas. Cologne: Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, 2021.
McKee, Francis (essay). Kathy Prendergast, the End and the Beginning. London and Dublin:
Merrell Publishers and Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1999.
Monmonier, Mark. How to Lie with Maps, 3rd edition. Chicago, IL and London: The Univer
sity of Chicago Press, 2018.
Murray, Peter, ed. 0044 – Irish Artists in Britain. Cork: Gandon Editions for the Crawford
Municipal Art Gallery, 1999.
Nash, Catherine. “Editorial, Mapping Emotion.” Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 16 (1998): 1–9.
Nash, Catherine. “Remapping and Renaming: New Cartographies of Identity, Gender and
Landscape in Ireland.” Feminist Review, no. 44 (1993): 39–57.
O’Toole, Fintan, Catherine Marshall, and Eibhear Walshe, eds. Modern Ireland in 100 Art
works. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy and Irish Times, 2016.
Robertson, Jean and Craig McDaniel. Exploring Maps. Terre Haute: Turman Art Gallery, Indi
ana State University, 1992.
Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma, Geography’s Visual Culture. London: Routledge, 2000.
Scott, Yvonne. “1995, City Drawings, Kathy Prendergast.” In Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks.
Fintan O’Toole, Catherine Marshall, and Eibhear Walshe, eds, 238–240. Dublin: Royal Irish
Academy and Irish Times, 2016.
Scott, Yvonne. “Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks; 1995, City Drawings, Kathy Prendergast,”
in Irish Times, May 28, 2016.
Silberman, R. World Views: Maps and Art. Minneapolis, MN: Frederick R. Weisman Art
Museum, 1999.
Storr, Robert. Mapping. New York: The Museum of Modern Art and H.N. Abrams, 1994.
Thrower, Norman J.W. Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society. Chicago,
IL: Chicago University Press, 1996.
164 Yvonne Scott
Watson, Ruth. “Mapping and Contemporary Art.” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 4 (2009):
293–307.
Wood, Denis, with John Fels. The Power of Maps. New York and London: The Guilford Press,
1992.
Online Resources
logainm.ie
Manuscript of John O’Donovan, who was employed on the 19th century placenames project,
can be consulted online: www.logainm.ie/en/res/179 (accessed 21 August 2021).
Ordnance Survey Ireland. https://osi.ie/education/third-level-and-academic/history-of-place
names/ (accessed 21 August 2021).
US Board on Geographic Names, “Principles, Policies, and Procedures: Domestic Geographic
Names,” report dated January 2021, Version 2.1. https://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/pubs/
DNC_PPP_JAN_2021_V.2.1.pdf (accessed 25 June 2021).
12 Uncommon Kinships
The Generous Reciprocity of the
Choctaw Nation and Ireland
Laura Marshall Clark (Muscogee Creek)
The afternoon was warm for April. Weathered wood stairs creaked under our feet to
a chorus of hidden crickets. Tall grasses, variegated green against a cyan sky, carpeted
the vertical mound in sway to a cadence of Wind. No one spoke. Earth and ancestors
welcomed us.
The mound rose forty feet above her meadow near the headwaters of the Pearl River,
nestled for more than two centuries among Mississippi blackjacks and longleaf pines.
At the top we stepped onto Holitopa Ishki, ‘Beloved Mother’, the ancient mound that
Choctaw people call Nanih Waiya (nun-i wa-ya).
Nanih Waiya lifted us onto her shoulders as we turned to look in every direction, imag
ining a thousand Choctaws dancing under her stars. We were Choctaw and Chickasaw,
Mvskoke and Ponca – painters, weavers, curators, writers. One by one, we offered
tobacco and prayer and song for those who had nursed at her breast and for those
who were torn from it. Echoes faded to stillness and Time opened to receive our
rememberings.1
– Laura Marshall Clark
The significance of the historic context of a gift from the Choctaw Nation in
1847 to more than 3 million victims of tragic suffering during Ireland’s Great
Hunger illuminates the works of contemporary artists today of the Choctaw
Nation of Oklahoma. As an independent curator, I came to understand this more
fully as I developed a 2022 exhibition called Chiefs, Clans, and Kin, featuring
more than thirty artists affiliated with what is known today as the Five Civilized
Tribes in Oklahoma and include the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Muscogee
(Creek), and Seminole. These artists and their families are not only tribal but
also descendants of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestors. Choctaw artists from the
Chiefs, Clans, and Kin exhibition in this study include Jane Semple Umsted, Gwen
Coleman Lester, and Chickasaw/Choctaw artist Billy Hensley. Other Choctaws
in the exhibition are Marcus Amerman, Dylan Cavin, Linda Kelly Kukuk, and
Sarah Sense. Margaret Roach Wheeler and Brenda Kingery are of Chickasaw/
Choctaw descent, along with Caddo/Choctaw Raven Halfmoon. Additional artists
with Choctaw descent include Chickasaw/Choctaw artists Brenda Kingery, Dustin
Mater, and Margaret Roach Wheeler; Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson), Chickasaw/
Choctaw/Creek/Cherokee Nation; and Maya Stewart, Chickasaw/Creek/Choctaw.
As gifted culture bearers, these and other artists in the exhibition respond to their
DOI: 10.4324/9781003225621-13
166 Laura Marshall Clark
ancestries and cultures in painting, sculpture, beadwork, bladesmithing, textiles,
mixed media, and more. The exhibition opens May 2022 at the Living Arts Center
of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and will then exhibit at the Choctaw Cultural Center
in Durant, Oklahoma, from July through December 2022. This essay also explores
the work of contemporary Hopi/Choctaw artist Linda Lomahaftewa and the com
memorative sculpture, Kindred Spirits, by Ireland’s Alex Pentek in Midleton,
County Cork, Ireland.
Central to my perspective is the important scholarship of Famine Pots: Choctaw
Gift Exchange 1847–Present, edited by Choctaw scholar LeAnne Howe and Irish
scholar Padraig Kirwin.2 As Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins reminds in the
Foreword to Famine Pots, “the language of justice and humanity” spoken by the
Choctaw Nation so long ago “still echoes . . . as we seek to play our part.”3 Those
echoes resonate from Famine Pots in the collaboration of Howe and celebrated con
temporary Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa from their work, Singing, Still: Libretto for
the 1847 Choctaw Gift to the Irish for Famine Relief, a call and response of visceral
imagery between the Irish and Choctaw peoples. Ní Ghríofa writes about the initial
undertaking:
The process of researching and beginning to write this pamphlet ignited many
feelings for me, notably a deep gratitude, but equally, a deep and profound sense
of shame. We Irish have such common ground with the Choctaw people, shar
ing our histories of brutal colonialism, and yet so many people of Irish origin
were active in the subjugation of native communities across America – not least
Andrew Jackson himself.4
The cry of a Choctaw mother, forcibly removed with thousands of Choctaws from their
homelands by President Andrew Jackson’s aggressive Indian Removal Act of 1830, is
heard in Howe’s “Ishki, Mother, Upon Leaving the Choctaw Homelands, 1831.”5
Right here is where I once suckled babies into Red people

Right here we grew three sisters into Corn, Beans, and Squash
Right here we gave foods to all who hungered
Right here we nurtured abundance.
Right here my body was a cycle of giving until

Torn from our homelands by the Naholla, and
Andrew Jackson, the duteous seamster
Intent on opening all veins.
Right here there’s a hole of sorrow in the center of my chest

A puncture
A chasm of muscle
Sinew
Bones
Right here I will stitch my wounds and live on

And sing,
And sing,
I am singing, still.
Uncommon Kinships 167
Ní Ghríofa responds with “An tAmhrán Ocrach” in her Irish language and English,
the voices of a million Irish waiting for ships to America to escape starvation.6
Ní thig linn an seansaol

a fheiceáil ach trí pholl eochrach,
radharc cúng orthu siúd
a ghlaonn go ciúin
ón dtaobh eile
den doras.
The past can be seen only

through a keyhole we peer through,
to find this narrow, shadowed view
of those who wait there,
a murmuring heard from the other side of the door.
Poll eocrach
Poll ocrach
Poll dubh a shlog
Poll a sciob
Keyhole
Hole that hungered
Hole that swallowed
Hole that stole
Cuirim cluas leis

an bpoll eocrach.
Cuirim beola leis.
Glaoim orthu arís
le buíochas
a ghabháil leo
And so, I press an ear

to the keyhole.
I press lips to it.
I call again;
in gratitude,
I call to them.
I know they are there,

I can almost hear them speak
as they prepare to leave.
As descendants of primarily Ulster Scots and Scottish emigrants who intermarried

with southeast tribes in the 1700s, the artists of Chiefs, Clans, and Kin tell a vivid
story of relationships, to tribe, to family, to history, to identity. Their stories appear
in every canvas, within every print, in stitches, in beads, sculpted in metal and stone.
LeAnne Howe describes Native storytelling as “tribalography”:
Native stories by Native authors, no matter what form they take – novel, poem,
drama, memoir, film, or history – seem to pull together all the elements of the
storyteller’s tribe, meaning the people, the land, multiple characters, and all their
manifestations and revelations, and connect these in past, present, and future
milieu. (Present and future milieu means a world that includes non-Indians.) The
Native propensity for bringing things together, for making consensus, and for
symbiotically connecting one thing to another becomes a theory about the way
American Indians tell stories.7
Senior curator for First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Choctaw
heather ahtone, posits that the heart of our tribal epistemologies is relationship and
that “relationships are at the center of all the good we can do.”8 Through this lens
of relationship, tribal artists draw from and transform personal story into art, which
serves as an Indigenous paradigm for this essay. As Howe so informs, it is a connec
tion of the histories and peoples of the Choctaw Nation, Ireland, Ulster Scots, lands,
and cultures across time, past, present, and future. In order to rightly understand this
connection, we first examine the relationships in historical context.
More than 100 years before the Great Hunger in Ireland and a more familiar Irish
diaspora to America in the nineteenth century, the Ulster Scots from Ireland, some
times known as Scots-Irish, disembarked from ship after ship, beginning in the early
1700s. They brought with them long histories of turmoil – centuries of war, subjuga
tion, both victims to and perpetrators of colonization, dispossession of lands, religious
conflict, and no less, cultural annihilation. The history of Ireland is complex, with
England’s lust for domination at its core. British incursion upon not only Irish soil but
also upon Highland and Lowland Scots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
ultimately had a disastrous impact on Ireland. Long-standing oppression and conflicts
with the English, widespread starvation, and finally, Catholic friars’ demands from
the people for more money in a “Beggars Summons” ignited a violent rebellion among
Lowland Scots. Only the fiery voice of reformation in Presbyterian John Knox eventu
ally soothed the uprising, and the Crown soon seized the moment.
King James VI/I forcibly removed Irish land holders, and the ‘reformed’ Lowland
Scots peasantry, 8,000 of them, were pushed into Ireland as imperialist pawns. The
Protestant Lowland Scots were strategically relocated to colonize Irish Ulster planta
tions, home to the Irish for thousands of years, in an attempt to break the strongholds
of Irish clan life and Catholicism. This forced an Irish rebellion that was crushed by
Oliver Cromwell in 1642, resulting in the deaths of half a million Irish. Those who
remained were stripped of any lands, possessions, religion, and right to an education.
Ireland was destroyed.9 Ireland’s fight for survival was complicated by its painful his
tory in the centuries leading up to the time of the Great Irish Famine.
By the onset of the American Revolution, the colonial shores of America witnessed
hundreds of thousands of Ulster Scots, Irish, and Scottish emigrants settling into cit
ies and towns, building communities in the Appalachians, and crossing the south
ern landscape of sovereign Indigenous nations.10 By 1790, Ulster Scots, Irish, Scottish
Highlanders, and Lowland Scots settlers had penetrated the South, together constitut
ing the second largest emigrant group in America.11
The eighteenth-century migrants came face to face with a significant force in the
southeast tribes that included the Choctaws who populated the lower Mississippi val
ley and western Alabama. The predominant tribes alongside the Choctaw were the
Figure 12.1 Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw), Remembering Choctaw Ancestors, 2010

(acrylic, mixed media on canvas, 15.25 × 37.25 in.), Private Collection.
Source: Photograph by Eric Wimmer. Courtesy of private collector.
Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee, and a confederacy of tribes known as the Muscogee

or Mvskoke, or Creeks. Also among these were other tribes in the southeast, such
as the Yuchi, Alabama, Catawba, Chitimacha, Ofo, Houma,12 Tuskegee, Yamasee,
Caddo, Koasati, Natchez, and numerous others.13 Leaders within these tribes were
cunning traders and political strategists among the English, French, Spanish, and
Americans, who forged economic and diplomatic alliances with both foreign powers
and with one another amid intertribal and trade wars. Scholars refer to this time as
“the shatter zone,” a complex period on tribal homelands of rivaling fur traders, slave
raiders, European armies, settler colonials, formative American states, and a paternal
istic federal government, all fighting for land and power.14 Deerskin trading became
labor-intensive to stay competitive among traders and drew many into mercantile prac
tice, creating hostilities among neighboring tribes and increased tribal warfare. Some
southeast tribes and colonial powers formed perilous relationships during the slave and
deerskin trade periods, irrevocably transforming the region.15 But it was not always so.
Long before the eruption of the shatter zone, the Choctaws were mound builders in
the Mississippian Culture Period, from approximately 700 to 1500 CE, with complex
communities centered around large, earthen platform mounds serving as centers of
sacred ceremonies, governance, social gatherings, stickball, farming, and home life.
Prior to European invasion, ancient mound communities were in place, such as the
2,200-acre Cahokia settlement six miles east of today’s St. Louis, Missouri, which was
home to more than 30,000 people.16 In the homelands of the Choctaw mounds such as
the Beloved Mother Mound of Nanih Waiya in Mississippi, printmaker, painter, and
mixed-media artist Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw) took a transformative jour
ney over a five-year period to make deeper connections to her Choctaw heritage in the
southeast, especially to ancestral mound sites.17 In her work, Remembering Choctaw
Ancestors (2010) (Figure 12.1), a mixed-media cultural imprint emerges around a cen
tral platform mound; guarded by the sun and sustained by corn, messengers of Choc
taw mothers and fathers flank the mound overlain with painted spirals and diamond
configurations found in Mississippian Culture pottery and materials. Lomahaftewa’s
designs invoke engaging connections to works by Irish artists that relate to prehistoric
burial sites like Newgrange (3000 BCE), also marked by spirals and other abstract
designs. These references in Irish art flourished during the Celtic Revival of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continue through today.18
Although she created Remembering Choctaw Ancestors one year before she visited
Nanih Waiya in Mississippi, Lomahaftewa later remarked that this imagery and connec
tion to mounds was “present all along.”19 In contrast to some of the artist’s mural-sized
paintings and panels, this mixed media work is 15.25 × 37.25 inches. Like Ní Ghríofa’s
“keyhole we peer through,” Remembering Choctaw Ancestors is an invitation into
centuries of Choctaw life. The gleaming white sun at the center of Lomahaftewa’s work
gives life, illumines, warms; Sun watches over the mound and the people, an iconogra
phy found in Mississippian Culture shell necklaces and pottery. The maturing, green
corn stalks symbolize abundance of corn, which sustains life, much in the way that joy
and gratitude are marks of the annual Green Corn Ceremony. Red people with star-
hands hide in the corn. Collaged among painted birds and dragonflies dotting the sky,
common elements in other works by the artist, are Choctaw male and female photo
transfers. To the left of the mound is a photo of a 1908 Mississippi Band Choctaw
stickball player. On the opposite side, a woman’s photo brings balance to the mound.
Both figures wear intricately designed and beaded, crisscrossed sashes like those still
worn by some Choctaws today. The semiotics tell of connections to earth and tribe.
The man holds a stickball stick, used to this day in the centuries-old impassioned game
of stickball, known as ishtaboli, known as “little brother of war.” A Choctaw woman
stands proudly, like her male counterpart, in a beaded sash of sun circles and leaf-like
imagery, and wearing an apron, necklaces of beads, and her shawl draped on an arm.
While scholars cannot yet pinpoint the exact exodus, sometime around or after the
1400s, mound culture was abandoned with only speculation as to the cause. Ireland’s
émigrés to America’s South three centuries later settled among a different type of Indige
nous community in organized tribal towns along waterways with advanced methods of
agriculture and republican forms of governance.20 Many in the early eighteenth century
arrived on “ships of misery and death” teaming with rats and cockroaches, exhausted
supplies, and ravaged by violent storms or pirates looting and kidnaping whomever
they pleased. Others came as indentured servants to pay for their passage to cities or
new states like Georgia and South Carolina.21 In opposition to this wave of migrants
in crisis, migrants in the latter portion of the eighteenth century came as travelers with
means, seeking trade and commerce. The mid-century wayfarer might have traveled on
profits from the burgeoning linen industry or other Irish commerce. An acceleration in
migration from Ulster, Leinster, and Ireland’s southern coast of Munster came follow
ing the Revolutionary War.22 It would be impossible to define only one type of emigrant
from Ireland who intermarried into the southeast tribes, given the overarching story of
Ulster-Scots and Irish history, and thus every family story differs.
Artist Billy Hensley (Chickasaw/Choctaw) creates large canvases of ancestral por
traits along with other works depicting deep connections to Choctaw culture. Some
times painted in deep blues and his dark “signature navy blue”23 against ribbons
of color, his ancestors often appear confident, eyes piercing time itself between and
through a geometry of horizontal and vertical lines. Between Two Worlds (2021)
(Figure 12.2), however, reveals conflicting emotions seen in the worried brow and
Figure 12.2 Billy Hensley (Chickasaw/Choctaw), Between Two Worlds, 2021 (acrylic on can
vas, 40 × 30 in.), Collection of the Artist.
Source: Courtesy of artist
disquieted mouth of a female ancestor, though hauntingly beautiful. Hensley is enrolled

Chickasaw and traces his Choctaw lineage through his father. He is also aware that his
bloodline includes ancestors from Scotland, which manifests in the face of his subject.
Deep red and orange hues in vertical bands on the canvas are elemental of her tension
and worry; her enmeshment of worlds is repeated in the multiple colors of her face.
Hensley’s vertical stripes on Between Two Worlds seem to imprison the subject in a
silent struggle for identity, a universal theme common today for many of mixed race.
While the ships of Ulster Scots and Irish continued to arrive at port in the eighteenth
century, the goal from the beginning by America’s leaders was to end the “Indian
problem” (President George Washington), eliminate the “wretches” (Thomas Jeffer
son), and “civilize” the “savages” (early American documents of Congress, U.S. mili
tia, and federally commissioned agents in the field). The emigrant Irish and Ulster Scot
understood this type of subjugation from centuries of British colonialism that deci
mated its warrior societies, clan life, kinships, and culture. Their developing relation
ships and intermarriages among Indigenes in light of these shared histories emerged
as symbiotic. Conversely, in the early 1800s President Andrew Jackson, son of Ulster
immigrants, assessed Indigenous resistance to his demands as a natural response of
their race: simple, naïve, and childlike. Although Choctaw soldiers had fought val
iantly alongside Jackson against the British in the Battle of New Orleans and were
credited for ending the War of 1812,24 Jackson contended that southeast tribes were
both “half-breeds and renegade white men” and “native of the forest.”.25
A congressional vote to approve Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 ensured the
forced removal of the Five Tribes from their homelands. In 1803 Jefferson said in a
private letter, “We presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that
they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them,”26 but publicly proclaimed
that if tribes followed the colonial example, “we will aid you with great pleasure.”27
After heated debate, the Removal Act passed by one vote, sealing the fate of thousands
destined to die on what became the “trail of tears and death,” or the Trail of Tears.
The most accurate count of the Choctaw people in 1830 was 25,000 before the pun
ishing 500-mile march. The Choctaw forced migration was the first of the Five Tribes
and began in waves. Their first march during a bitter winter killed 1,000 Choctaws
by starvation, disease, snakebites, accidents, and exposure. Another 1,500 Choctaws
perished on the trail the following winter. An additional 600 men, women, and chil
dren lost their lives to cholera in 1833 when the Arkansas River flooded.28 Torn from
all they knew, Choctaws fought to survive first the trail, arriving homeless onto frozen,
uncultivated ground of Indian Territory. One of every ten Choctaws died from starva
tion after their arrival to Jackson’s paternalistic Promised Land.29
In 1847, Choctaws at Skullyville in eastern Indian Territory learned of the thou
sands of Irish starving in the Great Hunger in Ireland, often referred to as the Potato
Famine. Padraig Kirwin attributes several reasons for Ireland’s reliance on a solitary
food in the 1840s, when tenant farmers produced a variety of cereal crops. The sheer
number of tenant farmers barely surviving and struggling to pay rents to landlords
increased during the period as the potato blight moved into the nation. While the
landlords exported copious nutritious grains produced by the tenant farmers, it was
the potato that produced 90 percent of the caloric sustenance of Irish people. “On one
hand, Ireland was a part of a global network of trade and travel,” Kirwin states. “On
the other hand, it was seen as a world apart . . . Although well-connected to the wider
world in terms of commerce, enterprise, literature, and religion – sometimes tragically
so.”30 Eyewitness accounts describe “unfathomable suffering,” whole families hud
dled in corners of their homes appearing dead, ghastly-like skeletons, moaning, and
piles of decomposing bodies and skeletons outside homes.31
When the Choctaws at Skullyville received reports that 2,500 Irish were dying
weekly in workhouses alone, and shore to shore, the death toll was quickly climbing
toward 300,000, the news of the destitution of the Irish broke the hearts of Choc
taws. The tribe, still separated from 6,000 Choctaws impoverished in their own home
lands,32 carried within them memories of the trail’s agonizing cries of dying children
and of the silent passing of elders, the faraway homeland graves of family killed from
blankets infected with smallpox at the hands of U.S. militia, and fresh graves of those
not long passed in their new lands. Howe believes “buried deeply within the Choctaw
body politic is a sense of a cultural lifeway,”33 called ima, the Choctaw word for give.
And the Choctaws began to bring money, bring what they could to Skullyville. Some
reports say the money gathered by the Choctaws was $710, others say $170 (the
equivalent of $5,000 today),34 but what mattered was the incredible generosity of a
people still impoverished. “It wasn’t the size of the gift that mattered,” said Choctaw
Figure 12.3 Jane Semple Umsted (Choctaw), Peter Perkins Pitchlynn, 2007 (batik on cotton,
synthetic and natural dyes, beeswax, paraffin wax, mounted on board, 18 × 24 in.),
Collection of the Artist.
elder, author, and storyteller Tim Tingle.35 “It is a gift of love. Love and respect . . .
blessings and hope.”36
Choctaw Peter Perkins Pitchlynn also understood the crushing of a nation. He was
the son of a prosperous Scotsman and a mother of Choctaw prominence in 1847 at
the time of the gift. He learned Choctaw and English among tribal leaders who trusted
his father as an interpreter for treaty negotiations, becoming a young intellectual dur
ing the first wave of removal. He experienced firsthand the immediate and long-term
devastation of his tribe, and at the time that Ireland was spiraling in great distress,
Pitchlynn still agonized over the one third of his tribe still suffering in their homelands.
Finding funding to aid his travel, the future chief of the Choctaws returned to Mis
sissippi to convince the remaining Choctaws to save themselves and join the removed
tribe. Moving through swamps and backcountry to avoid contact with authorities, he
came upon Choctaw people each day, but few were persuaded to leave. In the end he
led only 150 Choctaws safely to Indian Territory while reaping no profit for himself.
The portrait Peter Perkins Pitchlynn (2007) (Figure 12.3) is the work of Choctaw
artist Jane Semple Umsted, great-great-great granddaughter of Chief Peter Pitchlynn.
Figure 12.4 Alex Pentek, Kindred Spirits, 2015 (stainless steel, LED lighting), Midleton, County
Cork, Ireland.
Source: Image by Red Power Media. Courtesy of artist.
His visage is a humble statesman bearing a decorated sash much like Choctaw chiefs
wear today. Umsted’s vibrant batik cotton textile mounted on board is a call back
to cotton trade cloth worn in Pitchlynn’s day. Her wax-resistant dyes, beeswax, and
paraffin form rich layers of blues and blue-greens in the patterned waistcoat worn by
men of the Five Tribes in that period. Soft brown striations against a field of green
undertones draw the eye around the artwork. Pitchlynn’s patterned coat accented in
ruffled trim is a sharp contrast to the roach of feathers worn behind his head in the
artwork, originally found in the artworks of George Catlin, who painted Choctaws
in the mid-1800s. The historical accuracy of this tradition of headdress is in question
by scholars today, although Choctaws wore a feathered headdress of a different style
prior to that time.
The Choctaw gift to the Irish is now honored in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland,
4,300 miles distant from the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. Within Bailic Park stands
Kindred Spirits (2015), a six-meter-tall, stainless steel sculpture of eagle feathers
erected in honor of the Choctaw gift to Ireland in 1847 (Figure 12.4). Here, Irish
sculptor Alex Pentek assembled nine striking vertical feathers resembling the form
of an empty bowl, each composed of 300 individually welded veins. The thoughtful
creation of Kindred Spirits took a year in the artist’s studio at the National Sculpture
Factory in Cork before its sections were brought on site to erect, a labor commemorat
ing the past and celebrating our transatlantic cultural exchange today.37 I visited the
sculpture with Irish friends from University College Cork, and standing in its center,
we marveled at how it felt like a protective nest. The feather veins are spaced naturally
and configured to allow the sky and clouds to merge in and through the sculpture.
They lead the eye upward, creating a sense of freedom, and in its steely beauty, one
finds hope for the future. Recently, I visited the sculpture again at night. The lights
gleaming through the feathers and bouncing off the steel illumined the precision of the
structure, which in turn evoked the vibrancy of the connection between Ireland and
the Choctaw Nation to this day.
Kindred Spirits is a memorial to the perpetual friendship between Ireland and the
Choctaw Nation in a spirit of honor and reciprocity. Choctaw citizens and members
of other tribes in America visit the site regularly, acknowledging their kinship with
Irish suffering and familial connections through marriage. Leo Varadkar, then Taoi
seach (Irish Prime Minister), and a delegation visited the Choctaw Nation in 2018,
and Choctaw Chief Gary Batton, in turn, visited the sculpture site. At the Choctaw
Cultural Center in Durant, Oklahoma, architect Darlene R. Whitmore and designer
Joanne Gravina fashioned a light fixture as tribute to Kindred Spirits. Referencing the
beadwork of Choctaw artist Sue Folsom, they designed a glass bowl depicting rows of
colorful beadwork accented by four bronze feathers stemming from the bottom center
of the bowl. Bronze is the symbol of strength for Choctaw people, and these light fix
tures now illuminate the restaurant of the Cultural Center.
Generosity between the Irish and Indigenous Americans continues today. In 1997,
Ireland and the Choctaw Nation united to provide famine relief to Somalia, raising
$100,000 through a charitable walk together across the Trail of Tears from Oklahoma
to Mississippi.38 The Irish people aided the Navajo and Hopi Nations who experi
enced a rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020. When a GoFundMe contribution went
viral, 26,500 Irish individuals donated more than 1 million dollars. Others around the
globe, responding to the Irish generosity, brought the total donations to over 6 mil
lion dollars. “We will never forget the history we made together. We will never forget
how the Irish made us feel heard and seen in this beautiful way,” remarked Cassandra
Begay (Navajo), who works with the Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief.39
The benevolence of the Irish also surprised the sports world in 2020 when Ireland’s
lacrosse team surrendered their spot for the World Games 2022 so that the Iroquois
Nationals could play. The Iroquois Nationals ranked third in the world at the 2018
World Games and Ireland was fifteenth; the International World Games Association
said the Iroquois Nationals were ineligible because they were not from a sovereign
nation and had no Olympic Committee. After much pressure, the association said it
would reverse the decision if there was room on the roster. The Irish team withdrew
its place in the games in order to make room for the Nationals.40 Lacrosse played by
the Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee, is more often known to
the Native American world as stickball. Present-day tribal stickball teams are highly
competitive, and some tribes, like the Choctaws, include women players.
The importance of stickball is represented by Choctaw Gwen Coleman Lester in her
painting, Girl Power (2019) (Figure 12.5). The game itself is not only competitive but
extremely physical, played today by an increasing number of young women as they
Figure 12.5 Gwen Coleman Lester, Girl Power, 2019 (acrylic on canvas, 24 × 36 in.), Collec
tion of the Artist.
did centuries ago. Gwen’s niece is the subject in contemplation of a woven leather
stickball in her hand. Tribal wooden stickball sticks are handmade with ceremonial
care and carried on the back in a pouch with diamond-pattern appliqué, the Choctaw
respect for nature, iconic of the diamondback rattlesnake. Words from the Choctaw
language for ‘girl power’ are incorporated into the artwork in poster-style design.
Gwen was inducted as a master artist with the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in 2007.
The Chiefs, Clans, and Kin exhibition calls to mind our tribalography, the stories
of the deep connection between the Choctaw Nation and Ireland. Our identities are
strong, culturally distinct, and mutually respected; we have both suffered our Trail
of Tears. Our bonds have become a lasting kinship, with gratitude to those who left
distant shores, to those who left Nanih Waiyah, to those whose resilience guaranteed
there would be those who are to come. This reciprocity is sacred. Artists ask: What
is important, what is lasting, who are we, who do we want to be? Our gifts, our arts,
answer: We are Native nations forever bound to our brothers and sisters from Ireland.
We are culture bearers and ambassadors, painting, sculpting, and weaving ‘the lan
guage of justice and humanity,’ and seeking to do our part.
Notes
1. Laura Marshall Clark, “Nanih Waiya,” Remembering Mississippi, unpublished. Atop
Nanih Waiya, a visceral peace and oneness connected our group of travelers. We were
silent. Then we made an offering. I sang a remembrance to “Chickasaw Garfish Dance,”
a song composed by Chickasaw classical composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate for
Lowak Shoppala’ (Fire and Light), Theatric Suite of Chickasaw Legends for Orchestra,
Children’s Chorus and Narrator – 90′. My singing was more than imperfect, I hardly knew
the words, but I was among friends who understood offerings.
2. See LeAnne Howe and Padraig Kirwin, eds., Famine Pots: Choctaw Gift Exchange, 1847–
Present, (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2020). The history of the gift
and the story of these two nations carefully blends Indigenous and Irish perceptions of
shared histories, analogous cultures, colonial subjugation, and transnational connections.
3. Michael D. Higgins, “Foreword,” in Famine Pots, xv.
4. LeAnne Howe, “Famine Bonds: Choctaw and Irish Poets Combine,” The Irish Times,
June 23, 2017, www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/famine-bonds-choctaw-and-irish-poets
combine-1.3130918, accessed October 22, 2021.
5. This work originally appeared in Howe and Kirwin, eds., Famine Pots, 107–108.
6. Ibid, 163–164.
7. LeAnne Howe, “Blind Bread and the Business of Theory Making, by Embarrassed Grief,”
in Reasoning Together: A Critics Collective, Craig Womack, Daniel Heath Justice, and
Christopher Teuton, eds. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 330.
8. heather ahtone, “Decolonizing the Museum: An Indigenous Curator’s Thoughts,” Indig
enous Arts in Transition Seminar, Bard Graduate College February 3, 2021, www.bgc.
bard.edu/events/1193/03-feb-2021-Indigenous-arts.
9. Karen F. McCarthy, The Other Irish: The Scots-Irish Rascals Who Made America (New
York: Fall River Press, 2014), 160–117.
10. Kevin Lee Yeager, “The Power of Ethnicity: The Preservation of Scots-Irish Culture in the
Eighteenth-Century American Backcountry,” (PhD Dissertation, Louisiana State Univer
sity, 2000), iv.
11. Yeager, “The Power of Ethnicity,” 3.
12. Jason Baird Jackson, “Article: Containers of Tradition: Southeastern Indian Basketry,”
March 18, 2016, Gilcrease Museum, accessed November 29, 2017. https://collections.
gilcrease.org/articles/article-containers-tradition-Southeastern-indianbasketry.
13. David C. King, First People (New York: DK Publishing, 2008), 68.
14. Thomas W. Cowger and Mitch Caver, Piominko: Chickasaw Leader (Ada: Chickasaw
Press, 2017), 25–26.
15. Cowger and Caver, Piominko, 25–26.
16. Colin G. Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, 5th
Edition (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016), 32.
17. Jean Merz-Edwards, “Linda Lomahaftewa: Hopi/Choctaw Printmaker and Painter,” First
American Art Magazine, No. 24 (Fall 2019), 46. She was one “of the avant-garde group
who helped birth contemporary Native American art at the Institute of American Indian
Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.” For more information, see her website: https://loma
haftewa.weebly.com.
18. See, for example, T.J. Edelstein, ed. Imagining an Irish Past: The Celtic Revival, 1840–
1940 (Chicago, IL: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 1992),
and Vera Kreilkamp, ed., The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making It Irish (Boston, MA:
McMullan Museum, 2016).
19. Lomahaftewa, quoted in Merz-Edwards, 51.
20. Theda Perdue, Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South (Mercer Univer
sity Lamar Memorial Lecture Series) (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 201.
21. McCarthy, The Other Irish, 3–5.
22. Patrick Fitzgerald, “The Scotch-Irish & the Eighteenth-Century Irish Diaspora,” History
Ireland, www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-scotch-irish-the-eighteenth
century-irish-diaspora, accessed November 8, 2021.
23. Laura Marshall Clark interview with Billy Hensley, October 22, 2021.
24. “Choctaws and the War of 1812: A high point in relations with the U.S.,” Choctaw Nation
Biskinik, February 2015.
25. Theda Perdue, Mixed Blood Indians, 201.
26. Thomas Jefferson, “President Jefferson to William Henry Harrison (February 27, 1803)”,
in David H. Getches, OU D2L – Unit Two: Shifting Relationships-From Foreign To
Domestic, “Chapter 3: The Formative Years (1789–1871), Section D, Removal,” 94.
Accessed September 26, 2016.
27. Thomas Jefferson, “To the Brothers of the Choctaw Nation, December 17, 1803,” in The
Trail of Tears: The Forced Removal of the Five Civilized Tribes, Charles River Editors,
(Kindle Location, 2013), 415. Kindle Edition.
28. Phillip Carroll Morgan, “Love Will Build a Bridge,” in Famine Pots, 46.
29. Morgan, “Love Will Build a Bridge,” in Famine Pots, 55.
30. Kirwin, Famine Pots, 5–6.
31. Ibid, 7–8.
32. Howe, “Ima, Give,” in Famine Pots, 134.
33. Ibid, 135.
34. Howe and Kirwan, “Introduction,” in Famine Pots, xxvii.
35. Laura Marshall Clark interview with Tim Tingle, August 2021.
36. Tim Tingle, “I Should Have Known,” in Famine Pots, 132.
37. “Kindred Spirits in Stainless Steel,” Moly Review (February 2020), International Molybde
num Association, www.imoa.info/download_files/molyreview/IMOA_MolyReview_2
2020.pdf, accessed October 22, 2021.
38. Mary Ann Mulvihill-Decker, “Two Nations United by Compassion,” The Mulvihill Voice
5, no. 4, issue 52 (Spring 2021), 7.
39. Helen Lock, “Irish Citizens Have Donated Over $1M to Native Americans in Honor of
a Historic Debt,” October 15, 2020, Global Citizen, www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/
irish-donate-navajo-covid-19-relief-debt/, accessed October 22, 2021.
40. Allen Kim, “Ireland’s Lacrosse Team Gives Its Spot in an International Tournament to
a Native American Team,” CNN.com, September 7, 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/09/07/
world/ireland-iroquois-lacrosse-spt-trnd/index.html, accessed October 22, 2021.
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Index
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure on the corresponding page. Pages numbers
followed by an n indicate a note.
AAPS (Association of American Painters and Atlas of the Emotions series (Prendergast)
Sculptors) 47–48, 53n45, 54 151, 153–156
abolitionist movement 5–6, 136–137, 136n8, Auping, Michael 129
140, 142 Automobile Sightseeing (photograph) 62
Abstract Expressionism 2–3, 77, 121, 124, avant-garde art 47–48, 52
130
abstraction 1, 47, 77, 84, 121, 123–124, Bachelard, Gaston 122
127–130, 132, 158 Backs and Fronts (Scully) 130
Abstraction and Empathy (Worringer) 53 Back to the Wigwam (Mulvany) 11
Adams, Ansel 105–106 Barrel Man, The (Yeats) 50, 50n28
Adams, Herbert 29, 30 Barrows, Samuel June 15
African Americans 5–6, 14; Black Lives Barry, John 25–35
Matter movement 138, 143; Frederick Barry Statue Commission (BSC) 27–33, 35
Douglass 5, 136–144; mural movement Bartlett, Paul 33
139 Bather, The (Russell) 48, 92
ahtone, heather 168 Battle of Aughrim, The (Mulvany) 20, 20
Allen, Theodore 136 Battle of the Little Bighorn 3, 9, 12–15, 17
Allison, Young 17 Batton, Gary 175
American Indian Wars 12, 15 Beckett, Samuel 127
Amerman, Marcus 165 Begay, Cassandra 175
Amerman, Roger 165 Belle of Chinatown, The (Yeats) 72
Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) 28, Bellows, George 50, 51, 63
30–32, 35, 115 Bender, Albert 107
Anderson, Guy 77 Benteen, Frederick 12–13
Andrews, Gerry 111–112 Berlin, Ira 137
Anthony, George Smith 142 Between Love and Paradise (Prendergast)
Appadurai, Arjun 1 154–156
Aquin, Stéphane 121 Between Two Worlds (Hensley) 170–171,
Arensberg, Conrad 104, 106–111, 113, 115 171
Armory Show (1913) 4, 47–55, 90, 92; Big Fish, The (Kindness) 141n41
floorplan 51, 52; impact of display 51–53; Bird in a Gilded Cage, A (song) 69
legacy 55; overview 47–51; reactions to the Bird Maddened by Sounds of Machinery in
Irish art 53–55 the Air (Graves) 82
Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center blackface 69–70
139, 140, 141–142 Black Hills 3, 12, 14
Art, Ireland, and the Irish Diaspora Black Lives Matter movement 138, 143
(O’Connor) 2 Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity
Ashcan School 50–51, 63, 66–67 (Onkey) 142–143
Association of American Painters and Book of Kells (medieval manuscript) 142
Sculptors (AAPS) 47–48, 53n45, 54 Borglum, Gutzon 28–29
Index 181
Bowery, Yeats and 69–72 35; Irish Folklore 107–108; see also
Boyd, Ernest 93, 97 specific projects
Boyd, Madeline 92–93 Commodore John Barry statue (Murray) 27
Boyle, John J. xiii, 28–29, 33, 34 Commodore John Barry statue (Williams) 26
Broadside, A (publication) 64 Connor, Jerome 28–30, 33
British colonialism 2–3, 14, 142, 171 Conor, William 94
Brown, Michael 143 Cook, Walter 33
Burnham, D.H. 30 Corot, Jean Baptiste-Camille 51–52
Cosgrove, Denis 151, 160
Cahokia settlement 169 COVID-19 175
Cake Walk at Tony Pastor’s (Yeats) 69 Craig, James Humbert 96
Callahan, Kenneth 77 Crawford, H.S. 40, 42
Campbell, Richard 95, 97 Crawford, Lindsay 93
Carolingian period 40–43 Crawford Art Gallery 84, 94
Carrier, David 130 Cresswell, Robert 108, 113
Cartier-Bresson, Henri 110, 113 Cromwell, Oliver 168
cartography, transcultural 149–160 Cronon, William 154
Casey, Edward 157 Crook, George 13
Catherine and Anne O’Halloran (Lange) 112 Cross, Ruthwell 42
Catlin, George 174 Crosses and Culture of Ireland (Porter)
Cavin, Dylan 165 41–43
Cellini, Benvenuto 32 Cubism/Cubists 47, 51, 53–54, 94, 127
Celtic knot 142 Custer, George Armstrong 3, 12–20,
Celtic Revival 170 16n34
Chaffin, Tom 136 Custer, Libbie 12–13, 16, 18
Changing Winds (Ervine) 90 Custer’s Last Rally (Mulvany) 3, 9–23,
Cheyenne 12, 14 10, 18n43; critical reception 15–18;
Chiefs, Clans, and Kin (exhibition) 165–167, verisimilitude as historical accuracy 18–20;
176 Walt Whitman on 17
Chinatown, Yeats’s visit to New York’s
67–68 Danto, Arthur 128
Chinese Restaurant (Sloan) 67 Dark Windows (Scully) 131, 131–132
Chinese Theatre (Yeats) 67–78, 68 Davidson, Lilian 95
Choctaw Nation 165–176 Davies, Arthur 48, 51, 53
Circus Dwarf, The (Yeats) 49, 49–50, 50n28 Decoration (Jellett) 94
Circus, The (Bellows) 50 deerskin trading 169
City Drawings series (Prendergast) 151–153, de Kooning, Wilhelm 121, 127–128, 132
152, 157, 159 Delaney, Enda 124
civil rights 139, 142–144 Delano, Columbus 14
Civil War: Ireland 98; United States 9–10, Devenny, Danny 5, 139, 139n28, 140,
13–15, 20 141–144
Clan na Gael 10n6 diaspora, Irish 126, 168
Clash (Scully) 130 Dickinson, Jacob McGavock 35
Cleary, Martina 108 Digges, Dudley 97
Clements, Ed 16–17, 20 Dill, Bonnie Thornton 137
Clukey, Amy 143–144 Dixon, Daniel 11–115, 104–111
colonialism 2–3, 14, 14n25, 142, 166, 171 DMSA (Dublin Metropolitan School of Art)
Colton’s Atlas of the World 159 90–91
Colum, Padraic 94 Dobie, Beatrice 114
commemoration: The Battle of Aughrim Dooley, Brian 136, 144
(Mulvany) 20, 20; Charles Stewart Dorr, Charles Henry 53–54
Parnell xiii; Commodore John Barry Douglass, Frederick 5, 136–144; mural
25–25; Custer’s Last Rally (Mulvany) 15; 139–144, 140; My Bondage and My
Frederick Douglass 5, 136–144; Kindred Freedom 140; statues 137–139, 138
Spirits (Pentek) 166, 174–175 Druid Minimalism 129–130
commission 3–4, 25–33, 35, 107–10, 139, Dubin, Arnold M. 141
141, 154, 171; Barry Statue (BSC) 27–33, Dublin, Yeats’s depictions of 63–64
182 Index
Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) Frederick Douglass statue (Edwards) 138,
90–91 138
Duchamp, Marcel 51 French, Daniel Chester 29
Dunbar, Ulric 28 From Abandon to Worry, An Emotional
Dun Emer textiles 2, 6 Gazetteer of the United States
Dunne, Aidan (Prendergast) 154
Frömel, Gerda 84
Early Christian Art in Ireland (Stokes) From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri
40 and Ireland (Stuhlman and Leeds) 2
Early Irish Medieval art 40–41 Fry, Roger 53
Edwards, Andrew 5, 137, 138, 139, 144 FSA (Farm Security Administration) 104,
Edwards, Marion 94 107, 110
Eglinton, John 94
Elliot, Gertrude 70 Giant’s Causeway: Frederick Douglass’s Irish
Ellis Island immigration centre, Yeats’s Odyssey and the Making of an American
sketches of 65–66, 66 Visionary (Chaffin) 136
Elvery, Beatrice 95 Gilbert, Cass 33
Elwell, Frank 30 Gilkey, Richard 84
emigration 4, 109, 112, 115, 124 Girl Power (Lester) 175–176, 176
Empty Atlas (Prendergast) 153 Glackens, William 63, 69
Epstein, Jacob GoFundMe 175
Ervine, St. John Greer 90 Gogarty, Oliver St. John 97
Evans, Jonathan 131–132 Gong, Charles F. 67
Exhibition of Works by Irish Painters (1904) Gordon, Linda 107, 115
53 Grace, Frank “Parky” 141
Expressionism, Abstract 2–3, 77, 121, 124, Grant, Ulysses 14
130 Graves, Morris 5, 76–86; Bird Maddened
expressionist painters, Irish 4 by Sounds of Machinery in the Air 82;
Careläden 77–78, 82–84; 1st Movement
Falguière, J.A.J. 26 (Allegro) Bach, Brandenburg Concerto
famine 3, 10, 15, 124, 142, 150, 166, 168, 5 in D Minor 83; Hedgerow Creatures
172, 175 drawings 80–81; Hero 81, 81; Hibernating
Famine Pots: Choctaw Gift Exchange Raccoon 79, 79; Hibernation series 78–80,
1847–Present (Howe and Kirwin) 166 82; Instruments for a New Navigation
Farm Security Administration (FSA) 104, series 84–86, 85; Instruments for Celestial
107, 110 Navigation #2 85; Irish Goat 81, 82;
Farrell, Patric 4, 90, 97–98 in Japan 78, 78n9; Machine Age Noise
Foucault, Michel 123–124 paintings 82–83; Machine Age Noise V
Fauvism/Fauvists 47, 51, 53 83; Mouse Helping a Hedgerow Animal
Figure of Dignity – Irish Mountain Goat Carry a Prie-Dieu 80; Pooka – Life Size
(Flannagan) xiii, xiv 80; Sleeping Fox 78; Spring with Machine
Finerty, John 3, 13, 15, 17–18 Age Noise 83; Surf Reflected Upon Higher
1st Movement (Allegro) Bach, Brandenburg Space 83; Woodtown Manor 76, 83–84,
Concerto 5 in D Minor (Graves) 83 86
flâneur 62–63, 72 Gravina, Joanne 175
Flannagan, John B. xiii, xiv, 29 Great Depression 104, 112, 115
Flannery, Lot 30 Great Famine 3, 10, 15, 124, 142, 168, 172
Focillon, Henri 41–42 Great Hunger 139, 165, 168, 172
Foley, John Henry 139 Greenfield, Elizabeth Taylor 6
folklore 41, 43–44, 80, 107 Gregg, Frederick J. 48, 54–55
Folsom, Sue 175 Guide of Chinatown and Souvenir
Forbes-Robertson, Johnston 70 Programme (Gong) 67–68
Ford, Julia Ellsworth 6
Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Black Hackett, E. Byrne 92
O’Connell (exhibition) 139 Hackett, Francis 93
Frederick Douglass mural (Devenny) Hackett, Helen 4, 6, 90, 92, 96, 98
139–144, 140 Halfmoon, Raven 165
Index 183
Hamar, Fernand 26, 31–33 Ireland, Patrick 3
Hamilton, Letitia 95 Irish Agricultural Organisations Society
Handbook of Carved Ornament of the (IAOS) 90–91, 97–98
Christian Period (Crawford) 40, 42 Irish Art in the Early Christian Period
Hannan, Elmer 30 (Henry) 42
Harris, Ruth Green 96 Irish Art Rooms 97–98
Harte, Bret 15 Irish Countryman, The: An Anthropological
Hastings (Hone) 48 Study (Arensberg) 104, 106, 108
Heaney, Seamus 127 Irish Exhibition of Living Art 78
Helen Hackett Gallery 4, 90, 92, 94, 98 Irish Folklore Commission 107
Henri, Robert 63 Irish Goat (Graves) 81, 82
Henry, Françoise 2, 6, 40–44 Irish Homestead, The (Russell) 90
Henry, Paul 95–96 Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) 152
Hensley, Billy 165, 170–171, 171 Irish societies 28, 30, 32–33
Hero (Graves) 81, 81 Irish Statesman, The (Russell) 91, 95, 97–98
Hesse, Eva 128 Iroquois Nationals (lacrosse team) 175
heterotopias 123–124 Italian Futurists 47, 47n9, 53
Hibernating Raccoon (Graves) 79, 79 Iten, Jans 95
Hibernation – After Morris Graves (Spicer)
80 Jackson, Andrew 14, 166, 171–172
Hickson, Patricia 125, 128 James VI/I 168
Higgins, Michael D. 166 Jefferson, Thomas 171
High Crosses 40–44 Jellett, Mainie 94
Hine, Lewis 141 John and Anne O’Halloran Prepare to Milk
Hinson, Joshua D. 165 Cows Together on Their Farm at Mount
History of American Sculpture, The (Taft) Callan (Lange) 105
xiii, 30 Johnson, Dan 84, 86
Hoeber, Arthur 53 Johnson, Marian Willard see Willard, Marian
Homer, Winslow 10 Jones, John Paul 25, 27, 29
Homeward: Songs by the War (Russell) 91 journeying, duality of 150
Hone, J.M. 97 Joyce, James 127
Hone, Nathaniel 48, 52–55, 55n63 Juneja, Monica 1
horizon line, Scully and 121, 125–126
Houston, Charles Hamilton 6 Kandinsky, Wassily 51–52
Howe, LeAnne 166–168, 172 Keating, Seán 94, 96
Hubert, Henri 41 Kelly, James 28
Kenneally, Michael 110–111
IAOS (Irish Agricultural Organisations Kenneally, Nora 110, 113
Society) 90–91, 97–98 Kennedy, Brian 126
iconography of Irish art 40–44 Keogh, Myles 12
imagined worlds 1 Kindness, John 141n41
immigration 15, 65–66, 112, 115 Kindred Spirits (Pentek) 6, 166, 174, 174–175
Improvisation #27, Garden of Love Kinealy, Christine 144
(Kandinsky) 51–52 Kingery, Brenda 165
Indian Removal Act 14, 166, 172 Kirwin, Padraig 166, 172
Indian Territory 172–173 Knox, John 168
insets, Scully’s use of 121–125, 131 Kravagna, Christian 1
Inspection Station, Ellis Island, New York Kuhn, Walt 48, 51, 53
(Yeats) 65–66, 66 Kukuk, Linda Kelly 165
Instruments for Celestial Navigation #2
(Graves) 85 Labor Education Center, Arnold M. Dubin
International Exhibition of Modern Art see 139, 140, 141–142
Armory Show lacrosse 175
International Survey of Recent Painters and Lafayette, Marquis de 26, 28, 32
Sculptors, An (exhibit) 130 Lake, The (Russell) 48, 51
Invention of the White Race, The (Allen) 136 Lamb, Charles 94, 96
Ireland, John 26, 33 Land (Prendergast) 159
184 Index
Landline Gray (Scully) 121 medieval art, Irish 2, 40–44
Landline series (Scully) 125–126, 129, 132 Mercié, Antonin 26
Landseer, Edwin 15 Migrant Mother, Nipomo California (Lange)
land surveyors 157 104
Lane, Hugh 4, 53–55, 91–92, 96 migration 3–5, 15, 72, 112, 115, 124, 150,
Lanegran, David 157, 159 156, 160, 170
Lange, Dorothea 5–6, 104–116; Catherine Miller, J. Maxwell 30
and Anne O’Halloran 112; John and Millet, F.D. 30
Anne O’Halloran Prepare to Milk Cows minimalism 126–130, 132
Together on Their Farm at Mount Callan Minnesota Maps series (Prendergast) 151,
105; Migrant Mother, Nipomo California 156–160
104; Standing Out in the Rain While Mississippian Culture 169–170
the Women and Children Attend Mass Möller, Alvar 98
at St. Mary’s 114; Ten-year-old Birdie Molloy (Scully) 127, 130
O’Halloran 111; White Angel Bread Line Monahan, Earl 115
104 Mond, Ray 143
Larned, Charles 32 Montague, John 84
Larsen, Arthur 158 monuments 42, 139, 142; John Barry 25–35,
La Sculpture Irlandaise pendant les douze 31; see also specific projects
premiers siècles l’ére chrétienne (Henry) Moreau, Gustave 53
42–43 Morgan, Robert C. 127
Last Corinthian, The (Yeats) 50, 50n28 Motor Car (Yeats) 61, 61
Leeds, Valerie Ann 2 mound builders 169–170
Lester, Gwen Coleman 165, 175–176, 176 Mouse Helping a Hedgerow Animal Carry a
Lewis, John 139 Prie-Dieu (Graves) 80
Life magazine, Lange and 104, 106, Mullan, Don 5, 137–139, 144
113–114, 116 Mullins, Gerry 110–111, 113
Lincoln, Abraham 138 Mulvany, John 9–23; Back to the Wigwam
Lindsay, Vachel 98 11; The Battle of Aughrim 20, 20; Custer’s
Lokosh 165 Last Rally 3, 9–23, 10, 18n43; Lynch
Lomahaftewa, Linda 166, 169, 169–170 Law 11; McPherson and Revenge 10; The
Lost (Prendergast) 154, 155, 156 Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief – Scene
Lough Swilly (Hone) 48 in a Western Justice’s Court 11, 11, 13,
Lukeman, Augustus 28–29 20; Sheridan’s Ride from Winchester 10;
Luks, George 63, 66 Trappers of the Yellowstone 11
Lynch Law (Mulvany) 11 Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin
4, 54, 83, 91, 94
MacGonigal, Maurice 96 Murphy (Scully) 127
Machine Age Noise V (Graves) 83 Murray, Peter 84
Mackland, Ray 114 Murray, Samuel xiii, 25, 27, 28, 33
MacLiammóir, Micheál 95–96 Museum of Modern Art (New York) 47, 76,
MacWhite, Michael 93, 97 130
Mahoney, John 28 Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco) 82
Mâle, Émile 41 My Bondage and My Freedom (Douglass)
Malevich, Kazimir 131 140
manifest destiny 14, 157 mysticism 43, 78, 90–91
maps 149–160
Markievicz, Casimir 91 Nanih Waiya 165, 169–170, 176
Markievicz, Constance 54, 91 National Academy of Design 10–11
Mason, Thomas 43 Native Americans 12, 14–16, 20, 156, 175;
Mater, Dustin 165 maps and placenames 156–159; reciprocity
Mather, Frank Jewett 54 of Choctaw Nation and Ireland 165–176
McCahill, Agnes 6, 28–30 Nelson, Bruce 137
McDannell, Colleen 113 Neuberger, Sigmund 69
McKelvey, Frank 94–96 Newgrange 170
McNeill, James 97 New York: Ashcan School 50–51, 63, 66–67;
McPherson and Revenge (Mulvany) 10 Chinatown 67–68; Ellis Island immigration
Index 185
centre, Yeats’s sketches of 65–66, 66; Precious (Scully) 123, 123
theatres 68–71; Yeats’s visit (1904) 61–72 Precious Cargo (Scully) 132
New York: A Guide in Comprehensive Preliminary Trial of a Horse Thief,
Chapters 66 The – Scene in a Western Justice’s Court
Ní Ghríofa, Doireann 166–167 (Mulvany) 11, 11, 13, 20
Noctes Ambrosianae (Sickert) 51 Prendergast, Kathy 1, 5, 149–160; From
Northwest Ordinance (1787) 157 Abandon to Worry, An Emotional
Nude Descending a Staircase (Duchamp) 51 Gazetteer of the United States 154; Atlas
of the Emotions series 151, 153–156; City
Obama, Barack 137–138 Drawings series 151–153, 152, 157, 159;
O’Brien, Dermod 93, 94 Empty Atlas 153; Land 159; Lost 154,
O’Connell, Daniel 137–139, 142, 144 155, 156; Between Love and Paradise
O’Connor, Andrew 25, 29–35, 31 154–156; Minnesota Maps series 151,
O’Connor, Eimear 2 156–160; placenames 150, 153–156,
O’Doherty, Brian 3, 143 159; Road Trip series 158, 158–159;
Ó Duilearga, Séamus 107–108 Washington, DC 151–153, 152, 159
O’Halloran, Anne 112, 112 Proulx, Annie 150
O’Halloran, Bridie 110, 111 Public Letter Writer, The (Yeats) 72
O’Halloran, Catherine 112, 112
O’Kelly, James 3, 13 Quinn, John 6; Armory Show (1913) 47–49,
O’Malley, Cormac K.H. 2 51, 53–55; George Russell and 90–92,
O’Malley, Helen Hooker 2 95–96; Jack B. Yeats and 62, 67
O’Malley, Michael Power 97
O’Neill, Joseph 99 racism: in Ireland 143; by Irish-Americans
Onkey, Lauren 142–143 136, 136n6, 142–143, 142n56
Opened Ground: Selected Poems (Heaney) Rectangular Survey 157
127 Redon, Odilon 53
O’Rawe, Des 124–125, 132 “Reflections in Exile” (Said) 122
O’Sullivan, John L. 14 Remembering Choctaw Ancestors
(Lomahaftewa) 169, 169–170
Pach, Walter 48, 53 Remond, Sarah Parker 6
Passenger Line Red White (Scully) 125 Reno, Marcus 12–14, 18–19
Pastor, Tony 69 republicans, Irish 5, 10, 20, 98, 139, 144
Pearse, Patrick 92 Republic of Ireland 3, 78, 97, 107–108
Pentek, Alex 166; Kindred Spirits 6, 166, Rexroth, Kenneth 83
174, 174–175; Unity 6, 6–7 Reynolds, Paddy 111
Peter Perkins Pitchlynn (Umsted) 173, Road Trip series (Prendergast) 158, 158–159
173–174 Roark, Aidan 97
Philbrick, Nathaniel 15 Roberts, Hilda 84, 96
photography role in establishing scholarship Robinson, Lennox 97
43 Robinson, Tim 154, 159
pilgrimage roads 41 Rochambeau, Comte de 26, 30–33
Pinto, Augusto 141 Rodin 33, 35
Pitchlynn, Peter Perkins 173 Roethke, Theodore 84
placenames 150, 153–156, 159 Rolston, Bill 139, 142, 144
Plunkett, Horace 98 Romanesque art 40–41
Poetics of Space, The (Bachelard) 122 Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage
Poisoned Lands (Montague) 84 Roads (Porter) 41
Political Meeting Sligo, A (Yeats) 48 Roosevelt, Theodore 29, 33
politics, transcultural exchange and 3–5 Rothko, Mark 121, 127–128, 131–132
Pomes Penyeach (Joyce) 127 Russell, George W. 4, 48, 51–55, 55n63,
Pooka – Life Size (Graves) 80 90–99; The Bather 48, 92; Homeward:
Porter, Arthur Kingsley 2, 40–44, 99 Songs by the War 91; The Stone Carriers
Porter, George F. 50, 50n28 91; The Waders 48, 51, 92; The Winged
Porter, Lucy 43, 99 Horse 91, 92
Post-Impressionist art 47–48, 53–55 Russell, Violet 95, 97, 99
potato famine see famine Ryckebusch, Margaret Duggan 141
186 Index
Said, Edward 122 Soulages, Pierre 132
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus 28–29, 34–35 South Pacific (Yeats) 70
Sands, Bobby 139, 142 Spicer, Jack 79–80
Savage, Kirk 32 Spring with Machine Age Noise (Graves)
Schumacher, Dorothy 77–78 83
Scots-Irish see Ulster-Scots SS Mesaba 64–65, 65
Scott, Patrick 84 Standing Out in the Rain While the Women
Scully, Sean 1, 121–132; Backs and Fronts and Children Attend Mass at St. Mary’s
130; Clash 130; Dark Windows 131, (Lange) 114
131–132; insets, use of 121–125, 131; Starkie, Walter 93
Landline Gray 121; Landline series State Names (Smith) 156
125–126, 129, 132; Molloy 127, 130; Stevedore, The (Yeats) 50
Murphy 127; Passenger Line Pink Blue Stewart, Maya 165
125; Passenger Line Red White 125; stickball 169–170, 175–176
photograph of 125; Precious 123, 123; Stieglitz, Alfred 51
Precious Cargo 132; Sean Scully: Landline Stokes, Margaret 2, 6, 40–42, 44
(exhibit) 121, 128, 129; Sean Scully: The Stone Carriers, The (Russell) 91
Shape of Ideas (exhibit) 124; Sean Scully: Strand Races (Yeats) 50
Wall of Light (exhibit) 129; “Sean Scully: Strata, Kathy Prendergast (exhibit) 157
Works on Paper” (exhibit) 127; The Shape Street Scene (Hester Street) Luks 66
of Ideas 127, 129–130; The 12 131; Wall Stryker, Roy 104, 110
of Light series 128–130, 132; Walls of Studio, The (Yeats) 50
Aran 129; Window Painting 125 Stuhlman, Jonathan 2
Sea Drift (Davies) 51 Sullivan, Mrs. Cornelius 93
Sean Scully: Landline (exhibit) 121, 128, Surf Reflected Upon Higher Space (Graves)
129 83
Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas (exhibit) 124 surveyors, land 157
Sean Scully: Wall of Light (exhibit) 129 Svare, Richard 77–78, 81–85
“Sean Scully: Works on Paper” (exhibit) 127 Szarkowski, John 107
Sense, Sarah 165
Shape of Ideas, The (Scully) 127, 129–130 Taft, Lorado xiii, 30
shatter zone 169 Taft, Robert 9
Sheridan’s Ride from Winchester (Mulvany) Taft, William 28
10 Tate, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ 165n1
Sherman, William T. 29 Taylor, Dorcas 157
Shinn, Everett 63 Taylor, Paul S. 105–106, 115
Shipping News, The (Proulx) 150 Ten-year-old Birdie O’Halloran (Lange)
Sickert, Walter 51, 69 111
Singing, Still: Libretto for the 1847 Choctaw Terry, Alfred H. 13
Gift to the Irish for Famine Relief (Howe Theosophical movement 41
and Ní Ghríofa) 166 theosophy 41, 90–91
Singing ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee River Thompson, Jan 84
(Yeats) 70 Thompson, Launt 28
Sioux 12, 14, 17 Tingle, Tim 173
Sitting Bull 12, 14n25, 15 Tobey, Mark 77, 83
sketchbooks, of Jack Yeats 61–72 Tony Pastor’s (Yeats) 69, 70
Sleeping Fox (Graves) 78 Trail of Tears 14n23, 172, 175–176
Sloan, John 51, 63, 67 transcultural exchange: introduction 1–7;
Smith, Jaune Quick-to-see 156 politics and history 3–5
Smith, William ‘Strata’ 157 transculturalism, definition of 1, 1n3
Soby, James Thrall 83 Trappers of the Yellowstone (Mulvany) 11
Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick tribalography 167, 176
25–26, 28–29 Tuohy, Patrick 96
solidarity, transnational 136–144 The 12 (Scully) 131
Solomons, Estella 96
Sons and Daughters of the American Ulster-Scots 168, 170–171
Revolution 27 Umsted, Jane Semple 165, 173, 173–174
Index 187
United Arts Club 47 Winged Horse, The (Russell) 91, 92
Unity (Pentek) 6, 6–7 Wolff, Theodore F. 80
urban observer, Jack Yeats as 61–72 women’s rights 140, 142, 144
Woodtown Manor – for Morris Graves
Varadkar, Leo 175 (Montague) 84
vaudeville 68–70 Worringer, Wilhelm 53
Vernet, Horace 15, 20 Wylde, Bridget 110
Wylde, Denis 108–110, 112, 114
Waddington, Victor 86
Waders, The (Russell) 48, 51, 92 Yeatman, John 115
Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 127 Yeats, Elizabeth 6, 64, 90
Wall of Light series (Scully) 128–130, 132 Yeats, Jack Butler 4, 6, 93, 95–96; aboard
Walls of Aran (Scully) 129 SS Mesaba 64–65, 65; Armory Show
Ward, J.Q.A. 29 48–51, 53–55, 55n63; The Barrel Man
Warren, George Kendall 140 50, 50n28; The Belle of Chinatown 72;
Warren, Whitney 33 Cake Walk at Tony Pastor’s 69; Chinese
Washington, DC (Prendergast) 151–153, Theatre 67–78, 68; The Circus Dwarf 49,
152, 159 49–50, 50n28; Inspection Station, Ellis
Washington, George 171 Island, New York 65–66, 66; John Quinn
Welch, James 12 and 4, 62, 67, 92–93; The Last Corinthian
whaling industry 140–141 50, 50n28; Motor Car 61, 61; A Political
Wheeler, Roach 165 Meeting Sligo 48; The Public Letter Writer
White, Minor 115 72; Singing ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee
White Angel Bread Line (Lange) 104 River 70; South Pacific 70; The Stevedore
Whitman, Walt 12, 17, 17n40 50; Strand Races 50; The Studio 50; Tony
Whitmore, Darlene R. 175 Pastor’s 69, 70; as urban observer 71–72;
Whitney, Anne 35 visit to New York (1904) 61–72
Wilde, William 40 Yeats, John B. 63, 93
Willard, Marian 76, 81, 83–84, 86 Yeats, Mary Cottenham 4, 61–62, 64, 65,
Williams, Wheeler 25, 26 67, 69
Wilson, Kimberly 139, 141 Yeats, Susan 6, 90
Wilson, Woodrow 34 Yeats, W.B. 6, 48
Wilson Ross, Nancy 79 Yeats, William Butler 91
Window Painting (Scully) 125 Young, Stanley 79

Art History at The Crossroads of Ireland and The United States by Cynthia Fowler - Bibis - Ir

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Art History at The Crossroads of Ireland and The United States by Cynthia Fowler - Bibis - Ir

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Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland

and the United States

Cynthia Fowler is Professor of Art at Emmanuel College, Boston.

Histories of Conservation and Art History in Modern Europe

Art Criticism and Modernism in the United States

Sculpture Workshops as Space and Concept

Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art

Posthumous Art, Law and the Art Market

American Art in Asia

Bauhaus Effects in Art, Architecture and Design

Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge­

Edited by Cynthia Fowler and Paula Murphy

ISBN: 978-1-032-12127-7 (hbk)

List of Contributors vii

1. Desperate and Glorious: John Mulvany’s Custer’s Last Rally 9

2. ‘An American and Not an Irish Statue’: Commemorating

3. Some Thoughts on Arthur Kingsley Porter and Françoise

4. Irish Art at the Armory Show, 1913 47

6. ‘This New Life of Painting’: Morris Graves in Ireland,

7. Ireland’s ‘Strayed Angel’: George W. Russell (AE) – From

9. Sean Scully: Painting a Global Immigrant’s Vision 121

10. Transnational Solidarity: African American and Irish

11. Kathy Prendergast: Transcultural Cartography 149

12. Uncommon Kinships: The Generous Reciprocity of the

Laura Marshall Clark (Muscogee Creek) is an interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and

P.1 John B. Flannagan, Figure of Dignity – Irish Mountain Goat, 1932,

This anthology considers moments of transcultural exchange between Ireland and

Transatlantic Ireland and America: Global Flow and Transcultural

Art History and Irish/American Transcultural Encounters

Irish/American Art: Politics and History

These two works succeed as powerful expressions of transnational solidarity,

At times romanticizing Ireland as an idyllic rural fairyland, Americans often traveled

A Call for More Scholarship

ever, the dissolution of boundaries and a new understanding of our interconnectedness

Speculating in the mid-twentieth century on the most popular American artwork –

Perspectives on the Battle

In 1879, when Mulvany embarked on the painting, a Denver newspaper announced

As a genre painting it is worthy of a place among the masterpieces of American

Altogether a western, autochthonic phase of America, the frontiers, culminating,

The fine painting of Custer’s Last Rally by Prof. Mulvany – an Irish-American

Verisimilitude as Historical Accuracy

Mulvany explained how he “wished to rid the painting of any conventionality.

In June 1941, in anticipation of the bicentenary of the birth of Commodore John

were at one in admiration of O’Connor’s work and in disgust at the mismanagement

a rich contribution to the story of monument making in America, building on the

Arthur Kingsley Porter

Corrigendum in The Crosses and Cultures of Ireland

The Role of Photography in Establishing Scholarship

The Unique Contribution of Porter and Henry in the Study of

Figure 4.2 Jack B. Yeats: Strand Races, 1912, Private Collection.

The Impact of the Display

Figure 4.3 Plan of Armory Show, New York, 1913.

Reactions to the Irish Art

Figure 5.1 Jack B. Yeats, Motor Car, 1904 (ink on paper).

Seeing the City: Observing Modern Life

Journeys: Sea, River, New York

Vaudeville, Shakespeare, and Marionettes: Yeats at New York’s

Conclusion: Yeats as an Urban Observer

ultimate goal, the purchase of a countryside property in County Waterford on the

Figure 7.1 George Russell, Winged Horse, 1904 (oil on board).

Perhaps deliberately so as to appeal to Irish-American nostalgic images of the ‘emer­

On this side [New York] AE is thought of as a poet and a philosopher, not as a

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge

Perhaps deliberately so as to appeal to Irish-American nostalgic images of the ‘emer