Ireland's Art, Ireland's History

Until recently little attention was paid to the role of art in constructing the "story" of the Irish nation. This wide-ranging study of Irish pictures and sculpture opens up the subject by providing a fresh interdisciplinary approach. Each work is analyzed beyond its strictly art historical relevance. A deeper investigation into the context in which a work was produced reveals much about the aspirations and ideological ambitions of artists, those commissioning works, and the viewing public. The study of such diverse topics as the representation of the Irish peasant, the behind-the-scenes tensions in setting up a national gallery for Ireland, the erecting of political monuments, Church art, West of Ireland landscape painting, and the difference in nationalistic fervor among artists as diverse as Albert G. Power and Jack B. Yeats unveil fascinating testimony about Ireland's collective national "needs" and its constructs of identity.