The Glories Of Ireland Part 8

O'Curry: Lectures on the Ma.n.u.script Materials of Ancient Irish History (Dublin, 1861); Brunn: An Enquiry into the Art of the Illuminated Ma.n.u.scripts of the Middle Ages, Part I, Celtic Illuminated Ma.n.u.scripts (Edinburgh, 1897); Robinson: Celtic Illuminative Art in the Gospels of Durrow, Lindisfarne, and Kells (Dublin, 1908); Westwood: The Book of Kells, a lecture given in Oxford, November, 1886 (Dublin, 1887); Gougaud: Repertoire des fac-similes des ma.n.u.scripts irlandais (Paris, 1913).

THE RUINS OF IRELAND

By FRANCIS JOSEPH BIGGER, M.R.I.A.

The ruins of Ireland are her proudest monuments. They stand as a lasting revelation to all mankind--a distinct and definite proclamation that the Irish people, century after century, were able to raise and adorn some of the finest buildings in stone that western civilization has seen or known. It is recognized the world over that Irish art has a beauty and distinction all its own, in its own Irish setting unrivalled, throned in its own land, in its own natural surroundings. The shrines and gospels, the reliquaries and missals, the crosses and bells that are still existent, many in Ireland, others in every country in the world, attest beyond any dispute that Irish art-workers held a preeminent place in the early middle ages, and that works of Irish art are still treasured as unique in their day and time. No country has been plundered and desolated as Ireland has been. Dane, Norman, English--each in turn swept across the fair face of Ireland, carrying destruction in their train, yet withal Ireland has her art treasures and her ruins that bear favorable comparison with those of other civilizations.

In Dublin and in many private Irish collections can be found hand-written books of parchment, illuminated with glowing colors that time has scarce affected or the years caused to fade. On one page alone of the Book of Kells, ornament and writing can be seen penned and painted in lines too numerous even to count. They are there by the thousand: a magnifying gla.s.s is required to reveal even a fragment of them. Ireland produced these in endless number--every great library or collection in Europe possesses one or more examples.

As with books, so with reliquaries, crosses, and bells. When the Island of Saints and Scholars could produce books, it could make shrines and everything necessary to stimulate and hand down the piety and the patient skill of a people steeped in art-craft and religious feeling. What they could do on parchment--like the Books of Kells and Durrow--what they could produce in bronze and precious metals--like the Cross of Cong, the Shrine of Saint Patrick's Bell, the Tara Brooch, and the Chalice of Ardagh--not to write of the numberless bronze and gold articles of an age centuries long preceding their production--they could certainly vie with in stone.

Of this earlier work a word must go down. In Ireland still at the present day, after all the years of plunder she has undergone, more ancient gold art-treasures remain than in any other country, museum, or collection, most of them pre-Christian, and what the other countries do possess are largely Irish or of Celtic origin. We must have this borne into the minds of every one of Irish birth or origin, that this great treasure was battered into shape by Irish hands on Irish anvils, designed in Irish studios, ornamented with Irish skill for Irish use.

With such workmen, having such instincts and training, what of the housing and surroundings to contain them and give them a fit and suitable setting? The earliest stone structures in Ireland still remaining are the great stone cashels or circular walls enclosing large s.p.a.ces--walls of great thickness, unmortared, in which there are vast quant.i.ties of masonry. Around their summits a chariot might be driven, inside their s.p.a.ces horse races might be run. As a few examples, there are Staigue, in Kerry; Dun Angus, in Aran, off Galway; Aileach, above the walls of Derry. Of the earliest churches, cyclopean in construction and primitive in character, built of stone, with thick sloping walls from foundation to ridge, Gallerus still remains, and the Skelligs, those wondrous sea-girt rocks, preserve both church and cell almost perfect. There are many other examples, some of a later date, such as Temple Cronan and Maghera and Banagher in Derry, St. Finan's oratory in county Cork, St. Fechin's at Fore, and St. Molaise's at Devenish.

From the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, there are innumerable examples of oratories, some with stone roofs, others with roofs not so permanent, but all having the common features of an altar window facing the east, through which the sun fell at the beginning of the day to tell the early missioner that his hour of devotion had arrived, and a west door, through which the rays of the declining sun fell across the altar steps, speaking of a day that was closing. A south window was added close to the east end, and it, too, was a sun-dial; it told the hour of angelus, the mid-day, when the bell was rung and a calm reverence fell on all within its hearing. Such churches can still be seen at Aran and Inismurray, on the islands of Lough Derg, Lough Ri, and in many other places.

A few years later these oratories were too small for the growing faith, and larger churches were built, some using the older structure as chancels. Where the west door was built a circular arch was made and the new and old united. This can well be seen at Inis-na-ghoill in Lough Corrib, on the Aran Islands off Galway, at Glendalough, at Inis-cleraun in Lough Ri, at Clonmacnois, at Iniscaltra, and on many another island and promontory of the south and west.

During this time, and after, we find the most elaborate carvings on door and arch and window, equal in skill to what is found in book or metal work.

It must have been at this time that the Galls, or strangers, first invaded Ireland, bearing havoc in their train, for then it was that the _cloicteach_, or Round Towers, were built. It is now admitted by all Irish authorities of any repute, and that beyond dispute, that the Round Towers, the glory of Ireland, were built by Irish people as Christian monuments from which the bells might be rung, and as places of strength for the preservation of the valued articles used in Christian wors.h.i.+p; here they might be safely stored. They were also used for the preservation of life in case of sudden attack and onslaught by unexpected enemies. All the towers are on ecclesiastical sites, many are incorporated in church buildings, such as those of Glendalough in Wicklow and Clonmacnois on the Shannon, The records of the construction of some of them in the tenth and eleventh centuries are still extant, and this is conclusive. There are today about seventy Round Towers in Ireland, and many have been destroyed.

The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand By the lakes and rus.h.i.+ng rivers through the valleys of our land; In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime, These gray old pillar temples--these conquerors of time.

Here was placed the holy chalice that held the sacred wine, And the gold cross from the altar, and the relics from the shrine, And the mitre s.h.i.+ning brighter with its diamonds than the east, And the crozier of the pontiff, and the vestments of the priest.

_D.F. MacCarthy_.

This was the time when the High Crosses of Ireland were carved and set up. They vie with the Round Towers in interest and in the display of skill. What the towers have in perfection, masonry and construction, the crosses have in artistic carving and symbolic design. No two crosses are alike; they are as varied as the clouds in an Irish sky or the pebbles on the beach or the flowers in a garden.

They were carved in reverence by those who knew and esteemed their art, and lavished all their skill and knowledge on what they most valued and treasured. They were not set up as grave-marks merely--theirs was a higher and loftier mission. They were raised in places where some great event or period was to be commemorated--they were erected where some early disciple of the Cross could stand beside one of them and from any panel could tell the foundation of the Faith, for there in stone was story after story, from the Old Testament and the New, that gave him his text, and so, as at the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnois, a missioner could preach on every recurring holy day from Christmas to Christmas, with ever his text in stone before him. Many a broken and mutilated cross has been set up in Ireland in recent years, proving that the heart of the Gael, no matter how rent and broken, is still inclined to bind up the broken wounds of her past glories.

With the religious orders there came to Ireland a widespread desire to add something to the older sanctuaries of the Gael, to widen their borders and strengthen their cords, and so the abbeys were founded.

Here and there we find them still--by winding rivers, on rich meadows, in glens and glades, by the sea margin, or on the slopes of the rugged mountain. Their crumbling walls and broken windows can still be traced, their towers are still to be seen over tree tops and in the centre of many a slumbering town. By the sh.o.r.es of Donegal Bay the old Franciscan house, where the Four Masters compiled what is perhaps the most remarkable record possessed by any nation, is still clothed in ivy. At Kilconnell, in Galway, their old place is almost as they left it, but roofless, with the tears of the friars upon the altar steps. Clare Galway has a tower worth travelling half a continent to see. By the Boniet River, at Drumahaire, on the banks of Lough Gill, are the mason marks of the cloister builders, and the figure of St. Francis talking to the birds is still there. The abbey is roofless and empty, and so the birds of the air are his constant companions.

s.p.a.ce forbids, or endless abbeys might be described. The Black Abbey at Kilkenny, with its long row of Butler effigies, or the Cathedral of Saint Canice, still perfect, with its soaring round tower beside it, or the mystical seven light window of the Franciscan friary by the Nore, with the old mill-weirs running free to this day. How long could we ponder by the east window of Kilcooley, with tracery like a spider's web, and listen to the mystical bells, or gaze at the beautiful oriel at Feenagh, or stand at Jerpoint, with its s.p.a.cious cloisters and stone-groined choir, with Saint Christopher in Irish marble beside us.

Cashel, one of the wonders of the world, grows up suddenly into sight on a high rock rising from level land crowned with buildings. A great abbey dominates; beside it clings that carved gem of a stone-roofed church, Cormac's Chapel. Round Tower and Cross are there, and many a sculptured tomb.

Not far from Cashel is the Abbey of Holy Cross, with its lovely mitred windows, shadowed in the river pa.s.sing at its feet. The circular pillars and arches of Boyle Abbey are splendidly proportioned, whilst the cloisters of Sligo display in their long, shadowy recesses and ornamented pillars great dignity and beauty. The windows and monuments of Ennis Friary, founded by the O'Briens, are of unusual interest, the carving of figure-subjects being equal to the best of their age.

We have Thomastown and Callan, Dunbrody and Tintern, all having an individual charm and interest that not only dim the eye and make the blood course freely in every one of Irish stock when he looks upon what is and thinks of what was, but even in the coldest light give food for thought to every one desirous of knowing something of the growth and civilization of a great people.

Of the many castles and stout Irish strongholds it is hard to write in such a short paper as this. Those on the Boyne, such as Trim, for strong building and extent, excel in many ways. Carlingford, Carrickfergus, and Dunluce have by their size and picturesque situations ever appealed to visitors. They are each built on rocks jutting into the sea, Dunluce on a great perpendicular height, the Atlantic das.h.i.+ng below. Dunamace, near Maryborough, in the O'More country, appears like Cashel, but is entirely military. The famed walled cities of Kells, in Kilkenny, and Fore, in Westmeath, are remarkable. Each has an abbey, many towers, gates, and stout bastions. The great keeps of the midland lords, the towers of Granuaile on the west coast, and the traders' towers on the east coast, especially those of Down, afford ample material for a study of the early colonizing efforts of different invaders, as well as providing incidents of heroism and romance. These square battlemented towers can be seen here and there in every district.

Every portion of Ireland has its ruins. Earthworks, stone forts, prehistoric monuments, circular stone huts, early churches, abbeys, crosses, round towers, castles of every size and shape are to be found in every county, some one in every parish, all over Ireland. It is almost invidious to name any in particular where the number is so great.

REFERENCES:

Proceedings of Royal Irish Academy (Dublin); Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries (Dublin); Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Old Series and New Series, edited by F.J. Bigger, Belfast; Wakeman: Handbook of Irish Antiquities (Dublin, 1891); Stokes: Early Christian Art in Ireland (Dublin, 1887); Petrie: Round Towers and Ancient Architecture of Ireland (Dublin, 1845).

MODERN IRISH ART

By D.J. O'DONOGHUE,

_Librarian, University College, Dublin_.

It would be difficult to dispute, in view of her innumerable and excellent artists, that there has always been in modern times an art consciousness in Ireland, but it is impossible to a.s.sert that there has been any artistic unity in her people. She has produced no school, but merely a great number of brilliant painters, sculptors, and engravers, chiefly for export. With all our acknowledged artistic capacity, we have not, except in one notable instance, produced a c.u.mulative art effect. The history of Irish art is almost uniformly a depressing narrative. During a comparatively brief period in the eighteenth century--significantly enough, it was while the country enjoyed a short spell of national life--there was something like a national patronage of the artist, and the result is visible in the n.o.ble public buildings and beautiful houses of the Irish capital, with their universally admired mantelpieces, doors, ceilings, fanlights, ironwork, and carvings. In short, while Ireland had even a partly unfettered control of her own concerns, the arts were generously encouraged by her government and by the wealthy individual. When other European capitals were mere congeries of rookeries, Dublin, the centre of Irish political life, possessed splendid streets, grandly planned. But there was little solidarity among the artistic fraternity. Various a.s.sociations of artists were formed, which held together fairly well until the flight of the resident town gentry after the Union, and many admirable artists were trained in the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, but, since the opening of the nineteenth century, there has been almost no visible art effort in Dublin. True, there have been many fine artists, who have made a struggle to fix themselves in Dublin, but, as with the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which the best of them were members, the struggle has been a painful agony. Usually the artist migrated to London to join the large group of Irishmen working there; a few others went to America and obtained an honored place in her art annals. Those who went to England secured in many cases the highest rewards of the profession. Several, like Barry, Hone, Barrett, and Cotes, were founders or early members of the Royal Academy; one, Sir Martin Shee, became its President. Nevertheless, many distinguished artists remained in Dublin, where the arts of portrait-painting and engraving were carried to a high pitch of excellence.

This record must necessarily be of a chronological character, and can only take note of those whose works have actual value and interest, historical or other. Edward Luttrell (1650-1710) did some excellent work in crayon or pastel, while Garrett Murphy (fl. 1650-1716), Stephen Slaughter (d. 1765), Francis Bindon (d. 1765), and James Latham (1696-1747), have each left us notable portraits of the great Irish personages of their day. To fellow countrymen in London, Charles Jervas (1675?-1739), Thomas Hickey (d. 1816?), and Francis Cotes, R.A. (1725-1770), we owe presentments of other famous people.

George Barrett, R.A. (1728-1784), one of the greatest landscapists of his time; Nathaniel Hone, R.A. (1718-1784), an eccentric but gifted painter, with an individuality displayed in all his portraits; James Barry, R.A. (1741-1806), still more eccentric, with grand conceptions imperfectly carried out in his great historical and allegorical pictures:--these, with Henry Tresham, R.A. (1749?-1814), and Matthew Peters, R.A. (1742-1814), historical painters of considerable merit, upheld the Irish claim to a high place in English eighteenth century art. A little later, miniaturists such as Horace Hone, A.R.A.

(1756-1825), George Chinnery (1774-1852), and Adam Buck (1759-1844), also worked with remarkable success in London. Among resident Irish artists, the highest praise can be given to the miniature painters, John Comerford (1770?-1832) and Charles Robertson (1760-1821), and to the portrait-painters, Robert Hunter (fl. 1750-1803) and (especially) Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739-1808), of whose work Ireland possesses many distinguished examples. Some day Hamilton's pictures will appeal to a far wider public than his countrymen can provide. One must omit the names of many clever Irish artists like the Wests, Francis and Robert, who were the most successful teachers of perhaps any time in Ireland, and come at once to that branch of art in which Ireland stands second to none--mezzotint-engraving.

One of the earliest engravers in this style was Edward Luttrell, already named as a painter, but it was John Brooks (fl. 1730-1756) who is justly considered the real founder of that remarkable group of Irish engravers whose work may be more correctly described as belonging to a school than any other of the period. For many years in Dublin, and afterwards in London, a succession of first-rate artists of Irish birth produced work which remains and always must remain one of the glories of Ireland. Limits of s.p.a.ce allow only the bare mention of the names of James McArdell (1728?-1765), Charles Spooner (d. 1767), Thomas Beard (fl. 1728), Thomas Frye (1710-1762), Edward Fisher (1722-1785?), Michael Ford (d. 1765), John Dixon (1740?-1811), Richard Purcell (fl. 1746-1766), Richard Houston (1721?-1775), John Murphy (1748?-1820), Thomas Burke (1749-1815), Charles Exshaw (fl.

1747-1771), and Luke Sullivan (1705-1771)--artists of whom any country might be proud, and whose works have in most cases outlasted the remembrance of the persons whose likenesses they sought to reproduce. Separate monographs might be justifiably written on most of the gifted artists here enumerated, and one can only regret not being able in short s.p.a.ce to compare and estimate their various qualities. Thomas Chambers, A.R.A. (1724?-1784), William Nelson Gardiner (1766-1814), James Egan (1799-1842), and William Humphreys (1794-1865) are other Irish engravers who cannot be overlooked in a survey of the art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Contemporaneously with the remarkable development of the art of engraving arose a group of Irish architects. Rather earlier in point of time was Sir Edward Lovat Pearce (d. 1733), who was one of the chief architects of the Irish Parliament House, and Thomas Burgh (d.

1730), to whom we owe the Library of Trinity College, Dublin; but Thomas Cooley (1740-1784), designer of the handsome Royal Exchange of that city; Richard Castle (d. 1751), a foreigner who settled in Ireland and built a number of beautiful Irish residences; Francis Johnston (1761-1829), an excellent architect whose chief claim to remembrance, however, is as founder of the Royal Hibernian Academy; and, above all, James Gandon (1743-1823), whose superb Custom House, Four Courts, and part of the Irish Parliament House will perpetuate his name in Dublin while that city lasts--each helped to make the capital, even in its decay, one of the most interesting in Europe.

Nor should we forget Thomas Ivory (d. 1786), whose Foundling Hospital is another of Dublin's many graceful edifices; nor Sir Richard Morrison (1767-1849) and his son William (1794-1838), much of whose work remains to testify to their skill and ingenuity.

Ecclesiastical architecture in Ireland is indebted to Patrick Byrne (fl. 1840), James J. McCarthy (d. 1882), J.B. Keane (d. 1859), and James Murray (1831-1863), for many well designed churches and chapels throughout Ireland; but the great names in modern Irish architecture are those of Benjamin Woodward (1815-1861), whose premature death was a serious loss to Irish art; Sir Thomas Deane (1792-1871); and his son, Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899). The elder Deane was, with Woodward, the architect of the Oxford Museum and of the splendid Engineering Hall of Trinity College, Dublin, buildings which have elicited enthusiastic praise from John Ruskin and other eminent critics. Deserving of respectful mention, too, to come down to our own days, are Sir Thomas Drew (1838-1910) and William H. Lynn, who is still living.

In sculpture, again, Ireland has done memorable work. In the eighteenth century she gave us admirable craftsmen like Edward Smyth (1749-1812), John Hickey (1756-1795), and Christopher Hewitson (fl.

1772-1794), whose dignified monument of Bishop Baldwin is one of the most distinguished pieces of sculpture in Trinity College, Dublin.

But it was not till the appearance of a later group of sculptors, including John Hogan (1800-1858), John Edward Carew (1785-1868), John Henry Foley, R.A. (1818-1874), and Patrick MacDowell, R.A.

(1799-1870), that Irish sculpture obtained more than local renown.

Fortunately, most of the best work of Hogan and Foley remains in Ireland; that of Carew and MacDowell is chiefly to be found in the Houses of Parliament and other inst.i.tutions in London. The incomparable "Goldsmith," "Burke," "Grattan," and other statues by Foley, together with an almost complete collection of casts of his other works, are in his native country. Hogan is represented in Dublin by his "Thomas Davis" and his "Dead Christ," to name but two of his princ.i.p.al works. The names at least of James Heffernan (1785-1847), of John Edward Jones (1806-1872), of Terence Farrell (1798-1876), of Samuel F. Lynn (1834-1876), and perhaps of Christopher Moore (1790-1863), an excellent sculptor of busts, may be set down here. Sir Thomas Farrell (1827-1900) and the living sculptors, John Hughes, Oliver Sheppard, and Albert Bruce Joy, are responsible for some of the more admirable of the public monuments of Dublin. It is much to be deplored that of the work of one of the greatest of Dublin-born artists, Augustus Saint Gaudens, we have only one example--the statue of Parnell. Ireland may surely claim him as one of her most gifted sons. And perhaps a word might be said in this place of some of the other Irishmen who made their home in America: of Hoban the architect who designed the White House at Was.h.i.+ngton, modelling it after Leinster House in Dublin; of painters like Charles Ingham, W.G. Wall, William Magrath, the Morans, James Hamilton, and Thomas Hovenden; and of sculptors like John Donoghue, John Flanagan, Andrew O'Connor, John F. Kelly, Jerome Connor, John J. Boyle, and Martin Milmore. But they belong rather to the history of American art than to that of Ireland.

Before leaving the subject of Irish sculpture, the work of the medallists, an allied branch of the art in which Irishmen did much valued work, should not be overlooked. The medals of William Mossop (1751-1805), of his son, William Stephen Mossop (1788-1827), and of John Woodhouse (1835-1892), to mention only three of its chief representatives in Ireland, are greatly prized by collectors.

Most modern Irish art of high importance has been largely produced out of Ireland, which has been perforce abandoned by those artists who have learned how little encouragement is to be met with at home.

One can blame neither the artist nor the Irish public for this unfortunate result; there is sufficient reason in the political and economic condition of Ireland since the Union to explain the fact.

But for this cause men like Daniel Maclise, R.A. (1806-1870), William Mulready, R.A. (1786-1863), Francis Danby, A.R.A. (1793-1861), and Alfred Elmore, R.A. (1815-1881), might have endeavored to emulate the spirit of James O'Connor (1792-1841), the landscapist, Richard Rothwell (1800-1868), a charming subject painter, and Sir Frederic W.

Burton (1816-1900), one of the most distinguished artists of his time, who at least spent some of their active working career in their native land. The same words apply to artists who succeeded in other branches of the profession, men like John Doyle (1797-1868), a caricaturist with all the power, without the coa.r.s.eness, of his predecessors; his son, Richard Doyle (1824-1883), a refined and delicate artist; John Leech (1817-1864), the humorist, a member of an Irish Catholic family; Paul Gray (1842-1866), who died before his powers had fully matured; and Matthew James Lawless (1837-1864), who also died too early. William Collins, R.A. (1788-1847) and Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. (1793-1867), both eminent representatives of English art, though of Irish extraction, more properly belong to England than to Ireland.

Not discouraged by the melancholy history of many gifted Irish artists, Ireland still produces men who are not unworthy of a.s.sociation with the best who have gone before. Our most recent losses have been heavy--notably those of Walter F. Osborne (1859-1903) and Patrick Vincent Duffy (1832-1909), but we still have artists of genius in the persons of Nathaniel Hone, a direct descendant of his famous namesake; John Butler Yeats; John Lavery, A.R.A.; and William Orpen, A.R.A. Many other names might be given, but already this attempt at a survey suffers by its enumeration of artists, who, however, could hardly be neglected in such a record.

Crowded as the list may be, it is a careful selection, and it demonstrates that, notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which Ireland suffers, the country has an almost unlimited capacity for fine achievement, and that, with prosperity and contentment, she may be expected to rival the most ill.u.s.trious of art centres. It is only within living memory that any attempt has been made to direct the known artistic skill of the Irish people to industrial effort. But the remarkable success achieved in the modern designs for Irish lace in the English art compet.i.tions is an instance of what might be done generally in the applied arts. Though they are in their infancy, the new carpet and stained gla.s.s industries in Ireland also hold out considerable hope for the future. But one can only barely indicate what has been and might be done in the furtherance of Irish art. If we only had under one roof a judiciously made collection of all the best work done by Irish artists of all styles and periods, it would more eloquently justify our claim than endless columns of praise.

REFERENCES: