The Irish in the nineteenth century: colonized, caricatured...and conquerors?

Such is the vision offered by the exhibition 'Conquering England': Ireland in Victorian London at the National Portrait Gallery (London). This small exhibition, its title drawn from George Bernard Shaw's observation on the success of the Irish in scaling the cultural and political heights of Victorian London, presents an intriguing and unusual perspective on the contentious relationship between the two countries.

Co-curators Roy Foster and Fintan Cullen, known for their vigorous, iconoclastic accounts of Irish history and art history, stay true to form with this exhibition. There is a consciousness running throughout the show that this is a version of Irish history often lost in the crude stereotypes and excessive sentimentalism more familiar to audiences of Victorian art. As Foster notes in his contribution to the catalogue, "some thought should be spared for the Irish middle class... less immediately glamorous than Fenian revolutionaries or decayed Anglo-Irish ascendancy, less affecting than Land League agitators or heroic emigrants." Foster and Cullen's selection of a broad range of material, diverse in both subject and media and much of it seldom exhibited, seeks to grant the viewer a fuller picture of the complexities of Irish identity in a Victorian context.

The paintings, cartoons, photographs, and other ephemera forming the exhibition depict a vibrant Irish presence embodied in the personalities of the day; unsurprisingly it is the portraits that are the stars of the show. While the usual cast of illustrious characters are well represented (Charles Stewart Parnell, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, etc.), the works include several surprising and moving images of relative unknowns. Ford Madox Brown's The Irish girl (1860) glimmers with its shock of crimson and intimate scale. The subject's hair takes on a life of its own, quintessentially romantic, yet counterbalanced with the girl's pensive, warily modern expression. Likewise Julia Margaret Cameron's photograph of her servant girl and model Mary Ryan as The Irish immigrant (1856-6) sustains the image of the romantic and sensually depicted Irish female, simultaneously primeval and angelic.

Ford Madox Brown: The Irish girl, 1860; © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund; courtesy National Portrait Gallery

These images fascinate as artworks and historical pieces, further emphasizing the curators' intent to uncover unknown spheres of Irish influence. These include the role of women in cultural life as artistic models and critics, which is the focus of Cullen's essay in the exhibition catalogue and the most original contribution of the show to Irish art history. While the show succeeds in giving a new voice to women and acknowledging their significance in London Irish society, the relentlessly historical focus doesn't always do justice to the artistic contribution made by the Irish during this period. Indeed, of the three sections of the exhibition ('Literature and Journalism', 'Politics', and 'Visual Arts'), the 'Visual Arts' is weakest. Only two significant Irish painters' work (Daniel Maclise and John Lavery) features in this section, and both portraits only hint at the powers available to these artists. Sculpture is virtually omitted, save for a small maquette by John Henry Foley. The curators may also assume too much familiarity on the part of the viewer with the identity of Irish artists. While Yeats, O'Connell, and Wilde are probably known even to casual observers, can the same really be said for William Mulready, Foley, or even Maclise and Lavery? Victorian Irish visual art has never reached the level of recognition of Irish literature or drama (some would say deservedly), and given the exhibition's reliance on visual material perhaps a more detailed context is wanting.

The tendency to focus on works for their historical and social value also leads to some odd inclusions, like Robert Kelly's An ejectment in Ireland (a tear and a prayer for Erin) (1847-8). No doubt added as a recognition of the impact of the Famine on Ireland during Victoria's reign, the painting sits uncomfortably with the other works on show, inferior as an artwork and not contextualized within the fashion for eviction pictures in the late 19th century. The accompanying wall label and catalogue text discuss the work as an "Irish political piece," but fail to make the important point such images are as highly constructed and theatrical as Nicholas Crowley's Tyrone Power as Connor O'Gorman in the Groves of Blarney (1838), which features later as an example of Irish stage drama's popularity.

Despite these deficiencies the remaining two sections sparkle. 'Politics' captures the lively personalities of politicos from O'Connell to Parnell, with a haunting posthumous portrait of the latter by Sydney Prior Hall that vividly conveys the frustration and deepening despair of the man in his last years. Cartoons and caricatures sit alongside formal portraits, and although the nastier and more vicious Irish political stereotypes are absent here, the work of Harry Furniss and Hall effectively depicts the informal and often raucous world of parliamentary wrangling.

'Literature and Journalism' rounds out the exhibition and reaffixes the long shadow cast by Irish writers on Irish cultural identity since the nineteenth century. Culminating in the omnipresent W.B. Yeats and Shaw, this section reaps the rewards of dedicated archival research, and makes full use of the abundant ephemera (handbills, posters, and photographs) that provide visual muscle to match oft-flexed literary might. Savoury examples include a beautifully spare, art nouveau line portrait of Yeats by Althea Gyles (1899) and the commanding, evocatively lit photograph of Shaw by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1904) with his gaze yet fixed on worlds to conquer. The humour and panache which marks the writings of both curators here too surfaces, in their selection of a deadly earnest photograph of Yeats from The Tatler of 1904, posed in his meticulously arranged study festooned with William Blake engravings and Dante's death mask. Deflating Yeats' calculated self-image is the page which faces him in the magazine, featuring syrupy photos of a Mr. Alfred de Rothschild's prized 'Jap spaniels', including a head shot of one dog: 'Judy, the prettiest of geishas'.

The exhibition is not an exhaustive review of the Irish in Victorian London, but the limited gallery space available is utilised effectively by hanging small pictures and excavating a wide range of visual material not limited to 'fine art'. By sidelining more familiar negative representations of the Irish in the 1800s in favour of middle and upper class 'conquerors', it also subverts the dominant public perception of the relations between the two islands. While it may be argued that as a stand-alone, this exhibition runs the risk of glossing one of the most turbulent periods of Irish history, as a supplement it makes for fascinating viewing, and offers a nuanced account that persuasively recounts the contradictions of being Irish in London, and the reciprocal potential of the colonial relationship.

Emily Mark is an art historian based in Dublin.

Conquering England, National Portrait Gallery, London, March - June 2005

Article reproduced from CIRCA 113, Autumn 2005, pp.88-89
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