Ireland in Schools

 

Interpreting the Norman intervention in Ireland - further details

A 19th century Irish nationalist view (PowerPoint) of the twelfth-century Norman
intervention in Ireland and a Norman view of the Irish. 

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Tudor stereotypes - further details: pdf  images

An Irish chieftain, MacSweeney, feasting out of doors - a typical ‘booley’ setting.
Here the chieftain is on a hunting expedition eating out of doors with no knives or
forks. The scene is rather chaotic, with entertainments, cooking and butchering
going on at the same time. Two individuals are also warming their backsides against
the cold!

Protestant propaganda & the 1614 rising - further details

Sir John Temple's illustrated History of the Irish Rebellion was perhaps the most
lurid of the sensationalist works of propaganda produced in the aftermath of the rising.
The allegation that the rising was a premeditated plot to exterminate the Protestant
population, and the wild exaggeration of the numbers killed, helped legitimize the
sequestration of Catholic land in the Adventurers’ Act and Cromwellian land settlement.

 

The main painting from the late 19th century (Evicted by Lady Butler, 1890, University
College, Dublin) hows how Irish art had changed since the Famine years
Evicted constitutes a new direction in Irish rural art. Portraying the after-effects of the
destruction of the peasant woman's cabin, the beauty of the landscape (the Wicklow
hills) complements the plight of the inhabitants. 'She too is a victim of historic
exploitation, with no rights over the land she inhabits.'

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Easter rising - further details (PowerPoint)

Perhaps the most striking of the Art of 1916 is the Easter Lily by Nigel Rolfe, 1994, in
the centre of the collage.
The image of the lily, a symbol of the Rising with its connotations of death and
resurrection, had been appropriated by Sinn Fein and sold in flag form to raise funds.
Rolfe's time exposure sets out to reappropriate the image both historically and culturally.
Photographed over six hours on Easter Friday 1994, the changing light sweeping over
the white lily creates its own colour effects.
For Rolfe the flower, no longer a pure white, symbolises a sense of spiritual loss;
the concept of freedom, at the heart of the Easter.

'The troubles' - further details (PowerPoint)

Rita Duffy,The Marley Funeral,1989, charcoal on paper At the funeral of IRA member Lawrence Marley, the RUC saturated the area and refused to allow the remains to leave the Marley home until the Irish tricolour was removed from the coffin.