Introduction
A new phase in the long history of combining texts with images began around 1830, initiating a highly creative period in European publishing that lasted into the early 20th century. This exhibition is devoted to Irish artists who were involved with book illustration in the era that is now recognised as the heyday of European book and periodical illustration.
The rise in both spending power and literacy led to new demands for printed material. Publishers catered for an ever-widening market, supplying cheap editions as well as luxurious productions. Illustrations appeared alongside poems, in novels and travel books, on broadsheets and even in national school text-books. Many of the finest publications of the period were enhanced with specially commissioned images. Sometimes this involved a return to older processes using hand-cut plates or blocks to reproduce illustrations, but technology became increasingly important, speeding up and streamlining book production.
Charles Dickens The chimes: a goblin story, of some bells that rang an old year out and a new year in
Illustrated by Daniel Maclise and others
London, 1845
OLS B-10-633
The chimes was one of Dickens’s Christmas books, works published specially for the seasonal market, and the first of three with which Maclise was involved. His frontispiece and title-page image gave prominence to Maclise’s work. The text contains eleven more illustrations by three other contributors, the illustrators John Leech and Richard Doyle and the painter Clarkson Stanfield. In Maclise’s designs the fantasy elements of Dickens’s subject allowed the artist some imaginative freedom.
Walter Thornbury Historical & legendary ballads & songs
Illustrated by Mathew J. Lawless and others
London, 1876
Gall.RR.31.9
Mathew Lawless’s connection with the Langham Art Club in London brought him into contact with established illustrators whose numbers he soon joined. He worked mostly for periodicals but also contributed to books. Lawless died in 1864 aged 27 but his work was of sufficient merit and appeal to be reused in various later publications. In the present work his illustrations appeared alongside designs by J.M. Whistler, John Tenniel and other well-known artists and illustrators of the day.
Elizabeth Corbet Yeats Brushwork studies of flowers, fruit, and animals
Illustration by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats
London, 1898
Yeats 178
Elizabeth C. Yeats trained as a teacher in the Froebel system of education in the 1890s. During her period of instruction, she developed a method of teaching painting techniques to young children and produced a series of painting manuals. Brushwork studies was intended both for teachers and for advanced students. Her primary aim was that students should look to nature and paint their observations as accurately as possible. The original designs were executed in watercolour and the chromolithographic printing process accurately conveys Yeats’s colours.
William Bates (ed.) A gallery of illustrious literary characters, 1830-1838
Illustrated by Daniel Maclise
London, [1873]
Gall.O.25.29
This image, a group caricature entitled 'The Fraserians', is from a volume that contains portraits and biographical sketches that were originally published in Fraser’s Magazine, then edited by Maclise’s fellow Corkman, William McGinn. Maclise came into the social and intellectual circle around Fraser’s soon after he arrived in London in 1827. He contributed 81 portrait drawings to the magazine, some of them tinged with satire. Maclise’s precise, linear style of pen drawing was well suited to reproduction. The image was first published in Fraser's Magazine, vol. XI, January 1835.
This exhibition was curated by Dr Angela Griffith and Dr Philip McEvansoneya, both from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin in collaboration with the Early Printed Books Department, Trinity College Dublin.