Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
In the Lion's Den: Daniel Macdonald, Ireland and Empire

In the Lion's Den: Daniel Macdonald, Ireland and Empire

O'Sullivan, Niamh

Paperback

Art HistoryEuropean ArtBritish History

Publisher Price: $35.00

ISBN10: 0990468682
ISBN13: 9780990468684
Publisher: Cork University Press
Published: Feb 28 2016
Pages: 140
Weight: 1.70
Height: 0.50 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.90
Language: English
In 1847, in the British Institution, there hung a harrowing painting 'An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of their Store', the first and the last known contemporaneous painting of the Great Irish Famine. The painter was Daniel Macdonald (1820-1853), a young Irish artist recently arrived in London.



Niamh O'Sullivan's fascinating book reveals compelling new subtexts to the work of Macdonald and re-establishes him as a painter of national importance; it also sheds original light on the social and visual culture of Ireland in the years leading up to and including the Famine. Themes rarely visited by Irish artists - rural agitation, superstition and folklore, as well as aspects of the national character - were given spirited treatment by Macdonald who insinuated such subject matter in to the salons of metropolitan London, to venues distinctly hostile to Irish poverty, hunger and violence.



Simultaneously courted by the aristocracy and loyal to his roots in Cork, his responses to the conditions in which he grew up are part of how he became an artist of distinction. This story has not been told before. Macdonald was the subject of an exhibition in Ireland's Great Hunger Museum, and is undergoing a major re-evaluation as an artist. This critical biography is essential reading for anyone interested in Irish art and history.

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