process of re-construction and imagination in the Irish-Americans' commemoration of their origins.

32 In Quinn's collection one finds many depictions of the countryside by Irish artist Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917), such as *Glenmalure, County Wicklow*, described as a misty view of mountainous country, under a romantic blue sky, flecked with cirrus clouds. In the middle distance rising pasture lands of russet-brown tones, and cattle with their shepherd cloaked by a beam of sunlight. (American Art Association 97).

33 This type of landscape distanced itself from the harsh reality of peasants, focusing instead on the beauty of the Irish scenery.

<figure><img src="image_50.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5: William McEvoy, Glengariff from the Kenmare Road, Evening (1862), 71 x 132 cm.</figcaption></figure>

Source: http://www.ssothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/living-legacy-irish-art-collection-brian-p-burns-118318/lot.37.html

34 Similarly, William McEvoy's work, *Glengariff from the Kenmare Road, Evening* (1862, 71 x 132 cm), an oil on canvas which was in the collection of Brian P. Burns, illustrates the sublime scenery of the region: the foreground is plunged into darkness, while the mountains in the background are bathed in the golden light of the sunset. As noted by Catherine Marshall, the quiet atmosphere of the canvas does not allow the viewer to imagine "the plight of the Beare Peninsula that was separated from the rest of the country by the Kenmare-Glengariff road [...] during the Great Famine, just over a decade earlier." (Dalsimer 72) McEvoy's painting celebrates the beauty of Glengariff, which attracted 19th-century tourists who were looking for a picturesque destination. Here, Ireland is associated with the peaceful rhythm of rural life, a cliché which still attracts tourists from around the world.

### III. Paintings and the Recreation of the Past

35 Coming from the Greek root *stereos*, meaning solid, and *type*, referring to a printed image, stereotypes are representations of peoples which are simplistic and generalising. Walter Lippmann (1922) was the first to use this word in this way to refer to the mental images formed after reality has been perceived by your senses and your reason (Schadron). Such a definition reflects the daily work of a 19th-century genre
painter, who illustrated on a canvas his own impression of reality, often combining it
with preconceived ideas about nationalities. Commemorative artworks are no
exceptions to the rule and, generally, commemoration is even adapted to stereotypes
or conventions. As noted by Pierre Nora in *Les Lieux de mémoire*, commemoration draws
on stereotypical images:

> La mémoire s'adapte aux conventions (aux usages, aux coutumes, aux valeurs, aux stéréotypes) du groupe qui construit cette mémoire. Les gens commencent à oublier et à inclure des choses et ces transformations permettent que ce dont on se souvient soit cohérent par rapport aux stéréotypes et aux valeurs locales. (Nora 997, quoted by Morisson 145)

36 Commemoration is a transformation: it is a social construct which recreates the past, based on documents which are considered as emblems of the past, notably artworks. What is deemed memorable is often represented by artists, while what is considered shameful can be willingly erased from a country's iconography. As pointed out by Tzvetan Todorov (22-4), the commemorative function of paintings shows that they can glorify as well as obscure historical events.¹¹

37 This is why artworks are sometimes commissioned to prevent particular events from falling into oblivion, such as several sculptures financed by the Irish government in the 1990s to mark the 150th anniversary of the Famine (Morisson 137; Mark-Fitzgerald 2010: 181). In this case, the production of the artwork itself is determined by its commemorative function, so that it can be interpreted as an example of artistic reconstruction dictated by a body which wants to include the work in a public debate. It echoes David Lloyd's theory according to which history is always written by the ideological group in a position of cultural hegemony and, as a result, tends to create a homogeneous national narrative (Lloyd 23-7). The motivations for public commemoration are also based on a desire to reinforce national unity, hence the homogeneity of the historical account, because out of this unifying story can emerge a shared identity. Public commemoration participates in the construction of national identities inasmuch as it enhances the links between the members of what Benedict Anderson called an "imagined community."¹²

38 In such circumstances, there can be a significant gap between the creation of the artwork and the period represented in the artwork's specific motif, especially when it is produced more than a century later, which leaves room for a greater degree of interpretation and politically-involved recreation of the past. Valérie Morisson explains:

> Public, le monument doit illustrer l'histoire de manière explicite et être compris par tous car il est un hommage rendu au nom de la population dans sa totalité. Les artistes tendent ainsi à suivre une iconographie établie. (Morisson 142)

39 This is different from individual artistic creations resulting from first-hand experience of the Famine, in which painters were free to express their own feelings and impressions. When there is no public dimension, buyers selecting such artworks for their commemorative function put forward their own vision of the past. Exhibited in a private vault, it can be shared with others and even be transmitted. For a collector like Brian P. Burns, this is a source of motivation to buy and restore Irish paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries:

> Many of the pieces we have bought have required some work. But I am very happy about this. I feel that in restoring the work we are making an investment in the heritage of Ireland. Taking the time to have a work repaired will ensure that it will
be saved for another generation. I really believe that this is the work that the Irish diaspora can accomplish. We are returning something to the Irish culture that nourished us and sustained our people. What better gift can we bring? (Dalsimer II)

40 For Burns, 19th-century paintings evoking Irish emigration are to be handed on to future generations in order to commemorate Irish descent. Such paintings are therefore appropriate for a private form of remembrance, involving the members of a family, benefitting from a dedicated space, like a gallery in their house, in which these pictures can be exhibited.

41 Paintings can also be contemplated by several people at the same time (for instance on a day of remembrance, such as March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day), triggering a collective reaction which is part and parcel of commemoration. To favour this act of remembrance, private collectors are often willing to share their artistic treasures with the public. This is the case of Brian P. Burns, who lent his Irish collection to the Boston College Museum of Art (from January to May 1996) and then to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin (from June to August 1996) during an exhibition called "America's Eye: Irish Paintings from the Collection of Brian P. Burns." Similarly, American collectors of the 19th century agreed to make their Irish paintings available to the public, like Franklin O'Day, in Saint Louis, whose Irish roots can be guessed from his name, and who lent Erskine Nicol's canvas *Paying the Rent* (1866) for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, an international event organised in 1876 (United States Centennial Commission 38).¹³

<figure><img src="image_51.png" /><figcaption>Figure 6: Erskine Nicol, *Paying the Rent*, oil on canvas, 122 x 166 cm, 1866, private collection, USA.</figcaption></figure>

© Amélie Dochy, All rights reserved.

42 As a result, 19th-century paintings are adapted to a *private* form of commemoration, one implying a personal and intimate version of Irish history; but such family narratives can also support *public* commemoration, especially when art collectors lend their paintings to public galleries staging exhibitions to remember the past. Both the artwork and the collector thus participate in the Irish-American effort to bring the
causes of migration to light. As noted by Pierre Nora, the recreation involved in commemoration is generally collective because it is shared by a great number of people who are willing to remember the past and fuel its memory, each contributing to the building of a part of it by giving meaning to pictorial symbols.

43 Indeed, such paintings embody visual symbols of Irishness and, according to Athena S. Leoussi, this is characteristic of “national art,” which manage[s] to capture and symbolise the way of life of the so-called ‘masses’, the historico-cultural community [...] [and this] aesthetic transformation of the ethno-cultural experience into image has contributed, not only to the *prise de conscience* of this experience by its participants, but also to its celebration. (Leoussi 144)

44 National art is appropriate to the commemoration of a past event that has shaped the identity of a community. For Leoussi, “the folk, peasant community, was understood to be, not only a natural source of morality, but also the carrier and repository of the authentic character of a people.” (Leoussi 151) Painters focusing on the peasantry thus offer a dignifying and “authentic” vision of Irish character worth remembering.

45 The combined elements of this collective construction are then easily shared when they are conveyed by paintings, which is why they are privileged objects in commemoration or, to use the words of Valérie Morisson, why they “play a crucial role” in the stimulation of collective memory in the face of “traumatic events” (Morisson 145). The Great Famine can be interpreted as such a traumatic episode in Irish history, and paintings are thus helpful means of expression through which to get over such trauma. Yet, a century after the Famine, there was an obvious absence of commemoration in Ireland:

> the failure of the 1940s generation to foreground the Famine anniversary was increasingly characterized as ‘silence’, ‘repression’, or ‘amnesia’ in the wake of a profoundly traumatic cultural memory. (Mark-Fitzgerald 2013: 61)

46 Contrary to what had happened in 1945, the 150th anniversary of the Famine in the 1990s generated a “surge of interest in Famine History and memory” as noted by Emily Mark-Fitzgerald (2005: 184), and this renewed attention was echoed on the other side of the Atlantic by Irish-Americans who, like Brian P. Burns, took the commemoration of the Famine as a chance to reassert their Irish heritage. It is not surprising that as an art collector Burns lent his collection to the Boston Museum of Art in 1996, when commemoration of the Famine was centre stage, both in Ireland and in the United States (Mark-Fitzgerald 2013: 60). According to Mary Kelly,

> exhuming the horrors of hunger and exile required the safety net of time and distance, and it was only at the point when its negative associations could no longer undermine Irish-American progress that the episode’s legacy was openly confronted. (Kelly XVIII).

47 Commemoration includes the individual affection for art objects which trigger feelings of belonging, allowing the collector to connect to his or her family history. It also refers to the simplification of history which occurs whenever a national representation is called on to celebrate an event. There is no necessary contradiction between these two aspects: by allowing an individual to feel part of a diasporic community, 19th-century paintings also enhance a sense of national attachment. Thus, 19th-century paintings collected by Irish-Americans nourish the collective memory and reconstruct history, inasmuch as they consolidate the unifying dimension that is a characteristic of national representations. This is why such private forms of remembrance have complemented official celebrations in the construction of a diasporic memory.
48

A painting dating back to the 19th-century and representing Ireland thus functions like a metonymy: it is part of the past, having been made by a painter who witnessed Irish emigration, and it stands for the past, because it suggests so much more to the observer: beyond the sense of national belonging, it is a means of enabling the viewer not to forget his or her origins, and to express a nostalgia for an imagined rural mode of existence. Ireland is often depicted as a garden of Eden from which Irish peasants were chased away because of land mismanagement. 19th-century paintings are helpful in conveying and sustaining this inspiring narrative accounting for displacement, especially in America, where tens of thousands of Irishmen, women and children found a place to live, and fuelled the memory of their Irish ancestry for future generations of Irish-Americans.

# BIBLIOGRAPHY

## Artworks

- Brenan, James. *Letter from America*. oil on canvas. 81.5 x 91 cm, 1875. Crawford Art Gallery: Cork.

- Brenan, James. *The Finishing Touch*. oil on canvas. 64 x 76 cm, 1876. Private Collection.

- Brenan, James. *The Village Scribe*. oil on canvas. 29 x 24 cm, 1881. Collection of Brian P. Burns.

- Hone, Nathaniel. *Glenmalure, County Wicklow*. oil on canvas. 61 x 101.5 cm, undated.

- Mahoney, James. *Bridget O'Donnell and her two children*. Black and white engraving. *The Illustrated London News*, 22 December 1849: 404.

- McEvoy, William. *Glengariff from the Kenmare Road, Evening*. oil on canvas. 71 x 132 cm, 1862. Collection of Brian P. Burns.

- Nairn, George. *Knight of Tara*. oil on canvas. 65 x 89 cm, 1843. Collection of Brian P. Burns.

- Nicol, Erskine. *Paying the Rent*. oil on canvas. 122 x 166 cm, 1866. Private collection, USA.

- Nicol, Erskine. *A Disputed Boundary*. oil painting. 137 x 183 cm, 1865/9. Picture from the Frick Library, New York.

- Nicol, Erskine. *The Renewal of the Lease Refused*. oil on canvas. 93.5 x 72.5 cm, 1868. Private Collection.

- Nicol, Erskine. *Signing the New Lease*. oil on canvas. 122 x 93.5 cm, c. 1868. New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, England.

- Nicol, Erskine. *Waiting at the Crossroads*. oil painting. 71 x 105 cm, 1868. Picture from the Frick Library, New York.

- Yeats, Jack B. *Washing the Circus Horses*. Watercolour. 25.5 x 35.5 cm, undated.
## Nineteenth-century publications

Anonymous. "The Art Gallery; A List of the Pictures in Mr. Stewart's Collection; Works Valued at over Six Hundred Thousand Dollars." *The New York Times*, 12 April 1876: 8.

Anonymous. "Royal Scottish Academy's Exhibition; First Notice." *The Scotsman*. Edinburgh, 18 February 1869: 6.

Anonymous. "Sale of Water-colours and Modern Pictures." *The Scotsman*, 13 April 1891: 3.

American Art Association. *Paintings and Sculptures, The Renowned Collection of [...] John Quinn*. New York: American Art Association, 1927.

United States Centennial Commission. *Official Catalogue of the International Exhibition, Seventh and Revised Edition*. Philadelphia: J. R. Nagle & Co., 1876, 4 parts, part 2: "Art Gallery, Annexes and Outdoor Works of Art."

## Secondary sources

Anbinder, Tyler. "From Famine to Five Points." *American Historical Review* (April 2002): 351-387.

Anderson, Benedict. *Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism*. London & New York: Verso, 1990 [1983].

Barrell, John, *The Dark Side of the Landscape, The Rural Poor in English Painting 1730-1840*. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980.

Barthes, Roland. "L'Effet de réel." *Communications* 11 (1968): 84-9. DOI: 10.3406/comm.1968.1158

Benjamin, Walter. *The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, And other Writings on Media*. Ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, Thomas Y. Levin. Harvard UP, 2008 [1939].

Byrne, James P. "Cultural Memory, Identity and Irish-American Nostalgia." *Memory Ireland*, vol. 2: *Diaspora and Memory Practices*. Ed. Oona Frawley. Syracuse [New York]: Syracuse UP, 2012. 49-60.

Dalsimer, Adele, and Vera Kreilkamp eds. *America's Eye: Irish Paintings from the Collection of Brian P. Burns*. Boston: Boston College Museum of Art, 1996.

Draznin, Yaffa Claire. *Victorian London's Middle-Class Housewife*. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Dunne, W. M. P. "An Irish Immigrant Success Story." *The New England Quarterly* 65:2 (June 1992): 284-90.

Goodman, Nelson. *Languages of Art*. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1976.

Gray, Peter. *La Famine en Irlande*. Paris: Gallimard, 1995.

Higgins, Roisín. "Projections and Reflections: Irishness and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Easter Rising." *Éire-Ireland*, 42:3-4 (Fall-Winter 2007): 11-34.

Higgins, Roisín. *Transforming 1916: Meaning, Memory and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Easter Rising*. Cork: Cork UP, 2012.

Kelly, Mary. *Ireland's Great Famine in Irish American History: Enshrining a Fateful Memory*. Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, 2014.

Leoussi, Athena S., "The Ethno-Cultural Roots of National Art." *Nations and Nationalism*, 10: 1/2 (2004): 143-59.

Lloyd, David. *Ireland after History*. Notre Dame [USA] & Cork: U. of Notre Dame P. & Cork UP, 1999.
Mark Fitzgerald, Emily. "Pathos and Paddywhackery: Erskine Nicol and the painting of the Irish Famine." *Beyond the Anchoring Grounds: More Cross-Currents in Irish and Scottish Studies*. Ed. Shane Alcobia-Murphy, *et al*. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, 2005, 184-96.

Mark Fitzgerald, Emily. "The 'Irish Holocaust', Historical Trauma and the Commemoration of the Famine." *Visual Politics of Psychoanalysis: Art and the Image in Post-Traumatic Cultures*. Ed. Griselda Pollock. London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013, 60-76.

Mark Fitzgerald, Emily. "Towards a Famine Art History: Invention, Reception, and Repetition from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth." *Ireland's Great Hunger: Relief, Representation, and Remembrance*. Vol. 2. Ed. David A. Valone. Lanham & Plymouth: UP of America, 2010, 181-202.

Miller, Kerby. *Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America*. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.

Morehouse, Frances. "The Irish Migration of the Forties." *The American Historical Review* 33:3 (April 1928): 579-92.

Morisson, Valérie. "Évocations de la Famine dans l'art contemporain irlandais: une relecture de l'histoire." *Histoire et mémoire en France et en Irlande*. Ed. Sylvie Mikowski. Reims: Épure, 2010, 137-60.

Murray, Peter. "Representations of Ireland in the *Illustrated London News*." *Whipping the Herring, Survival and Celebration in Nineteenth-Century Irish Art*. Ed. Peter Murray. Cork: Crawford Art Gallery and Gandon Editions, 2006. 231-253.

Nora, Pierre. *Les Lieux de mémoire*, t. 3 *Les France, L'ère de la commémoration*. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.

Potterton, Homan, "Jack B. Yeats and John Quinn." *Irish Arts Review Yearbook* 9 (1993): 102-14.

Pricket, Stephen. *Modernity and the Reinvention of Tradition*. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012 [2009].

Reid, Benjamin Lawrence. *The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends*. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1968.

Salamone, Franck A. "Kennedy Family." *Class in America, An Encyclopædia*, vol. 2 (H-P). Ed. Robert E. Weir. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2007, 418-23.

Schadron, Georges. "De la naissance d'un stéréotype à son internalisation." *Discrimination: Perspectives de la psychologie sociale et de la sociologie*. Vols. 10-11 (2006). https://journals.openedition.org/urmis/220

Todorov, Tzvetan. *L'Éloge de l'Individu*. Paris: A. Biro, 2000.

Trilling, Lionel. *Sincerity and Authenticity*. Cambridge & London: Harvard UP, 1972.

## Radio Programme

Chassaigne, Philippe. "Des Migrants en nombre immense: le cas de l'Irlande." *Concordance des temps*, dir. Jean-Noël Jeanneney. *France Culture*, 3 October 2015. https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/concordance-des-temps/des-migrants-en-nombre-immense-le-cas-de-l-irlande

## NOTES

1. Tyler Anbinder mentions the marquis of Lansdowne, who lived in England (in Bowood) but who possessed 95,000 acres in various parts of West Kerry and whose estate agent, William
Trench, organised the emigration of 1,700 tenants to America between December 1850 and March 1851. Thus, a boat departed from Cork every week, with about 200 passengers on board, who could choose to land in New York, Boston, New Orleans or Quebec (Anbinder 352, 357, 365).

2. The boats were not adapted for the transport of travellers, earning the notorious name of “coffin ships.” For example, *The Virginius* departed from Liverpool in May 1847 with 476 passengers on board, of whom 158 died during the journey, while 106 had contracted typhus before reaching Quebec (Chassaigne). However, in the 1850s, legislation was introduced to remedy the worst excesses of such transport, significantly decreasing the death rate of migrants travelling to America.

3. Similarly, in New York, boats carrying migrants were quarantined in Staten Island (Gray 109).

4. The family farm was located near New Ross (Salamone 418-9).

5. I would like to thank Suz Massen and Elizabeth Lane, who both work at the Frick Library in New York, for their generous help in my research about Erskine Nicol’s paintings entitled *Waiting at the Crossroads* and *A Disputed Boundary*.

6. This was already true for nineteenth-century art collectors, as was underlined by Julian Treuherz: “though [the viewers] wanted to be touched, they did not want to be pained.” (Quoted by Mark Fitzgerald 2005: 187).

7. Nelson Goodman writes: “The plain fact is that a picture, to represent an object, must be a symbol for it, stand for it, refer to it; and that no degree of resemblance is sufficient to establish the requisite relationship of reference. Nor is resemblance necessary for reference, almost anything may stand for almost anything else. A picture that represents—like a passage that describes—an object refers to, and, more particularly, denotes it. Denotation is the core of representation and is independent of resemblance.” (Goodman 5)

8. Protestants from Ireland came to the US at the beginning of the 18th century, in the wake of the 1704 legislation which excluded non Anglicans from public office with expensive leases. However, these migrants who came from Ireland to the USA before the Famine tried to distance themselves from those they called the “Famine Irish.” Nicknamed the Scotch-Irish, because they were descendants of Presbyterians from Ulster, they tended to insist on their American heritage rather than on their Irish ancestry (Miller 156).

9. This is a comment made by the editors in the catalogue of Burns' Collection: "With horses of his own that race in the Curragh in County Clare [sic, Kildare?], Burns had a particular fondness for [Knight of Tara], demonstrating the keen reverence of the Irish for the horse." (Dalsimer II)

10. American Art Association (72). See also Homan Potterton (102-114) and Reid (4).

11. Todorov gives the example of the face of Geta, which was rubbed out of the Severan Tondo, a circular portrait of Septimius Severus' family (AD 200), because he was assassinated by Caracalla who, once in power, attempted to erase any trace of his late brother's existence.

12. “The nation [...] is an imagined political community [...] because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” (Anderson 15)

13. I would like to thank Janell Snape (Bonham's, San Francisco) for her great help in finding a picture of the painting.
## ABSTRACTS

This article explores the ways in which 19th-century paintings collected by Americans of Irish descent complement the official celebrations aimed at commemorating the Irish diaspora in the United States. It shows how these paintings are usually selected by art collectors for their authenticity, a quality often associated with artworks conveying stereotypes about Irishness as well as some nostalgia for the homeland. By exhibiting such images, an individual presents his own vision of the past and this private form of remembrance is likely to participate in the construction of a cultural identity in the collective imagination, especially when the collector lends his paintings to a public gallery. Thus, these pictorial symbols of Irishness may move from the private to the public sphere, so that they can enhance the sense of national identity deriving from a commemoration organised by the state.

Cet article montre comment les tableaux du dix-neuvième siècle collectionnés par certains Américains d'origine irlandaise complètent les cérémonies officielles visant à commémorer la diaspora irlandaise aux États-Unis. Il souligne que ces tableaux sont souvent sélectionnés par les collectionneurs pour leur authenticité, une qualité généralement associée aux peintures véhiculant des stéréotypes à propos de l'Irlandité ou une certaine nostalgie pour le pays d'origine. En exposant de telles images, un individu présente sa propre vision du passé et ce souvenir personnel tend à participer à la construction d'une identité culturelle dans l'imagination collective, en particulier lorsque le collectionneur prête ses peintures à une galerie publique. Ainsi, ces symboles picturaux de l'Irlandité passent du domaine privé à la sphère publique, de façon à mettre en valeur une définition de l'identité nationale qui se dégage habituellement des commémorations organisée par l'État.

## INDEX

**Mots-clés:** commémoration, peinture, Irlandité, souvenirs personnels et familiaux, communauté nationale, stéréotypes, nostalgie

**Keywords:** commemoration, painting, Irishness, private remembrance, national community, stereotypes, nostalgia

## AUTHOR

AMELIE DOCHY

Maître de Conférences, Agrégée d'anglais, Phd. Irish Studies, 19th century, English Department, University of Toulouse II. Contact: amelie.dochy[at]univ-tlse2.fr