# Éimear O'Connor, Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora: Chicago, Dublin, New York, 1893-1939. Culture, Connections, and Controversies

Amélie Dochy

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OpenEdition
Journals

## Édition électronique

URL : https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/13579

DOI : 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.13579

ISSN : 2259-8863

## Éditeur

Presses universitaires de Caen

## Édition imprimée

Date de publication : 15 décembre 2022

Pagination : 143-145

ISBN : 978-2-38185-180-8

ISSN : 0183-973X

## Référence électronique

Amélie Dochy, « Éimear O'Connor, Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora: Chicago, Dublin, New York, 1893-1939. Culture, Connections, and Controversies », Études irlandaises [En ligne], 47-2 | 2022, mis en ligne le 08 novembre 2022, consulté le 12 octobre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/13579 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.13579

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BOOK REVIEWS

Éimear O’Connor, *Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora: Chicago, Dublin, New York, 1893-1939. Culture, Connections, and Controversies*, Newbridge, Irish Academic Press, 2020, 380 p.

Éimear O’Connor is an Irish art historian who has written on Seán Keating or Irish women artists before publishing with Irish Academic Press this volume in 380 pages entitled *Art, Ireland and the Irish Diaspora* (2020). Rewarded with the McCaffrey prize in America, it studies the cultural relationships between Ireland and the United States in 333 pages, followed by endnotes (p. 334-361), witnessing the research done in the press, but also in public and private archives. Indeed, the book refers to rare documents, such as two photographs of the display elaborated in 1906 for Lady Aberdeen’s Irish Lace Depot (p. 35, 38), or intimate letters exchanged by Lady Gregory and John Quinn (p. 45, 149). The reader will also enjoy the unpublished drawings illustrated here, like Michael Scott’s designs for an Irish Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair of 1939 (p. 312-314). A list of these illustrations is provided (p. 362-367), as well as a select bibliography (p. 368-372) and a helpful index (p. 373-380). The volume starts in 1893, with the World’s Columbian Exposition of Chicago and its two Irish villages (p. 16-31), and it ends in 1939, with World War II. More precisely, the time span is divided into four sections.

The first, covering the period 1893-1907, portrays Alice Hart (1848-1931) and Lady Aberdeen (1857-1939), who promoted Irish crafts from the 1880s onwards. They both supported Home Rule (p. 4-31), contrary to Horace Plunkett (1854-1932), who founded the Agricultural Organisations Society in 1894, and the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI) in 1899, in order to modernise Irish agriculture (p. 33-36, 253-254). Painters also wished to revive the Irish economy and culture, such as James Brenan (1837-1907) or George Russell (1867-1935), aka AE (p. 37-41, 254-255). AE was a friend of John Quinn’s (1870-1924), an American lawyer who acted as a bridge between Ireland and America as he purchased pictures by Nathaniel Hone, John and Jack Yeats (p. 103-104), organised exhibitions of Irish art (p. 46, 63) but also supported the Cuala Industries, launched by Susan and Elizabeth Yeats (p. 45). He also invited their brother and poet William to tour America in 1903 (p. 46, 151-155). At the end of the first part, O’Connor sums up the universal exhibitions held in Ireland (p. 48-50), thus putting into context the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition of 1904 (p. 52-53). It was followed by the Dublin International Exhibition of 1907 (p. 72), where industries were put forward along Irish arts, including Mildred Anne Butler’s (1858-1951) “Curiosity”, reproduced on the back cover of the book (p. 76-85). In the same show, the Women’s National
Health Organisation of Lady Aberdeen had a stall explaining how to cure tuberculosis (p. 35-38, 87, 255-257). So, this first part demonstrates that such international events aimed at improving health conditions, but also economic networks that would trigger a cultural, industrial and agrarian renewal in Ireland (p. 65).

The second section, ranging from 1907 to 1924, plunges the reader into the Irish Exhibition of 1908 organised by Patrick T. Power in New York, to which John Quinn lent many works and where the textiles of Evelyn Gleeson's Dún Emer could be seen, next to those of the Cuala Industries (p. 92-98). The time was that of modernism, introduced in Ireland in 1884 at the Dublin Sketching Club, with pictures by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), and in other shows such as Modern Paintings in 1899, with canvasses from Europe (p. 98-102). Hugh Lane (1875-1915) also helped such paintings circulate in Ireland, and he was equally involved in the promotion of Irish contemporary artists such as John Yeats, William Orpen (1878-1931), Augustus John (1878-1961) or Gerald Festus Kelly (1879-1971) (p. 105, 109-120). The life and unfortunate death of Hugh Lane, ruining his project for an Irish gallery of modern art, is also developed (p. 51, 57, 107-108, 142-146, 253). It is true that "post-modernist" pictures caused controversies, noticeably in the eyes of AE (p. 118), lamenting the absence of a specific Irish school (p. 98), or of the visitors to the Armory Exhibition in New York (1913), who wondered where the sitter could be in Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase (p. 120-124). Cubism, fauvism and futurism are here discussed (p. 124-127), with a focus on Michael Power O'Malley (1877-1946) (p. 128-132, 174-176). 1913 was also marked by Lady Gregory's tour in America with the Abbey Theatre (p. 136-138, 252-253) and, in Ireland, by the "Dublin Lockout", described in a letter by Maud Gonne, that O'Connor found in New York (p. 138-139). The passage brings to light the author's feat as she underlines the role of women in art and history, while relating cultural, political and economic spheres throughout the book. There are other interesting references to the Easter Rising (p. 140-141), the Great War and the loss of Robert Gregory in 1918 (p. 148-150), the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in 1921, and the ensuing Civil War (1922-1923). Such events impacted Irish arts, while in the 1920s, its various actors were trying to rebuild a post-colonial identity (p. 150-160), especially in the works of May Guinness (1893-1955), Mainie Jellet (1897-1944), Evie Hone (1894-1955) and Albert Gleizes (1881-1953) (p. 158-165).

The third section, covering the period 1923-1935, corresponds to a time of relative peace allowing companies to develop, such as the Gorry Gallery, the United Arts Club (p. 168) or the Brick Row Bookshop, which was founded in 1915 in Dublin but moved to New York under the impulse of Helen and Edmund B. Hackett (p. 171-173). In 1926, Helen opened her own art gallery (p. 174-182, 244), thus fuelling the Irish Revival in New York, which included figures such as writer Patrick Colum (1881-1972) or painters Patrick Tuohy (1894-1930), Dermod O'Brien (1865-1945), Margaret Clarke (1884-1961), Séan Keating (1889-1977), AE or Paul Henry (1876-1958) (p. 183-188). Crowned with success, Helen travelled to Ireland in 1929 to meet artists there and her unpublished diary is disclosed by
O'Connor (p. 193-234). On her return, Hackett continued to exhibit pictures from Ireland until 1935 (p. 235-250, 328). Her success inspired Patrick Farrell, who opened his Irish Theatre and Art Rooms in New York in 1930 – a space where he showed pictures, staged Irish plays, and offered tea to his visitors (p. 244-252, 329).

The last section, ranging from 1931 to 1939, emphasises that, despite the will to modernise Irish identity, most images of the country were still bucolic and designed to attract tourists. Even in the film by Robert Flaherty called *Man of Aran* (1934), this sentimental imagery is echoed (p. 262, 268-303). Likewise, at the Chicago Century Progress Exhibition of 1933, private investors in America erected an Irish village when the Dublin government refused to do so, given its colonial connotations (p. 264-267). This leads O'Connor to claim that “the Irish-American expatriate community [...] were [...] more Irish than the Irish in terms of their allegiance to myth and nostalgia” (p. 267). Nostalgia was indeed marketable (p. 303-308). Similarly, at the New York World's Fair of 1939, Ireland was represented in a building in the form of a shamrock (p. 304, 312-315): this was another cliché contrasting with Seán Keating's mural showing the country's first aeroplane, a hydroelectric plant, or a concrete manufacture (p. 313-317, 327) – a painting about innovation which is reproduced on the cover of the book (p. 318-325). Finally, O'Connor stresses that Irish censorship was an impediment to artistic creation (p. 330-331), so that she concludes on the crucial role that a government can play in supporting its national arts (p. 333). In her turn, O'Connor participates here in highlighting various forms of Irish art and her reader can only be impressed by her encyclopaedic knowledge, in the service of Irish culture and its reputation around the world.

Amélie DOCHY

Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès

Bertrand Cardin, *Neil Jordan écrivain-scénariste. L'imaginaire de la transgression*, Oxford – New York, P. Lang, 2021, 297 p.

*Neil Jordan écrivain-scénariste. L'imaginaire de la transgression* est une invitation au voyage. Dès les premières lignes, nous sommes plongés dans le décor de la côte nord-ouest de l'Irlande où planent mystères et légendes. Ces premières lignes sont à l'image de l'œuvre littéraire de Neil Jordan que Bertrand Cardin nous fait découvrir.

L'auteur s'inquiète du fait que le réalisateur (d'une vingtaine de films), scénariste (de quatorze films), nouvelliste et romancier (neuf ouvrages) depuis plus de quatre décennies soit exclu du monde littéraire irlandais en raison de ses succès à Hollywood. Une production artistique double, qui ne fait pas l'objet d'une reconnaissance équivalente. Aussi s'efforce-t-il, à raison, de lui rendre justice par l'examen et l'interprétation de son œuvre littéraire, sans par ailleurs ignorer son activité cinématographique.