page_title: John O'Hanlon (writer)
section_title: Interest in Art
hierarchical_section_title: John O'Hanlon (writer) / Interest in Art
caption_attribution_description: English: w:Moycreddin lower cemetery, sketched in August 1874 by Rev. John Canon O'Hanlon
context_page_description: The Very Reverend John Canon O'Hanlon MRIA was an Irish Catholic priest, scholar and writer who also published poetry and illustrations, and involved himself in Irish politics. He is best known as a folklorist and a hagiographer, and in particular for his comprehensive Lives of the Irish Saints.
context_section_description: In addition to his other achievements, O'Hanlon was a competent illustrator, with a particular interest in recording local topographical features. 
  128 of the illustrations in his Lives of the Irish Saints (about one fifth of the total) were made by O'Hanlon himself. O'Hanlon was a strong believer in the importance of topography, or the study of place, which is evident in his praise of the Ordnance Survey, for whom he advocated a government grant to employ artists to record local features. In his own drawings and his use of drawings by others he showed a clear concern to record visual antiquarian and historical details which otherwise might disappear.
  These artistic abilities were also expressed in an interest in architecture. O'Hanlon wrote about the churches of Laois, commended the newly built church of St. Laurence O'Toole in Seville Place, Dublin, in his The Life of St. Lawrence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin (1857) and worked on the restoration of his own parish church, St. Mary Star of the Sea.
caption: A sketch by O'Hanlon of Moycreddin lower Cemetery (1874)
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