The Reading Figure in Irish Art in the Long Nineteenth Century

Tricia Cusack

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781785276446
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785276460
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

The reading figure has been a recurrent theme in Western art but especially from the nineteenth century. This book examines Irish portraits during the long nineteenth century in which people are shown reading or holding a book. It explores different values ascribed to reading and contemporary constructions of the reader. The selected pictures are by artists born, trained, or practising in Ireland. 'Irish art' is, therefore, used broadly to include work framed in some way by experience of Ireland and its history, culture, and politics. This was a time of large social and cultural shifts for Ireland, and a period when books and other reading, including Irish novels, were often published in London. Many of the artists and sitters discussed were Anglo-Irish Protestants. Both Imperial and nationalist ideologues tended to devalue reading, especially fiction, as an unmanly occupation. Nonetheless, some men are depicted reading and failing to embody a manly attitude. The spread of the novel, and the introduction of 'silent reading' allowed women of the middle and upper classes, often Anglo-Irish, to engage with a range of imaginative reading materials, secure from patriarchal surveillance. Visual images of women as serious readers drew on and contributed to the emergence of the 'New Woman' in Ireland.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Imperial Man, Manly Nationalism and the Unmanly Reader
• Chapter 2 ‘Creatures of a Different Breed’: Women Readers and Patriarchal Discourse
• Chapter 3 The Shaping of the New Woman in Ireland
• Chapter 4 The Silent Reader and the Fictive Viewer
• Chapter 5 A Room of Her Own: Four New Women in Dublin
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Referenced
• Index