8 - Visualising the City: Images of Ireland's Urban World, c.1790–1820

Summary

From the muted calmness of Johannes Vermeer's views of seventeenthcentury Delft to the vibrancy of Claude Monet's impressions of Victorian London, the activities and routines of the urban world have fascinated artists for centuries. In Ireland, things have been no different in this respect: market towns and cities, as well as the busy lives of those that inhabit them, have continually been the subject of artistic attention.

From the late eighteenth century, one of the most prolific chroniclers of the urban world was the Cork-born artist Nathaniel Grogan (c.1740–1808), who created an array of images that celebrated the enterprise and vibrancy of his local city. For instance, in his etching North Gate Bridge (c.1794) (Figure 8.1) the viewer is presented with a diverse slice of life beneath the looming structure of Cork's northern gatehouse (which also served as a jail). In the foreground, bricklayers with a wheelbarrow and trowel can be seen building part of a stone wall, behind them a man is begging, whilst other labourers (both male and female) can be seen throughout the picture carrying heavy loads, baskets and selling wares. On the other side of the bridge, a soldier (or constable) is just visible as he patrols the street in front of the jail with a rifle over his shoulder. In contrast to these activities, an elegant carriage, which possibly carries Richard Barry, the Earl of Barrymore, traverses the crowded scene. The lack of a narrative sequence here means that the etching reads like a detailed portrait of a city and its people – an illustration of a mundane ‘day in the life’ in the city of Cork. However, the variety of activity and the diversity of the crowd immediately indicate that this is not just a picture of the ordinary lives of a singular group within Irish society; rather, it introduces the daily routines of both the industrious workers and the leisurely elites – a collective everyday that encompasses many aspects of Irish urban life.

Visualisations of the urban environment like this one have had a recognisable function within Irish studies to date. Pictures like North Gate Bridge, or others of markets, busy ports and street scenes, have been used by historians and art historians to illustrate findings on material culture, as frontispieces for economic histories or to ‘offer significant new evidence about the lives of a silenced population’.