The Irish History Emporium - The Irish Pub Emporium

Magnificent Ireland’s Writers Poster

€65.00

Superb poster depicting the myriad of Irish literary greats throughout the ages -to name but a few,Thomas Moore,JM Synge,WB Yeats,Joyce,Oscar Wilde,Patrick Kavanagh,G.B Shaw etc 84cm x 54cm Irish Literature comprises writings in the Irish, Latin, and English (including Ulster Scots) languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from the seventh century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish. In addition to scriptural writing, the monks of Ireland recorded both poetry and mythological tales. There is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing, including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny. The English language was introduced to Ireland in the thirteenth century, following the Norman invasion of Ireland. The Irish language, however, remained the dominant language of Irish literature down to the nineteenth century, despite a slow decline which began in the seventeenth century with the expansion of English power. The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rapid replacement of Irish by English in the greater part of the country. At the end of the century, however, cultural nationalism displayed a new energy, marked by the Gaelic Revival(which encouraged a modern literature in Irish) and more generally by the Irish Literary Revival. The Anglo-Irish literary tradition found its first great exponents in Richard Head and Jonathan Swift followed by Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. At the end of 19th century and throughout the 20th century, the Irish literature get an unprecedented sequence of worldwide successful works, especially those by Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, C.S. Lewis and George Bernard Shaw, prominent writers who left Ireland to make a life in other European countries such as England, France and Switzerland. The descendants of Scottish settlers in Ulster formed the Ulster-Scots writing tradition, having an especially strong tradition of rhyming poetry. Though English was the dominant Irish literary language in the twentieth century, much work of high quality appeared in Irish Gaelic. A pioneering modernist writer in Irish was Pádraic Ó Conaire, and traditional life was given vigorous expression in a series of autobiographies by native Irish speakers from the west coast, exemplified by the work of Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Peig Sayers. The outstanding modernist prose writer in Irish was Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and prominent poets included Máirtín Ó Direáin, Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Prominent bilingual writers included Brendan Behan (who wrote poetry and a play in Irish) and Flann O'Brien. Two novels by O'Brien, At Swim Two Birdsand The Third Policeman, are considered early examples of postmodern fiction, but he also wrote a satirical novel in Irish called An Béal Bocht(translated as The Poor Mouth). Liam O'Flaherty, who gained fame as a writer in English, also published a book of short stories in Irish (Dúil). Most attention has been given to Irish writers who wrote in English and who were at the forefront of the modernist movement, notably James Joyce, whose novel Ulysses is considered one of the most influential of the century. The playwright Samuel Beckett, in addition to a large amount of prose fiction, wrote a number of important plays, including Waiting for Godot. Several Irish writers have excelled at short story writing, in particular Frank O'Connor and William Trevor. In the late twentieth century Irish poets, especially those from Northern Ireland, came to prominence with Derek Mahon, John Montague, Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. Other notable Irish writers from the twentieth century include, poet Patrick Kavanagh, dramatists Tom Murphy and Brian Friel and novelists Edna O'Brien and John McGahern. Well-known Irish writers in English in the twenty-first century include Colum McCann, Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Sebastian Barry, Colm Toibín and John Banville, all of whom have all won major awards. Younger writers include Paul Murray, Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, Donal Ryan and dramatist Martin McDonagh. Writing in Irish has also continued to flourish. Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 90cm x 60cm 8kg

Add to cart Details
Daniel O’Connell Framed Print (after R.M Hodgetts)

€70.00
Pair of tastefully framed portraits (after the paintings by R.M Hodgetts) of one of the greatest statesmen, orators and wits in Irish history -Daniel O'Connell 28cm x 25cm Daniel O'Connell (18th August 1775 – 15 May 1847), often referred to as The Liberator or The Emancipator,was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century. He campaigned for Catholic emancipation—including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, denied for over 100 years—and repeal of the Acts of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland. Throughout his career in Irish politics, O'Connell was able to gain a large following among the Irish masses in support of him and his Catholic Association. O'Connell's main strategy was one of political reformism, working within the parliamentary structures of the British state in Ireland and forming an alliance of convenience with the Whigs. More radical elements broke with O'Connell to found the Young Ireland movement. O'Connell was born at Carhan near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, to the O'Connells of Derrynane, a once-wealthy Roman Catholic family that had been dispossessed of its lands. His parents were Morgan O'Connell and Catherine O'Mullane. Among his uncles was Daniel Charles, Count O'Connell, an officer in the Irish Brigades of the French Army. A famous aunt was Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, while Sir James O'Connell, 1st Baronet, was his younger brother. Under the patronage of his wealthy bachelor uncle Maurice "Hunting Cap" O'Connell. O'Connell was first sent with his brother Maurice to Reddington Academy at Long Island, near Queenstown (Cobh) They both studied at Douai in France from 1790 and O'Connell was admitted as a barrister to Lincoln's Inn in 1794, transferring to Dublin's King's Inns two years later. In his early years, he became acquainted with the pro-democracy radicals of the time and committed himself to bringing equal rights and religious tolerance to his own country.

O'Connell's home at Derrynane Co Kerry

While in Dublin studying for the law, O'Connell was under his Uncle Maurice's instructions not to become involved in any militia activity. When Wolfe Tone's French invasion fleet entered Bantry Bay in December 1796, O'Connell found himself in a quandary. Politics was the cause of his unsettlement. Dennis Gwynn in his Daniel O'Connell: The Irish Liberator suggests that the unsettlement was because he was enrolled as a volunteer in defence of Government, yet the Government was intensifying its persecution of the Catholic people—of which he was one.He desired to enter Parliament, yet every allowance that the Catholics had been led to anticipate, two years previously, was now flatly vetoed. As a law student, O'Connell was aware of his own talents, but the higher ranks of the Bar were closed to him. He read the Jockey Club as a picture of the governing class in England and was persuaded by it that, "vice reigns triumphant in the English court at this day. The spirit of liberty shrinks to protect property from the attacks of French innovators. The corrupt higher orders tremble for their vicious enjoyments." O'Connell's studies at the time had concentrated upon the legal and political history of Ireland, and the debates of the Historical Society concerned the records of governments, and from this he was to conclude, according to one of his biographers, "in Ireland the whole policy of the Government was to repress the people and to maintain the ascendancy of a privileged and corrupt minority". On 3 January 1797, in an atmosphere of alarm over the French invasion fleet in Bantry Bay, he wrote to his uncle saying that he was the last of his colleagues to join a volunteer corps and "being young, active, healthy and single" he could offer no plausible excuse.Later that month, for the sake of expediency, he joined the Lawyers' Artillery Corps. On 19 May 1798, O'Connell was called to the Irish Bar and became a barrister. Four days later, the United Irishmen staged their rebellion which was put down by the British with great bloodshed. O'Connell did not support the rebellion; he believed that the Irish would have to assert themselves politically rather than by force. He went on the Munster circuit, and for over a decade, he went into a fairly quiet period of private law practice in the South of Ireland.He was reputed to have the largest income of any Irish barrister but, due to natural extravagance and a growing family, was usually in debt; his brother remarked caustically that Daniel was in debt all his life from the age of seventeen. Although he was ultimately to inherit Derrynane from his uncle Maurice, the old man lived to be almost 100 and in the event Daniel's inheritance did not cover his debts. He also condemned Robert Emmet's Rebellion of 1803. Of Emmet, a Protestant, he wrote: "A man who could coolly prepare so much bloodshed, so many murders—and such horrors of every kind has ceased to be an object of compassion." Despite his opposition to the use of violence, he was willing to defend those accused of political crimes, particularly if he suspected that they had been falsely accused, as in the Doneraile conspiracy trials of 1829, his last notable court appearance. He was noted for his fearlessness in court: if he thought poorly of a judge (as was very often the case) he had no hesitation in making this clear. Most famous perhaps was his retort to Baron McClelland, who had said that as a barrister he would never have taken the course O'Connell had adopted: O'Connell said that McClelland had never been his model as a barrister, neither would he take directions from him as a judge. He did not lack the ambition to become a judge himself: in particular he was attracted by the position of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, yet although he was offered it more than once, finally refused.
O'Connell returned to politics in the 1810s. In 1811, he established the Catholic Board, which campaigned for Catholic emancipation, that is, the opportunity for Irish Catholics to become members of parliament. In 1823, he set up the Catholic Association which embraced other aims to better Irish Catholics, such as: electoral reform, reform of the Church of Ireland, tenants' rights, and economic development. The Association was funded by membership dues of one penny per month, a minimal amount designed to attract Catholic peasants. The subscription was highly successful, and the Association raised a large sum of money in its first year. The money was used to campaign for Catholic emancipation, specifically funding pro-emancipation members of parliament (MPs) standing for the British House of Commons.

Statue of Daniel O'Connell outside St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne

Members of the Association were liable to prosecution under an eighteenth-century statute, and the Crown moved to suppress the Association by a series of prosecutions, with mixed success. O'Connell was often briefed for the defence, and showed extraordinary vigour in pleading the rights of Catholics to argue for emancipation. He clashed repeatedly with William Saurin, the Attorney General for Ireland and most influential figure in the Dublin administration, and political differences between the two men were fuelled by a bitter personal antipathy. In 1815 a serious event in his life occurred. Dublin Corporation was considered a stronghold of the Protestant Ascendancy and O'Connell, in an 1815 speech, referred to it as a "beggarly corporation".Its members and leaders were outraged and because O'Connell would not apologise, one of their number, the noted duellist John D'Esterre, challenged him. The duel had filled Dublin Castle (from where the British Government administered Ireland) with tense excitement at the prospect that O'Connell would be killed. They regarded O'Connell as "worse than a public nuisance", and would have welcomed any prospect of seeing him removed at this time. O'Connell met D'Esterre and mortally wounded him (he was shot in the hip, the bullet then lodging in his stomach), in a duel at Oughterard, County Kildare. His conscience was bitterly sore by the fact that, not only had he killed a man, but he had left his family almost destitute. O'Connell offered to "share his income" with D'Esterre's widow, but she declined; however, she consented to accept an allowance for her daughter, which O'Connell regularly paid for more than thirty years until his death. The memory of the duel haunted him for the remainder of his life, and he refused ever to fight another, being prepared to risk accusations of cowardice rather than kill again. As part of his campaign for Catholic emancipation, O'Connell created the Catholic Association in 1823; this organisation acted as a pressure group against the British government so as to achieve emancipation. The Catholic Rent, which was established in 1824 by O'Connell and the Catholic Church raised funds from which O'Connell was able to help finance the Catholic Association in its push for emancipation. Official opinion was gradually swinging towards emancipation, as shown by the summary dismissal of William Saurin, the Attorney General and a leading opponent of religious toleration, whom O'Connell called "our mortal foe". O'Connell stood in a by-election to the British House of Commons in 1828 for County Clare against William Vesey Fitzgerald, who had just joined the British Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. By law at the time, Cabinet office was deemed to be "an office of profit" under the Crown, requiring the promoted man to obtain the endorsement of his constituents by standing for re-election. After O'Connell won election, he was unable to take his seat as members of parliament had to take the Oath of Supremacy, which was incompatible with Catholicism. The Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, even though they opposed Catholic participation in Parliament, saw that denying O'Connell his seat would cause outrage and could lead to another rebellion or uprising in Ireland, which was about 85% Catholic. Peel and Wellington managed to convince King George IV that Catholic emancipation and the right of Catholics and Presbyterians and members of all Christian faiths other than the established Church of Ireland to sit in Parliament needed to be established; with the help of the Whigs, it became law in 1829. However, the Emancipation Act was not made retroactive, meaning that O'Connell had either to seek re-election or to attempt to take the oath of supremacy. When O'Connell attempted on 15 May to take his seat without taking the oath of supremacy, Solicitor-General Nicholas Conyngham Tindal moved that his seat be declared vacant and another election ordered; O'Connell was elected unopposed on 30 July 1829. He took his seat when Parliament resumed in February 1830, by which time Henry Charles Howard, 13th Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey, had already become the first Roman Catholic to have taken advantage of the Emancipation Act and sit in Parliament. "Wellington is the King of England", King George IV once complained, "O'Connell is King of Ireland, and I am only the dean of Windsor." The regal jest expressed the general admiration for O'Connell at the height of his career. The Catholic emancipation campaign led by O'Connell served as the precedent and model for the emancipation of British Jews, the subsequent Jews Relief Act 1858 allowing Jewish MPs to omit the words in the Oath of Allegiance "and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian".
Ironically, considering O'Connell's dedication to peaceful methods of political agitation, his greatest political achievement ushered in a period of violence in Ireland. There was an obligation for those working the land to support the established Church (i.e., the United Church of England and Ireland) by payments known as tithes. The fact that the vast majority of those working the land in Ireland were Catholic or Presbyterian tenant farmers, supporting what was a minority religion within that island (but not the United Kingdom as a whole), had been causing tension for some time. In December 1830, he and several others were tried for holding a meeting as an association or assemblage in violation of the orders of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but the statute expired in course of judgment and the prosecution was terminated by the judiciary. An initially peaceful campaign of non-payment turned violent in 1831 when the newly founded Irish Constabulary were used to seize property in lieu of payment resulting in the Tithe War of 1831–1836. Although opposed to the use of force, O'Connell successfully defended participants in the Battle of Carrickshock and all the defendants were acquitted. Nonetheless O'Connell rejected William Sharman Crawford's call for the complete abolition of tithes in 1838, as he felt he could not embarrass the Whigs (the Lichfield House Compact secured an alliance between Whigs, radicals and Irish MPs in 1835). In 1841, Daniel O'Connell became the first Roman Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin since the reign of James II, who had been the last Roman Catholic monarch of England, Ireland and Scotland.

The Monster Meeting at Clifden in 1843 by Joseph Patrick Haverty. O'Connell is depicted in the center addressing the gathered masses.

Once Catholic emancipation was achieved, O'Connell campaigned for repeal of the Act of Union, which in 1801 had merged the Parliaments of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. To campaign for repeal, O'Connell set up the Repeal Association. He argued for the re-creation of an independent Kingdom of Ireland to govern itself, with Queen Victoria as the Queen of Ireland. To push for this, he held a series of "Monster Meetings" throughout much of Ireland outside the Protestant and Unionist-dominated province of Ulster. They were so called because each was attended by around 100,000 people. These rallies concerned the British Government and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, banned one such proposed monster meeting at Clontarf, County Dublin, just outside Dublin city in 1843. This move was made after the biggest monster meeting was held at Tara.

O'Connell Monument on O'Connell Street in Dublin

Tara held great significance to the Irish population as it was the historic seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Clontarf was symbolic because of its association with the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when the Irish King Brian Boru defeated his rival Maelmordha, although Brian himself died during the battle. Despite appeals from his supporters, O'Connell refused to defy the authorities and he called off the meeting, as he was unwilling to risk bloodshed and had no others. He was arrested, charged with conspiracy and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £2,000, although he was released after three months by the House of Lords, which quashed the conviction and severely criticised the unfairness of the trial. Having deprived himself of his most potent weapon, the monster meeting, O'Connell with his health failing had no plan and dissension broke out in the Repeal Association.

Daniel O'Connell is honoured on the first commemorative stamps of Ireland, issued in 1929.

The round tower marking O'Connell's mausoleum

Mausoleum of Daniel O'Connell in Glasnevin Cemetery

O'Connell died of softening of the brain (cerebral softening) in 1847 in Genoa, Italy, while on a pilgrimage to Rome at the age of 71; his term in prison had seriously weakened him, and the appallingly cold weather he had to endure on his journey was probably the final blow. According to his dying wish, his heart was buried in Rome (at Sant'Agata dei Goti, then the chapel of the Irish College), and the remainder of his body in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, beneath a round tower. His sons are buried in his crypt. On 6 August 1875, Charles Herbert Mackintosh won the gold and silver medals offered by the St. Patrick's Society during the O'Connell centenary at Major's Hill Park in Ottawa, Ontario for a prize poem entitled The Irish Liberator. O'Connell's philosophy and career have inspired leaders all over the world, including Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Martin Luther King (1929–1968). He was told by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) "you have done more for your nation than any man since Washington ever did". William Gladstone (1809–1898) described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen". Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote that "Napoleon and O'Connell were the only great men the 19th century had ever seen." Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) wrote that "the only man like Luther, in the power he wielded was O'Connell". William Grenville (1759–1834) wrote that "history will speak of him as one of the most remarkable men that ever lived". O'Connell met, befriended, and became a great inspiration to Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) a former American slave who became a highly influential leader of the abolitionist movement, social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. O'Connell's attacks on slavery were made with his usual vigour, and often gave great offence, especially in the United States: he called George Washington a hypocrite, and was challenged to a duel by Andrew Stevenson, the American minister, whom he was reported to have called a slave breeder. Notwithstanding his pronounced opposition to slavery, however, O'Connell, in the words of Lee M. Jenkins in her 1999 Irish Review article "Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork", "accepted money for his Repeal cause from Southern slaveholders". The founder of the Irish Labour Party and executed Easter Rising leader James Connolly, devoted a chapter in his 1910 book "Labour in Irish History" entitled "A chapter of horrors: Daniel O'Connell and the working class" in which he criticised O'Connell's parliamentary record, accusing him of siding consistently with the interests of the propertied classes of the United Kingdom. And Patrick Pearse, Connolly's fellow leader of the Easter Rising, wrote: "The leaders in Ireland have nearly always left the people at the critical moment. ... O'Connell recoiled before the cannon at Clontarf" though adding "I do not blame these men; you or I might have done the same. It is a terrible responsibility to be cast on a man, that of bidding the cannon speak and the grapeshot pour". In O'Connell's lifetime, the aims of his Repeal Association—an independent Kingdom of Ireland governing itself but keeping the British monarch as its Head of State—proved too radical for the British government of the time to accept, and brought upon O'Connell persecution and suppression. O'Connell is known in Ireland as "The Liberator" or "The Great Emancipator" for his success in achieving Catholic Emancipation. O'Connell admired Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar, and one of his sons, Morgan O'Connell, was a volunteer officer in Bolívar's army in 1820, aged 15. The principal street in the centre of Dublin, previously called Sackville Street, was renamed O'Connell Street in his honour in the early 20th century after the Irish Free Statecame into being.His statue (made by the sculptor John Henry Foley, who also designed the sculptures of the Albert Memorial in London) stands at one end of the street, with a statue of Charles Stewart Parnell at the other end. The main street of Limerick is also named after O'Connell, also with a statue at the end (in the centre of the Crescent). O'Connell Streets also exist in Ennis, Sligo, Athlone, Kilkee, Clonmel. Dungarvan and Waterford. The Daniel O'Connell Bridge was built over the Ophir River, Central Otago, New Zealand in 1880. There is a statue honouring O'Connell outside St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia.There is a museum commemorating him in Derrynane House, near the village of Derrynane, County Kerry, which was once owned by his family.He was a member of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland as well.

1834 portrait of Daniel O'Connell by George Hayter

In 1802 O'Connell married his third cousin, Mary O'Connell. It was a love marriage, and to persist in it was an act of considerable courage, since Daniel's uncle Maurice was outraged (as Mary had no fortune) and for a time threatened to disinherit them. They had four daughters (three surviving), Ellen(1805–1883), Catherine (1808), Elizabeth (1810), and Rickarda (1815) and four sons. The sons—Maurice (1803), Morgan (1804), John (1810), and Daniel(1816)—all sat in Parliament. The marriage was happy and Mary's death in 1837 was a blow from which her husband never fully recovered. He was a devoted father; O'Faoláin suggests that despite his wide acquaintance he had few close friends and therefore the family circle meant a great deal to him.
O'Connell assisted his younger son, Daniel junior, to acquire the Phoenix Brewery in James's Street, Dublin in 1831. The brewery produced a brand known as "O'Connell's Ale" and enjoyed some popularity. By 1832, O'Connell was forced to state that he would not be a political patron of the brewing trade or his son's company, until he was no longer a member of parliament, particularly because O'Connell and Arthur Guinness were political enemies. Guinness was the "moderate" liberal candidate, O'Connell was the "radical" liberal candidate. The rivalry caused dozens of Irish firms to boycott Guinness during the 1841 Repeal election. It was at this time that Guinness was accused of supporting the "Orange system", and its beer was known as "Protestant porter". When the O'Connell family left brewing, the rights to "O'Connell Dublin Ale" was sold to John D'Arcy. The brewing business proved to be unsuccessful though, and after a few years was taken over by the manager, John Brennan, while Daniel junior embraced a political career. Brennan changed the name back to the Phoenix Brewery but continued to brew and sell O'Connell's Ale. When the Phoenix Brewery was effectively closed after being absorbed into the Guinness complex in 1909, the brewing of O'Connell's Ale was carried out by John D'Arcy and Son Ltd at the Anchor Brewery in Usher Street. In 1926, D'Arcy's ceased trading and the firm of Watkins, Jameson and Pim carried on the brewing until they too succumbed to the pressures of trying to compete with Guinness. Daniel junior was the committee chairman of the licensed trade association of the period and gave considerable and valuable support to Daniel O'Connell in his public life. Some time later a quarrel arose and O'Connell turned his back on the association and became a strong advocate of temperance. During the period of Fr. Mathew's total abstinence crusades many temperance rallies were held, the most notable being a huge rally held on St. Patrick's Day in 1841. Daniel O'Connell was a guest of honour at another such rally held at the Rotunda Hospital.

O'Connell is on the left edge in this painting which is of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention.

Michael Doheny, in his The Felon's Track, says that the very character of emancipation has assumed an "exaggerated and false guise" and that it is an error to call it emancipation. He went on, that it was neither the first nor the last nor even the most important in the concessions, which are entitled to the name of emancipation, and that no one remembered the men whose exertions "wrung from the reluctant spirit of a far darker time the right of living, of worship, of enjoying property, and exercising the franchise".Doheny's opinion was, that the penalties of the "Penal Laws" had been long abolished, and that barbarous code had been compressed into cold and stolid exclusiveness and yet Mr. O'Connell monopolised its entire renown. The view put forward by John Mitchel, also one of the leading members of the Young Ireland movement, in his "Jail Journal" was that there were two distinct movements in Ireland during this period, which were rousing the people, one was the Catholic Relief Agitation (led by O'Connell), which was both open and legal, the other was the secret societies known as the Ribbon and White—boy movements. The first proposed the admission of professional and genteel Catholics to Parliament and to the honours of the professions, all under British law—the other, originating in an utter horror and defiance of British law, contemplated nothing less than a social, and ultimately, a political revolution. According to Mitchel, for fear of the latter, Great Britain with a "very ill grace yielded to the first". Mitchel agrees that Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington said they brought in this measure, to avert civil war; but says that "no British statesman ever officially tells the truth, or assigns to any act its real motive." Their real motive was, according to Mitchel, to buy into the British interests, the landed and educated Catholics, these "Respectable Catholics" would then be contented, and "become West Britons" from that day.

"Daniel O'Connell: The Champion of Liberty" poster published in Pennsylvania, 1847

A critic of violent insurrection in Ireland, O'Connell once said that "the altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood", and yet as late as 1841, O'Connell had whipped his MPs into line to keep the (First) Opium War going in China. The Tories at the time had proposed a motion of censure over the war, and O'Connell had to call upon his MPs to support the Whig Government. As a result of this intervention, the Government was saved. Politically, he focused on parliamentary and populist methods to force change and made regular declarations of his loyalty to the British Crown. He often warned the British establishment that if they did not reform the governance of Ireland, Irishmen would start to listen to the "counsels of violent men". Successive British governments continued to ignore this advice, long after his death, although he succeeded in extracting by the sheer force of will and the power of the Catholic peasants and clergy much of what he wanted, i.e., eliminating disabilities on Roman Catholics; ensuring that lawfully elected Roman Catholics could serve their constituencies in the British Parliament (until the Irish Parliament was restored); and amending the Oath of Allegiance so as to remove clauses offensive to Roman Catholics who could then take the Oath in good conscience. Although a native speaker of the Irish language, O'Connell encouraged Irish people to learn English to better themselves.Although he is best known for the campaign for Catholic emancipation; he also supported similar efforts for Irish Jews. At his insistence, in 1846, the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed. O'Connell said: "Ireland has claims on your ancient race, it is the only country that I know of unsullied by any one act of persecution of the Jews".In April 1835, misled by inaccurate press reports, O'Connell thought Disraeli had slandered him and launched an outspoken attack upon him: Disraeli sought satisfaction by challenging O'Connell's son Morgan to a duel, Daniel having sworn never to duel again after previously killing a man. Morgan declined, replying that he was not responsible for his father's words.

O'Connell's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. In accordance with his final words – "My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, and my soul to heaven" – his embalmed heart was interred in a silver casket and sent to Rome, though it is now lost.

"The altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood." (Written in his Journal, December 1796, and one of O'Connell's most well-known quotes. Quoted by O'Ferrall, F., Daniel O'Connell, Dublin, 1981, p. 12)

"Gentlemen, you may soon have the alternative to live as slaves or die as free men." (speaking in Mallow, County Cork)

"Good God, what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed. Oh Liberty! What horrors are committed in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!" (Written in his journal, 2 January 1799, referring to the recent 1798 Rebellion. Quoted from Vol I, p. 205, of O'Neill Daunt, W. J., Personal Recollections of the Late Daniel O'Connell, M.P., 2 Vols, London, 1848.)

"My days—the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood—have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land—in the land of my sires—I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast." (July 1812, aged 37, reflecting on the failure to secure equal rights or Catholic Emancipation for Catholics in Ireland. Quoted from Vol I, p. 185, of O'Connell, J. (ed.) The Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 2 Vols, Dublin, 1846)

"How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors ...'. (O'Connell's Correspondence, Letter No 700, Vol II)

"I want to make all Europe and America know it—I want to make England feel her weakness if she refuses to give the justice we [the Irish] require—the restoration of our domestic parliament ..." (Speech given at a 'monster' meeting held at Drogheda, June 1843)

"There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations ... What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us." (Letter to T. M. Ray, 1839, on English attitudes to Ireland (O'Connell, Correspondence, Vol VI, Letter No. 2588))

"No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream." (Letter to Bishop Doyle, 1831 (O'Connell Correspondence, Vol IV, Letter No. 1860))

"The principle of my political life ... is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.' (Writing in The Nationnewspaper, 18 November 1843)

"No man was ever a good soldier but the man who goes into the battle determined to conquer, or not to come back from the battle field (cheers). No other principle makes a good soldier." (O'Connell recalling the spirited conduct of the Irish soldiers in Wellington's army, at the Monster meeting held at Mullaghmast.)

"The poor old Duke [of Wellington]! What shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse." (Shaw's Authenticated Report of the Irish State Trials (1844), p. 93)

"Every religion is good—every religion is true to him who in his good caution and conscience believes it." (As defence counsel in R. v Magee (1813), pleading for religious tolerance.)

"Ireland is too poor for a poor law." (In response to the Poor Relief Act of 1839 that set up the workhouses.
Add to cart Details
1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders Print

€100.00
43cm x 33cm Ringsend Dublin A beautiful portrait of the 14 Rebel Leaders executed after the 1916 Easter Rising.

14 men executed in Kilmainham Gaol

A 15th man, Thomas Kent, has also been executed in Cork

1916

easter rising

executions

patrick pearse

thomas clarke

thomas macdonagh

joseph plunkett

edward daly

michael o'hanrahan

willie pearse

john macbride

eamonn ceannt

michael mallin

sean heuston

con colbert

sean mac diarmada

james connolly

thomas kent

constance markievicz

eamon devalera

roger casement

Dublin, 13 May 1916 - 14 men have been executed in Kilmainham Gaol for their involvement in the recent Dublin rebellion. The executions were carried out by firing squad at dawn. The men had earlier been tried in secrecy at Richmond Barracks in Dublin at a series of field general courts-martial where they were permitted no defence counsel. The executions began on the morning of 3 May with Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh being shot by firing squad at the Stonebreaker’s Yard in Kilmainham Gaol. The following morning Joseph Plunkett, Edward Daly, Michael O'Hanrahan and Willie Pearse were shot, followed by John MacBride on the morning after. Éamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin, Seán Heuston and Con Colbert were shot on 8 May, followed by Seán Mac Diarmadaand James Connolly on 12 May. There are reports that Connolly was already grievously ill and was unable to stand in front on the firing squad that shot him. Among the men who have been shot are all seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that was posted on walls around Dublin during the rebellion and was read aloud outside the GPO on Sackville Street by Patrick Pearse on Easter Monday. A further execution in Co. Cork took place on 9 May where Thomas Kent was shot after his arrest 7 days earlier. Mr Kent had been heavily linked with land agitation in Cork, but it is not clear that he had any involvement in the Rising in Dublin.
Cartoon from Issues and Events commenting on the freedom of Ireland. (Image: Villanova University)
Other rebels Also executed were leaders of various garrisons of volunteers who took over key buildings around Dublin. The decisions to single out Willie Pearse and John MacBride for execution appear unrelated to any rank they held, however. Other rebel leaders – including Eamon de Valera and Constance Markievicz – remain in custody and it is not clear what their fate will be. In London, Roger Casement awaits trial for treason and is being held in the Tower of London, following his arrest in Co. Kerry on Good Friday. It appears that Casement was attempting to facilitate a shipment of arms from Germany for use in the rebellion. Meanwhile, the arrests of hundreds of people associated, or deemed by the authorities to be associated with the Rising, continues. Those arrested are being interned, with some being sent across the Irish Sea to England and Wales. [Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]

RELATED CONTENT
Add to cart Details
The United Irishmen of 1798 Bicentennial Commemorative Poster (limited edition)

€50.00

Lovely,limited edition commemorative poster celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of the 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion. 78cm x 57cm The 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion led by Theobald Wolfe Tone was ill fated from the outset.Inspired by the recent successful American and French Revolutions,the Rebels leadership became fragmented and the revolt was only sporadically successful .This poster captures the portraits of such notable United Irishmen as Henry Joy McCracken,Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone himself.
The united Irish crest.
An overview of the insurrection of 1798, by John Dorney. The 1798 rebellion was an insurrection launched by the United Irishmen, an underground republican society, aimed at overthrowing the Kingdom of Ireland, severing the connection with Great Britain and establishing an Irish Republic based on the principles of the French Revolution. The rebellion failed in its aim to launch a coordinated nationwide uprising. There were instead isolated outbreaks of rebellion in county Wexford, other Leinster counties, counties Antrim and Down in the north and after the landing of a French expeditionary force, in county Mayo in the west. The military uprising was put down with great bloodshed in the summer of 1798. Some of its leaders, notably Wolfe Tone were killed or died in imprisonment, while many others were exiled.
The 1798 rebellion was failed attempt to found a secular independent Irish Republic.
The 1790s marked an exceptional event in Irish history because the United Irishmen were a secular organisation with significant support both among Catholics and Protestants, including Protestants in the northern province of Ulster. However, the unity of Catholics and Protestants was far from universal and the fighting itself was marked in places by sectarian atrocities. As a result of the uprising, the Irish Parliament, which had existed since the 13th century, was abolished and under the Act of Union (1800) Ireland was to be ruled directly from London until 1922.
Background

The Irish Parliament on Dublin’s College Green.
In the 18^th century, Ireland was a Kingdom in its own right, under the Kings of England. Executive power was largely in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, appointed by the British prime minister. However, Ireland also had its own parliament, which throughout the century, lobbied for greater control over trade and law making in Ireland. The Irish parliament was subservient to the British parliament at Westminster, but increasingly, as the century wore on, agitated for greater autonomy. In 1782, the Irish parliament managed to free itself from subservience to the Lord Lieutenant and, to an extent, from the British parliament through the passage of laws that enabled it to make its own laws for the first time without reference to Westminster.
Ireland in the 18th century had its own parliament but the majority of the population was excluded from political participation on religious and property grounds.
However, membership of the parliament was confined to members of the Anglican Church of Ireland, which, allowing for some conversions, was overwhelmingly composed of descendants of English settlers. The parliament was not a democratic body; elections were relatively infrequent, seats could be purchased and the number of voters was small and confined to wealthy, property-owning Protestants. Under the Penal Laws, enacted after the Catholic defeat in theJacobite-Williamite war of the 1690s, all those who refused to acknowledge the English King as head of their Church – therefore Catholic and Presbyterians – were barred not only from the parliament but from any public position or service in the Army.
United Irish leader Theobald Wolfe Tone.
Catholic owned lands were also confiscated for alleged political disloyalty throughout the 17^th century. Catholics, to a large extent the descendants of the pre-seventeenth century Irish population, also suffered from restrictions on landholding, inheritance, entering the professions and the right to bear arms. Presbyterians, mostly descendants of Scottish immigrants, while not excluded as rigorously as Catholics from public life, also suffered from discrimination – marriages performed by their clergy were not legally recognised for instance. Although some of the Penal Laws were relaxed in 1782, allowing new Catholic churches and schools to open, and allowing Catholics into the professions and to purchase land, the great majority of the Irish population was still excluded from political power, and to a large extent from wealth and landholding also, as the last decade of the 18^thcentury dawned. Discontent among Catholics was exacerbated by economic hardship and by tithes, compulsory taxes that people of all religions had to pay, for the upkeep of the established, Protestant Church. Initially the United Irishmen, founded, mainly by Presbyterians in Belfast in 1791, campaigned merely for reform, lobbying for the vote to be extended to Catholics and to non-property holders. The United Irishmen had a determinedly non-sectarian outlook, their motto being, as their leading member Theobald Wolfe Tone put it, ‘to unite Catholic Protestant and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman’.
The United Irishmen, inspired by the American and French revolutions, initially lobbied for democratic reform.
They were greatly inspired by the events of the American and French revolutions (1776 and 1789 respectively) and hoped to eventually found a self-governing, secular Irish state on the basis of universal male suffrage. The leadership of the United Irishmen was largely Protestant or Presbyterian at the start and it recruited men of all sects, mainly in the richer, more urban, eastern half of the country. Some of their early demands were granted by the Irish parliament, for example Catholics were given the right to vote in 1793, as well as the right to attend university, obtain degrees and to serve in the military and civil service. However the reforms did not go nearly as far as the radicals wished. Catholics still could not sit in the Parliament for example, nor hold public office and the vote was granted only to holders of property worth over forty shillings a year.
Radicalisation

A contemporary depiction of the ‘the mob’ during the French Revolution.
The United Irishmen did not remain an open reformist organisation for long. The French revolution took a radical turn in 1791. In the following two years it deposed King Louis XVI and declared a Republic. Britain and revolutionary France went to war in 1793. In Ireland, the United Irishmen, who supported the French Republic, were banned and went underground in 1794. Wolfe Tone went into exile, first in America and then in France, where he lobbied for military aid for revolution in Ireland. The United Irishmen now stated that their goal was a fully independent Irish Republic. At the same time, popular discontent was growing, as the government dispatched troops to suppress the United Irishmen and other ‘seditious’ groups. The government also announced that men had to serve in the militia which would maintain internal security in Ireland during the war with France. Resistance to impressment into the militia led to fierce rioting in 1793 that left over 200 people dead.
Repression of United Irish suspects, in this case a ‘half hanging’.
Having been driven underground, the United Irishmen in Ireland began organising a clandestine military structure. In an effort to recruit more foot soldiers for the hoped-for revolution, they made contact with a Catholic secret society, the Defenders, who had been engaged in low level fighting, especially in the north, with Protestant groups such as the so called Peep of Day Boys and the newly founded Orange Order. As a result, while the majority of the United Irishmen’s top leadership remained Protestant, their foot soldiers, except in north east Ulster, became increasingly Catholic. That said, the Catholic Church itself was opposed to the ‘atheistical’ Republicans and was, for the first time, courted by the authorities, being granted the right to open a college for the education of priests in Maynooth in 1795. In 1796 revolutionary France dispatched a large invasion fleet, with nearly 14,000 troops, and accompanied by Wolfe Tone, to Ireland. By sheer chance, invasion was averted when the fleet ran into storms and part of it was wrecked off Bantry Bay in County Cork. Battered by the weather and after losing many men drowned, they had to return to France.
The United Irishmen were banned after Britain went to war with France in 1793 and went underground.
The government in Dublin, startled by the near-invasion, responded with a vicious wave of repression, passing an Insurrection Act that suspended habeas corpus and other peacetime laws. Using both British troops, militia and a newly recruited, mostly Protestant and fiercely loyalist, force known as the Yeomanry, government forces attempted to terrorise any would-be revolutionaries in Ireland who might aid the French in the event of another invasion. The Crown forces’ methods including burning of houses and Catholic churches, summary executions and the practice of ‘pitch-capping’ whereby lit tar was placed on a victim’s scalp. By the summer of 1798, the United Irishmen, under severe pressure from their own supporters to act, planned a co-ordinated nationwide uprising, aimed at overthrowing the government in Dublin, severing the connection with Britain and founding an Irish Republic.
The Rebellion breaks out

Edward Fitzgerald is shot dead during arrest in Dublin.
The rebellion was intended to be signalled by the stopping of all mail coaches out of Dublin on May 23, 1798. However, the authorities in Dublin were aware of the plans and on the eve of the rebellion arrested most of the senior United Irishmen leadership. Their most senior leader in Ireland, Edward Fitzgerald was shot and mortally wounded during his arrest. While mail coaches were stopped in some areas, other areas had no notice of the planned insurrection and with the United Irish leadership mostly in prison or in exile, the rising flared up in in a localised and uncoordinated manner. Large bodies of United Irishmen rose in arms in the counties around Dublin; Kildare, Wicklow, Carlow and Meath, in response to the stopping of the mail coaches, but Dublin city itself, which was heavily garrisoned and placed under martial law, did not stir.
The Rising was uncoordinated as most of the United Irish leaders had been imprisoned.
The first rebellions resulted in some sharp fighting but the poorly armed (they mostly had home-made pikes) and poorly led insurgents were defeated by British, militia and Yeomanry troops. In many cases, captured or surrendering rebels were massacred by vengeful government forces.
Wexford, Ulster and Kilalla Bay

The battle of Vinegar Hill.
Only in County Wexford did the United Irishmen meet with success. There, after rising on May 27, the insurgents defeated some militia and Yeomanry units and took the towns of Enniscorthy and Wexford. The leadership of the Wexford rebels was both Catholic and Protestant (the leader was the Protestant Harvey Bagenal), but included some Catholic priests such as father John Murphy and the rank and file were largely Catholic, in many cases enraged by the sectarian atrocities committed in the previous months by the Yeomonary. The rebels failed to take the towns of New Ross and Arklow despite determined and costly assaults and remained bottled up in Ireland’s south eastern corner. In response to the government forces’ killing of prisoners at New Ross, the rebels killed over 100 local loyalists at Scullabogue and another 100 at Wexford Bridge. The fighting in the rebellion was marked by an extreme ideological and, increasingly, sectarian, bitterness. Prisoners on both sides were commonly killed after battle.
The rebels in Wexford held most of the country for a month before being defeated at Vinegar Hill.
The Wexford rebellion was smashed about a month after it broke out, when over 13,000 British troops converged on the main rebel camp at Vinegar Hill on June 21, 1798 and broke up, though failed to trap, the main rebel army. Guerrilla fighting continued, but the main rebel stronghold had fallen.
A depiction of the Battle of Antrim 1798 at which the Ulster Irish uprising was crushed.
In the north, the mainly Presbyterian United Irishmen there launched their own uprising in support of Wexford in early June, but again, after some initial success, were defeated by government troops and militia. Their leaders, Henry Joy McCracken and Henry Munro, were captured and hanged. The last act of the rebellion came in August 1798, when a small French expeditionary force of 1,500 men landed at Killalla Bay in county Mayo. Led by General Humbert, they defeated a British force at Castlebar, but were themselves defeated and forced to surrender at Ballinamuck. While the French soldiers were allowed to surrender, the Irish insurgents who accompanied them were massacred. Another, final, French attempt to land an expeditionary force in Ireland, accompanied by United Irish leader Wolfe Tone, was intercepted and defeated in a sea battle by the Royal Navy near Tory Island off the Donegal coast in October. Tone was captured along with over 2,000 French servicemen. Sentenced to death, Tone took his own life in prison in Dublin. Lord Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, tried to end the bloodshed and reprisals by government forces by forgoing execution of the other imprisoned United leaders in return for their telling what they knew of the clandestine United Irish organisation. An amnesty and pardon was also declared for rank and file United Irishmen.
Aftermath

Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant who oversaw the Act of Union.
The fighting in the 1798 rebellion lasted just three months, but the deaths ran into the tens of thousands. A high estimate of the death toll is 70,000 and the lowest one puts it at about 10,000. Thousands more former rebels were exiled in Scotland, transported to penal colonies in Australia and others such as Miles Byrne went into exile serving in the French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies until 1815. A brief rebellion led by Robert Emmet, younger brother of one of the 1798 United Irish leaders, in 1802 achieved little beyond Emmet’s own death by execution. In 1800 the Irish parliament, under pressure from the British authorities, voted itself out if existence and Ireland was ruled directly from London from then until 1922.
The Irish parliament was abolished in 1800 and Ireland ruled directly from London until 1922.
While the radicals of the 1790s had hoped that religious divisions in Ireland could be made a thing of the past, the fierce sectarian violence that took place on both sides during the rebellion actually hardened sectarian animosities. Many northern Presbyterians began to see the British connection as less potentially dangerous for them than an independent Ireland. The United Irishmen’s hope of founding a secular, independent, democratic Irish Republic therefore ended in total defeat.

Add to cart Details
John Gilroy Lost Guinness Archives- Is it Art ? No its Guinness

€120.00

68cm x 46cm

The biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out.

“Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”

Cliché or not, that’s roughly what happened in 2008 when hundreds of artist John Gilroy’s oil-on-canvas paintings started to appear on the market. The canvases had been painted by Gilroy as final proofs for his iconic Guinness beer posters, the most recognized alcoholic-beverage advertisements of the mid-20th century. Before most collectors of advertising art and breweriana knew what had happened, most of the best pieces had been snapped up by a handful of savvy collectors. In fact, the distribution of the canvases into the hands of private collectors was so swift and stealthy that one prominent member of the Guinness family was forced to get their favorite Gilroys on the secondary market.

One of those early collectors, who wishes to remain anonymous, recalls seeing several canvases for the first time at an antiques show. At first, he thought they were posters since that’s what Guinness collectors have come to expect. But after looking at them more closely, and realizing they were all original paintings, he purchased the lot on the spot. “It was quite exciting to stumble upon what appeared to be the unknown original advertising studies for one of the world’s great brands,” he says. But the casualness of that first encounter would not last, as competition for the newly found canvases ramped up among collectors. Today, the collector describes the scramble for these heretofore-unknown pieces as “a Gilroy art scrum.”

Among those who were particularly interested in the news of the Gilroy cache was David Hughes, who was a brewer at Guinness for 15 years and has written three books on Guinness advertising art and collectibles, the most recent being “Gilroy Was Good for Guinness,” which reproduces more than 150 of the recently “discovered” paintings. Despite being an expert on the cheery ephemera that was created to sell the dark, bitter stout, Hughes, like a lot of people, only learned of the newly uncovered Gilroy canvases as tantalizing examples from the cache (created for markets as diverse as Russia, Israel, France, and the United States) started to surface in 2008.

“Within the Guinness archives itself,” Hughes says of the materials kept at the company’s Dublin headquarters, “they’ve got lots of advertising art, watercolors, and sketches of workups towards the final version of the posters. But they never had a single oil painting. Until the paintings started turning up in the United States, where Guinness memorabilia is quite collectible, it wasn’t fully understood that the posters were based on oils. All of the canvases will be in collections within a year,” Hughes adds. For would-be Gilroy collectors, that means the clock is ticking.

As it turns out, Gilroy’s entire artistic process was a prelude to the oils. “The first thing he’d usually do was a pencil sketch,” says Hughes. “Then he’d paint a watercolor over the top of the pencil sketch to get the color balance right. Once that was settled and all the approvals were in, he’d sit down and paint the oil. The proof version that went to Guinness for approval, it seems, was always an oil painting.”

Based on what we know of John Gilroy’s work as an artist, that makes sense. For almost half a century, Gilroy was regarded not only as one of England’s premier commercial illustrators, but also as one of its best portraitists. “He painted the Queen three times,” says Hughes, “Lord Mountbatten about four times. In 1942, he did a pencil-and-crayon sketch of Churchill in a London bunker.” According to Hughes, Churchill gave that portrait to Russian leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which may mean that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin, there’s a portrait of Winnie by the same guy who made a living drawing cartoons of flying toucans balancing pints of Guinness on their beaks.

For those who collect advertising art and breweriana, Gilroy is revered for the numerous campaigns he conceived as an illustrator for S.H. Benson, the venerable British ad agency, which was founded in 1893. Though most famous for the Guinness toucan, which has been the internationally recognized mascot of Guinness since 1935, Gilroy’s first campaign with S.H. Benson was for a yeast extract called Bovril. “Do you have Bovril in the U.S.?” Hughes asks. “It’s a rather dark, pungent, savory spread that goes on toast or bread. It’s full of vitamins, quite a traditional product. He also did a lot of work on campaigns for Colman’s mustard and Macleans toothpaste.”

pparently Gilroy’s work caught the eye of Guinness, which wanted something distinctive for its stout. “A black beer is a unique product,” says Hughes. “There weren’t many on the market then, and there are even fewer now. So they wanted their advertising to be well thought of and agreeable to the public.” For example, in the early 1930s, Benson already had an ad featuring a glass of Guinness with a nice foamy head on top. “Gilroy put a smiling face in the foam,” says Hughes. Collectors often refer to this charming drawing as the “anthropomorphic glass.”

That made the black beer friendly. To ensure that it would be appealing to the common man, Benson launched its “Guinness for Strength” campaign, whose most famous image is the 1934 Gilroy illustration of a muscular workman effortlessly balancing an enormous steel girder on one arm and his head.

Another early campaign put Guinness beer in the world of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” “Guinness and oysters were a big thing,” says Hughes. In one ad, “Gilroy drew all the oysters from the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ sipping glasses of Guinness.”

nd then there were the animals, of which the toucan is only the most recognized, and not even the first (that honor goes to a seal). “He had the lion and the ostrich and the bear up the pole,” Hughes says. “There was a whole menagerie of them. The animals kept going for 30 years. It’s probably the longest running campaign in advertising history.”

Most of Gilroy’s animals lived in a zoo, so a central character of the animal advertisements was a zookeeper, who was a caricature of the artist himself. “That’s what Gilroy looked like,” says Hughes. “Gilroy was a chubby, little man with a little moustache. As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”

Gilroy’s animals good-naturedly tormented their zookeeper by stealing his precious Guinness: An ostrich swallows his glass pint whole, whose bulging outline can be seen in its slender throat; a seal balances a pint on its nose; a kangaroo swaps her “joey” for the zookeeper’s brown bottle. Often the zookeeper is so taken aback by these circumstances his hat has popped off his head.

In fact, Gilroy spent a lot of time at the London Zoo to make sure he captured the essence of his animals accurately. “In the archives at Guinness,” says Hughes, “there are a lot of sketches of tortoises, emus, ostriches, and the rest. He perfected the drawing of the animals by going to the zoo, then he adapted them for the adverts.” As a result, a Gilroy bear really looked like a bear, albeit one with a smile on its face.

During World War II, Gilroy’s Guinness ads managed to keep their sense of humor (eg: two sailors painting the hull of an aircraft carrier, each wishing the other was a Guinness), and in the 1950s and early ’60s, Gilroy’s famous pint-toting toucans flew all over the world for Guinness, in front of the Kremlin as well as Mt. Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty, although some of these paintings never made it to the campaign stage.

Gilroy’s work on the Guinness account ended in 1962, and in 1971, Benson was gobbled up by the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Ogilvy & Mather. By then, says Hughes, Gilroy’s work for Guinness was considered the pinnacle of poster design in the U.K., and quite collectible. “The posters were made by a lithographic process. In the 1930s, the canvases were re-created on stone by a print maker, but eventually the paintings were transferred via photolithography onto metal sheets. Some of the biggest posters were made for billboards. Those used 64 different sheets that you’d give to the guy with the bucket of wheat paste and a mop to put up in the right order to create the completed picture.”

In terms of single-sheet posters, Hughes says the biggest ones were probably 4 by 3 feet. Benson’s had an archive of it all, but “when Benson’s shut down in ’71, when they were taken over, they cleaned out their stockroom of hundreds of posters and gave them to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Today, both have collections of the original posters, including the 64-sheets piled into these packets, which were wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. They’re extremely difficult to handle; you can’t display them, really.”

At least the paper got a good home. As for the canvases? Well, their history can only be pieced together based on conjecture, but here’s what Hughes thinks he knows.

Sometime in the 1970s, a single collector whose name remains a mystery appears to have purchased as many as 700 to 900 Gilroy paintings that had been in the archives. “The guy who bought the whole archive was an American millionaire,” Hughes says. “He’s a secretive character who doesn’t want to be identified. I don’t blame him. He doesn’t want any publicity about how he bought the collection or its subsequent sale.”

air enough. What we do know for sure is that the years were not kind to Gilroy’s canvases while in storage at Benson’s. In fact, it’s believed that more than half of the cache did not survive the decades and were probably destroyed by the mystery collector who bought them because of their extremely deteriorated condition (torn canvases, images blackened by mildew, etc.). After all, when Gilroy’s canvases were put away, no one at Benson’s thought they’d be regarded in the future as masterpieces.

“A lot of the rolled-up canvases were stuck together,” says Hughes. “Oil takes a long while to dry. Gilroy diluted his oils with what’s called Japan drier, which is a sort of oil thinner that allows you to put the oil on the canvas in a much thinner texture, and then roll them up afterwards. The painted canvas becomes reasonably flexible. The problem is that even with a drier, they still took a long time to dry. And if someone had packed them tightly together and put weight on them, which is what must have happened while the Gilroy paintings were in storage at Benson’s, they’d just stick together. Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930.”

For diehard Guinness-advertising fans, though, it’s not all bad news. After all, almost half of the cache was saved, “and it’s beautiful,” says Hughes. “I’ve just come back from Boston to look at a lot of these canvases out there, and they are superb. The guy who’s selling the canvases I saw had about 40 or 50 with him. They’re absolutely fabulous.”

Although he has no proof, Hughes believes the person who bought the cache in the 1970s also oversaw its preservation. Importantly to many collectors, all of the Gilroy canvases are in their found condition, stabilized but essentially unchanged. Even areas in the paint that show evidence of rubbing from adjacent canvases remain as they were found. “I think the preservation has been done by the owner,” Hughes says. “I don’t think the dealers did it. It’s my understanding that they were supplied with fully stabilized canvases from the original buyer. It appears that they were shipped from the U.K., so that’s interesting in itself.” Which suggests they never left the United Kingdom after being purchased by the mysterious American millionaire.

collectors of the approval process at Benson. Gilroy painted his canvases on stretchers, and in the bottom corner of each canvas was a small tag identifying the artist, account code, and action to be taken (“Re-draw,” “Revise,” “Hold,” “Print,” and, during World War II, “Submit to censor”). “They would’ve been shown to Guinness on a wooden stretcher,” Hughes says. “Before they went into storage, somebody removed the stretchers and either laid them flat or rolled them up.”

“As a younger man, he drew himself into the advert, and he became the zookeeper.”

Without exception, the canvases Hughes has seen, which were photographed exclusively for his book, are in fine shape and retain their mounting holes for the stretchers and Benson agency tags. “The colors are good,” he says. “They haven’t been in sunlight. They’ll keep for years and years and years.” One collector notes that you can even see the ruby highlights in Gilroy’s paintings of glasses of the stout. “When a pint of Guinness is backlit by a very strong light, the liquid has a deep ruby color,” this collector says. “Gilroy was very careful to include this effect when he painted beer in clear pint glasses.”

Finally, for Guinness, breweriana, and advertising-art collectors, the Gilroy canvases also offer a peek of what might have been. “I would say about half the images were never commercially used, so they are absolutely brand new, never been seen before,” says Hughes. “They’re going to blow people away.” Of particular interest to collectors in the United States are the Gilroy paintings of classic cars that were created for an aborted, early 1950s campaign to coincide with the brewing of Guinness on Long Island.

Still, it’s the medium that continues to amaze Hughes. “The idea of the canvases, none of us expected that,” he says. “As a Guinness collector, I’ve always collected their adverts, but they’re prints. They never touched Gilroy, he was never anywhere near the printing process. I had acquired a pencil drawing, which I was delighted with. Then these oils started turning up,” he Naturally, Hughes the Guinness scholar has seen a few oils that Hughes the Guinness collector would very much like to own. “If I had a magic wand? Well, I saw one this weekend that I really liked. It’s one of the animal ones. But it’s an animal that was not used commercially. It’s of a rhinoceros sitting on the ground with the zookeeper’s Guinness between his legs. The rhinoceros is looking at the zookeeper, and the zookeeper’s looking around the corner holding his broom. It’s just a great image, and it’s probably the only one of that advert that exists. So if I could wave my magic wand, I think that’s what I’d get. But I’d need $10,000

With those kinds of prices and that kind of buzz, you might think that whoever is handling the Guinness advertising account today might be tempted to just re-run the campaign. But Hughes is realistic about the likelihood of that. “Advertising moves on,” he says. “Gilroy’s jokey, humorous, cartoon-like poster design is quintessentially 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. It is a bit quaint, maybe even a little juvenile for today’s audiences. But it’s still amusing. The other day I showed the draft of my book to my mother, who’s 84. She sat in the kitchen, just giggling at the pictures.”

That sums up Gilroy to Hughes; not that it’s only appealing to people in their 80s, but that his work is ultimately about making people happy, which is why his advertising images connected so honestly with viewers. “Gilroy had a tremendous sense of humor,” Hughes says. “He always saw the funny side of things. He was apparently a chap who, if you were feeling a little down and out, you’d spend a couple of hours with him and he’d just lift your spirits.” You know, in much the same way as a lot of us feel after a nice pint of Guinness.

Add to cart Details
Confiding over a pint of Guinness

€80.00

Add to cart Details