 I'm delighted to introduce James Kelly. Jimmy Kelly is here from Dublin City University. He's a graduate of University College Dublin. I also attended University College Dublin and did my master's there, as did Guy Biner, my colleague and Sullivan chair in Irish Studies. James Kelly was most recently the head of school, the School of History and Geography at Dublin City University. His main area of research lies in the areas of Irish political and social history and focuses on the period from 1660 to 1860. In this area he's published a number of books and there are too many to cite here but I'll mention a couple of them that are really landmark publications that have helped define the field. That damned thing called Honor, Dueling in Ireland, was published in 1995. Henry Flood, Patriots and Politics in 18th century Ireland and Sport in Ireland 1600 to 1840 that was published in 2014. His most recent monograph was titled Food, Rioting in Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries which was published by Forecourt's Press in 2017. Just last year the Royal Irish Academy published Climate and Society in Ireland from prehistory to the present that was published with Tomas O'Caragat. He is the editor of volume three of the Cambridge history of Ireland that addressed the year 1730 to 1880. Those four volumes were launched here at Boston College back in 2018 and all four editors including Jimmy was here for that event. Jimmy is also an active member of a number of historical societies and bodies. He served as president of the Irish Historical Society, the 18th century Irish society and most recently of the Irish Economic and Social History Society. He's been wonderful to have here on campus, he's engaged with undergraduates as well as the graduate students and especially the faculty here in Irish Studies and it's a pleasure to welcome Jimmy Kelly. Please give a warm welcome to Professor James Kelly. Thank you all very much. I'm glad to be here. As Rob mentioned, I had a first encounter with this August institution, at least this room in this institution, some years ago when the Cambridge history of Ireland was launched and it was such an encouraging and stimulating experience that I was delighted to be able to both apply for and be offered a Burns scholarship and certainly the experience has not been proving disappointing. Now I would like in the context in which we're in just to draw attention to just one wider contextual event. Recently the theshek of our country, Mihal Martin, this is a violent observed and I quote, it's important that we come when it's important that as we come together during the St Patrick's Day Festival that we highlight and illustrate and show our solidarity with the people of Ukraine. I would just like in that context to express my own solidarity with the people of the Ukraine and support the commitment that we've been asked to do with the objective of strengthening the global coalition in support of that country and its people. Now my talk this evening is going to address the subject of Irish single street caricature in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The subject I say I want you wish to speak today is an overlooked dimension of Ireland's visual culture. It is that of single sheet caricature. It is a term I suggest which partly explains itself but I would like to say a few words to avoid any ambiguity. Many of you would be familiar with the United Ireland weekly freemen images of the final decades of the 19th century of which was one on screen. These were what are known as chromolithographs colored lithographic images produced with the technology that permitted mass production and which typically sold for one and a half pennies and were published as a supplement to the freemen's journal. They were as is well known partly relates to their appeal and present nationalist tone and theme and they constitute a valuable visual accompaniment to the politics of homeroom, the land war and the cultural revival of the 1890s. My subject relates to a pre-existing form dating from a century earlier. During what was I would suggest the inaugural era of Irish caricature production. Between the late 1770s and late 1820s with a final brief flurry in the early 1840s single street sheet caricatures were published in limited editions on all sorts of themes and subjects. They differed from models to follow differed from from these in that they did not focus exclusively on politics or engage in national stereotypes. They were caricature images based on distorted and exaggerated renderings of people and situations satires if you will created with the deliberate purpose of mucking and thereby inducing the viewers to laugh at the person or persons being depicted or the situations in which they are portrayed. Moreover since they were engraved from original drawings then etched printed and hand colored they were printed in small editions and as they were hand colored I think you could even argue that they were each unique in its own way to a certain extent. Just two examples. They were priced accordingly the cheapest and smallest myself of five pence the largest and could cost as much as five to six shillings. They were also by a broader range of artists. Most are anonymous in the sense of who the engravers were but the Irish engravers and artists included amongst those we know William Pollock Kerry, Alexander McDonald and Henry Brocas who I'll mention later. A majority of them were copied mainly from English images by such well-known caricatures as James Gilray but it there were a significant portion were original. So that is what I want to talk about. It's a category of Irish illustration which really has not been fully explored or examined. So I will try and speak about them under three headings. Firstly try and provide the context to national for their study. Secondly I will seek to identify what I perceive are the main phases and the main publishers because the publishers is the key and thirdly I would like to attempt to identify the extent to which they were both a copy of and a departure from those images that were produced in London and I will throw out endeavor to illustrate the points with images so that if what I'm saying really seems a bit remote or not of interest hopefully that the images will you will find the images at least somewhat as attractive and as alluring as I have. Now part one then I'll try to talk about the context and rationale. Ireland or to more precise Dublin since it was virtually exclusive based in that city sustained a culture of single street to single sheet caricature production during the half century 1780 to 1830 that was second only to that of London in Great Britain and Ireland. It's not entirely unknown it features in the relatively recent Yale art and architectural volume got a couple of pages there and more recently there are signs with the appearance of an article in the Irish architectural and decorative studies on William McLeary who was one of the key figures in its production in Ireland that may well be an interest emerging in the subject but the subject remains significantly understudied and it is a measure of how ill informed we are we are as to it at present that we're not in a position or I should say I am not in a position to comment with any confidence on its scale and still less to identify many of those who were responsible for drawing and engraving the many hundreds of images that were printed in Dublin when it's still worn in that sea in times in terms of identifying biographical details. Now in some senses because of the derivative nature of much of the phenomenon from from London it's tempting to perceive this as a provincial manifestation of a metropolitan phenomenon. I'm not certain that this is tenable but nonetheless I think I'd most acknowledge at the outset the extent to which London was both the cultural as well as political capital of the composite monarchy in which Britain and Ireland were bound until 1800 and then post 1800 was the the cultural, political and parliamentary capital of the newly forged United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland that came into being in January 1800. At the same time it would be wrong to conceive of Dublin in purely provincial terms in other words we ought not overlook what was distinctive about the caricatures produced in Dublin or record insufficient notice to the fact that in the midst of the many Irish copies and Irish renditions of English images conceived by the likes of Gilray and then we talk about others like William Bunbury and Thomas Rowlandson and the members of the various members of the Krukshank family there are scores of domestically generated images dealing with distinctly Irish subjects and these are integral to how we characterize and define that pursuit as the copies of the most celebrated images of Gilray, Rowlandson and particularly George Krukshank. I think it's, I suggest it is important that we do so not only because by so doing we're engaging in a valuable act of recovery which modest as it may seem to many is I would suggest one of the purposes of history but I think it has a purpose above and beyond that. If we examine these images we'll be able to provide secure some insight into what people thought important enough to represent, to pay money for and this particularly significant I suggest to laugh at. Laughing is something that we perhaps don't necessarily comprehend historically or knowing exactly how to locate but if one goes back to the as far as the 19th century French border layer one can see evidence and support for his argument that it is a means of incentivizing how we examine and explore and reflect upon the human condition. Humor is certainly integral to satire and to our appeal to verbal written and visual means to cast an ironic cynical and sometimes condemnatory comment on matters of concern in our lives. They need not be the great issues of the day. War, revolution, economic boom and bust might be their subjects but they're not always. Interestingly the single street caricatures that were published in Dublin did not engage with the 1798 rebellion and its impressive aftermath. They did not engage with the resistance crisis of 1799-1801 or the still more serious volcanic induced crisis of 1815 to 1817 or the original famine of 1822. What they do allow us to explore the imagery of certain key events. This which you have here is an Irish copy beside by side with Gilray's original portrait of an Irish chief which was produced at the time of the 1798 rebellion. There are images also not exactly particularly of that of this quality or particularly fine of the active union. There are images of the Catholic question in the early 19th century. There's a particularly revealing image almost a precautious image in terms of identifying Daniel O'Connell one of one of the earliest manifestations of his engagement with Irish politics dating just from short of the time of the visit of George IV. There is our cartoons on the visit of George IV and on particular events like the 1823 bottle riot prompted when a bottle was thrown at a particular social event at the Lord left tenant as he was present. And there are some cartoons though surprisingly small but perhaps come back to this on the subject of Catholic emancipation. And yet when one was looking for them one is struck by how many more caricatures and cartoons there are of events and personalities of British politics and society. So in there they featured William Pitt, Child's Games Fox, George III, George IV or before he was George IV the Prince Regent, Queen Caroline, his ill-fated wife and the divorce that they went through. International events this is the counts for the presence of General Sovereign of Russian General who at that stage actually was a liberator of Europe and playing a different quite different role from from the present. There are critical ones and fascinating ones on Napoleon and Napoleon's ill-fated campaign in 1812, 1813. But it's the ones that I think are more revealing the ones that address social issues. There are matters of social observation. Ones that engage with clothing, with fashion, with dance styles, or military dress and behaviour. Really on all sorts of issues that one might not conceive from historical perspective as necessarily important but which provide us with the perspective on what people at the time thought were important. Things as obvious as are for them and troubling for them as a dog's tax. As smoking chimneys. The theatre on the effeminacy of men which seem to be a particular concern at this particular point in time. In some while it could be misleading to imply that they encompass all of life they encompass a lot and they offer a nearly a nearly unique access to aspects of the world that we cannot gain insights into from the correspondence of the leaders of state, from the records of the debates in parliament, or from the magazines journals and newspapers that chronicled the time in words. As a consequence one can echo the view that this was an age of laughter that was different and distinct from that which followed and indeed from that which prevails today. It was a time when irreverence was respected, encouraged, permitted, choose whichever verb you wish. And this was manifest in irreverence towards monarchy, towards the political elite, towards municipal and local politicians, towards clergymen and towards the military. But it was also a time when snobbery, pretension, affectation were overtly challenged and satirized. If, as Vic Gattrell has suggested in respect to his study of this work in London, London was at the time quote a city of laughter, then so too was Dublin. Indeed one person has, to my knowledge, maintained that one can in this respect talk about Dublin as quote the second city of laughter I'm not personally sure what's the point of that but what is clear is that next to London it was the most productive centre of caricature production in the composite cultural realm that was Britain and Ireland at the end of the 18th beginning, moving into the 19th century. In terms of its output it exceeded Edinburgh which was third and which had in John K a great biographical caricaturist. What it does I suggest provide us with an indicator of the mood of the theme of attitude that illustrates and suggests that the mood at this time was different to that which succeeded and which we identify as Victorian. That sought and emphasized respectability. 18th century, early 19th century Ireland would appear not to have done so. It had a mood based on what we can include from the caricature as an emblem of identity and of outlook. It was a mood that was different from the moralistic confection of religion and nationalism that succeeded in Ireland in the 20th century when societal after I emphasize was largely suppressed. This is significant as there is good case to be made that when the ability of a society to maintain the capacity to laugh at itself is it is healthy for it to do so but it's also empowering when it does so. It can be a protection against overt over seriousness is it subject to which we're all I suggest prone when the matter at issue is something about which we believe deeply or sincerely. Now moving on I want to try and begin by addressing what I identify as the main phases of this phenomenon of single street caricature in Dublin. There's an earlier phase I would suggest spanning the late 1770s early 1780s which witnessed a transition from a time when most of the caricature of Irish relevance was English in origin and published in magazines to a period when single street caricature was becoming available for purchase. The leading Irish publisher of this form of print was a man named William Allen who ran a print shop in Dame Street Dublin from the end of the 1770s. Allen wasn't alone in producing a caricature in this single sheet form at this period and he was in response of producing a particularly large volume of material. He began by producing some political caricature in support of the patriot demand for free trade but he soon abandoned that and I moved on to show a preference for the gently satirical images of William Bunbury two of whose images are on the screen in front. Bunbury focused on domestic situations and particularly on gentlemen and their horses. He seemed to have particular enthusiasm I suspect born out of his own gentry background in England. Based on their price and they were expensive by the standards of the time, minimum was six months, not unaffordable but the more expensive ones could be multiples of shillings. His audience was the genteel. He certainly seems to have avoided the cheaper and more contentious end of the market which was also beginning to take shape in the 1780s which produced largely uncurred and frequently ill drawing images reflecting issues of political argument at the time. But with Bunbury I think with Allen and his publication of copies of William Bunbury we see a pattern being established whereas publishers in Dublin are set a pattern of copying English images which others are to follow. There's two other images for this period. One on the left is Bunbury and the one on the right is from an English caricature of the name Newton. Not a particularly sophisticated image but the fact that it was published in Dublin. I think it sustains the argument I would make that the 1790s very early years of the 18th century witnessed a developing phase in caricature production that I would identify as transitional. There was no identifiably dominant caricature publisher engraver during these years but the decade did witness an increase in the number of political caricatures graved in Dublin. These were not always sophisticated images though they can be effective and this one of John Foster who is the Speaker of the House of Commons I seems to me to epitomize one of the more effective ones. Foster would be identified today probably would be perceived as a defender of Protestant ascendancy. He was particularly active in 1793 a bigger pardon for which this image dates in dealing with sedition and basically so he's been presented there as the loud more. The implement of preference being a scythe and just how siding of manifestations of radicalism and if you are acutely observant you can notice in the background a very satirical gesture been been been been expressed by a president which I take it as a comment on of the the engraver on Foster himself. This decade also sees back to a Gilray again the beginnings of the publication of more overtly satirical English images then was this one was the case in the 1780s. The image on the left is probably derived from Gilray it's an interesting reflection and a rare image both for a for an important time pretty much in Europe at the stage of a visit to the dentist not a practice to be welcomed to the time and whenever disagreeable maybe to you now I just imagine what it was like when it was it was being pursued then but it's not until the end of the decade that we see a marked increase in satirical caricaturing. William McLeary was responsible for some of the previous images I identified which which were produced in respect of the active union but as McLeary's emergence at the in and his establishment of a shop on Nassau street is that sets the tone for the development and growth of caricature production in in Ireland. In the main the caricatures that were produced in the following years a bit like the one to the right which is of which is McLeary's copy of a comment on the on the Dutch embarkation and invasions care in the early years of the 19th century. My perception is that the majority of those images are not just copies and which is true of them in the main but they were reasonably safe. Now if so it is succeeded by a third phase and when the amount of caricature production escalates dramatically this coincides with the entry of James Sidebottom an Englishman of uncertain background into the expanding Irish caricature market and it's against his background we see this major surge in caricature production. It was also characterized by intense rivalry a Sidebottom who set up on the fashionable site on lower Sackville street just basically still been brought into being nowadays O'Connell street and McLeary who continued to operate out of Nassau street competed aggressively for dominance of what really was a relatively small Irish caricature market but the positive perspective the positive outcome from our perspective was the publication of an unprecedented range of caricatures on a diversity of themes and subjects. There was also an exceptional amount of underhand practice. Sidebottom alleged that McLeary sought deliberately to undermine him by reproducing his images I suspect he did but Sidebottom was not exactly free of guilt in respect to this charge as well. What you see there anyhow in the images of the two is an illustration of how competitive the situation is is that you've got an image a really quite effective image though it's a little reduced there I apologize for that of John Philpot Curran on his master of the roles effectively identical it was clearly one was produced to subvert the other and then you've got Sidebottom's version of one of Gilray's really quite marvelous images satires of two fashionable men who were preoccupied with blacking their boots. The original is in the National Portrait Gallery in London and if you happen to be there never see it actually it is worth just making a detour to look at it. There was I'm suggesting in other words an enormous amount of counterfeiting and this is one of the manifestations and products of that competition. The point about it though is there was no law so what you see here is basically these are images that were drafted or prepared by Sidebottom in which he's satirizing and trying to expose what he sees at the underhand practices of McLeary. If he's right the listing of images which is only the horn or the extinguisher was hence the term would suggest that McLeary was really copying on an almost industrial scale but the image is also valuable because it's the only visual impression that one has of what either Sidebottom or McLeary looked at. It's not the most flattering of images but nonetheless it does indicate that William McLeary didn't wear a wig that well he didn't dress up he probably dressed very ordinarily for the time but it does give a side perspective. An event they were operating in an environment in which there was no law against this copying and if it was a challenging to make a living and it created a unhealthy or perhaps unfair competition it did have the positive virtue as I suggested at the outset of fostering the development on publication of caricatures on Irish political and social themes that enriched and expanded the options available to purchasers. The competition between these two men anyhow can be said to have peaked in 1813-14 which is when I date those two images that are on the screen and resulted in some very intriguing but also some commonly misread images. They're misread in this sense and that the tendency because these two were produced by Sidebottom for people to perceive that McLeary was the more unprincipled of the two when certainly on the basis of how Sidebottom conducted himself when he went back to London in 1815 he wasn't exactly the most principled of individuals either. More importantly though it strikes me that the competition contributed to the improvement in the quality of the caricature that was produced. I instance this as an example that not the man who's been caricatured here is not somebody I think anybody or many of you would ever likely to have heard. He was the brother of one time Archbishop of Dublin. Archbishop of Dublin at the time was a man by the name of Usa B. Cleaver. Now by the time this caricature was done he was senile so he wasn't going to even notice. But this was his brother who was a don in Oxbridge University and the original which is by Dytton is part of a series of caricatures of dons at the time which actually I find really quite quite attractive even though it's quite difficult to try and link them the images with personalities. But if you look at the caricature to the right which is McLeary's version of it and it strikes me that there's an act of caricature it is far superior and well we haven't got the liberty here to actually to zoom in on it. The two aspects that stand out so visibly are his girth and secondly the wart on his nose which is definitely if it was there is highly well it lent itself to the exaggeration of which caricature was which the emblematic as you say of caricature. In any event by 1815 it seems that McLeary had won since Sidesbottom departs Dublin to try and reach well I'm not so much read because I'm not sure he was there before but try and start up a career in London. The net effect of this is that William McLeary consolidates his place as the dominant force in the Irish caricature marketplace. Now he didn't have the market entirely to himself Joseph Lipetit who had been an ally towards the end of Sidesbottom's term in Ireland and who seems to acted to some degree as a sort of an agent for him for a short time at least after Sidesbottom's return to London or to England sought to fill in the space created by the latter's departure. The Petite is a most intriguing individual. He had previously worked as an engraver and printmaker in London in the 1790s before coming to Dublin and when he came to Dublin he wasn't actively engaged in in print production. Indeed he has perhaps achieved a certain measure of renown in certain quarters as the publisher of some exceptionally high quality topographical scenes of Dublin and if you know the broadcast scenes well then you'll know of which I speak. Those are the ones that came after the better known Malton images. Lipetit published extensively overwhelmingly English caricatures but he wasn't really in the market and able to compete against with McCleary whose consolidates his place as the leading caricature producer and one of the areas in which he basically monopolizes and at least that he dominates is in his production of caricatures of fashion excesses. This was the peak period of the dandy and the dandy lent itself a true caricature for a variety of reasons partly because of the effeminacy of their the dress style or as it was perceived and which was seen as an offense by the more masculine masculine men and secondly because of their disposition to dress which lent itself to caricature. More generally though McCleary was alert to important niche markets because as well as the enthusiasm for the dandy images he capitalizes on the interest in the regency particularly of George Prince of Wales on the divorce of Queen Caroline and George IV and on the bottle ride and in the 1820s on the production of military caricatures. Lipetit by contrast concentrates on producing English images but his reproductions of the Hogarthian image and the one that's there is the cockpit which is one of a series is nonetheless strikes me as really quite intriguing and quite interesting and not insignificant in the history of the Hogarth images and I don't think it's an aspect of what that perhaps has been ever actually explored. Anything to the McCleary-Lipetit era lasted about a decade 1816 to 1825 and it's succeeded by the what I perceive as the final phase at the final phase of this caricature production in Dublin which is a little open-ended. It begins in the 1820s I suggest and carries on a bit fitfully arguably into the 1840s though perhaps one's pushing the envelope a little bit by linking the the caricature images of Daniel O'Connell and repeal in the 1840s to this perhaps they just they're just standalone. Now why did the caricature world that was seemed to be so vibrant as a decade earlier come to a conclusion so rapidly ostensibly in the in the mid-1820s? Well I'm not sure quite frankly maybe something to do with the changing fortunes of Lipetit and McCleary. Lipetit found himself in difficulties in the mid-1820s when he was arrested for the sale of his involvement in the sale of offensive images. He brought court and basically he's not he while their firm survives carried on by his family members is not they're not engaged in caricature production thereafter. Coincidentally by this point in time McCleary also exited the business they haven't been involved in it for 35 years it won't perhaps can forgive him for that but he did leave for another decade which suggests there may well be something going taking place. At any event my point is there is nothing in Ireland to compare with the extraordinary surge in political caricaturing prompted by the heated debate on Catholic emancipation that you can see in England in the second half of the 1720s. It's not that there was no attempt to caricature the politics of Catholic emancipation the film of Holbrooke and Son produces some very antagonistic caricaturing of the Catholic association which they call the cat the cat association or just simply the cat and they utilize that image as a means of belittling and and and downplaying it. There are other so engaged in slightly more benign image making sort of wise heart for example later on in the 1830s the Ormond printing house is engaged in some caricature production but it's really very tame it's very and it's very small beer by comparison with what's succeeded. Its last hurrah then arguably is the McCormick's images the repeal images of of the 1840s. There's a series of 12 historically interesting but essentially artistically very naive images that's there on the on the right hand side which I've just taken one of them which shows Daniel O'Connell with a birch leathering child. Now moving on from this outline of its of the trajectory of Irish image making I want to say something finally on on its its character and on its range. Basically as I think a point I've made clear in its conclusion you'll have arrived from the images that you've seen is that whilst there was an indigenous element to Irish caricature production it was highly dependent on the still more dynamic I would suggest ultra-dynamic London tradition there's certainly nothing like it in the whole of the Atlantic world at this period in time. Now there are a number of ways we can sort of examine this relationship Sylvia Beltrametti and William Laffin have endeavored to do so looking at the quality of the images that William McLeary published. What they have suggested is that when you look in particularly at some of the quality of the coloring that you identify in some of McLeary's images they are they're reflective of of a quality that it oftentimes exceeds that in England. It's an argument that can be made if you look there you will see then there's basically to the left you've got the Gilray original with the McLeary copy it's copy is quite attractive but I think basically not only is it short in the background but it just doesn't have the I think of the quality that you find in Gilray. Now Gilray is by a street you know the most remarkable of the caricatures of his period so perhaps that isn't a reasonable comparison. Let's move on and look at something slightly different this is two of the dandy images from later in the from 1818 later in the same decade and basically what you see there is the crook shank original on the left with the McLeary on the on the right and to my mind the McLeary one there has an advantage. If you're wondering why the reversed image we can tell you how closely connected they are by the fact that one is a reverse of the other it means it's a copy but I think basically in this instance what you can there is a mechanism of demonstrating by comparing images where you won't realize possible and to assess the quality. But I think we want to try and offer a slightly larger perspective on this this phenomenon and what I've been trying to do is identify a way of assessing this statistically and this is not an easy task. We do not possess an inventory of the single street caricatures published in Ireland so basically you're not clear about proportion of images that we actually survived. There's no major institutional catalogue or database of titles comparable to the Dorothy George assemble catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum which basically runs to all of 11 volumes and which is published almost over a period of a century. Interestingly and not unhelpfully it embraces those Irish caricatures that are in the collection of the British Museum. It's not unimpressive but it's not it's not not complete. It's a start but we can go slightly further in terms of to arrive at some sort of calculation as to the volume of Irish caricature because Nick Robinson made his one of his lifetime works to build up a collection of Irish themed caricature and then he bequeathed it to or donated it to Trinity College. It is the most comprehensive single collection of Irish caricature and it's the logical starting point for any consideration of the single sheet caricature phenomenon in Ireland but it too is not complete and as I described it previously as it's an Irish themed caricature. It concludes caricatures a lot of which were made in Dublin and as well as characters were made which made in London which have an Irish subject. My particular question trying to ask here is what proportion or percentage are Dublin produced? The net effect of all of this is that trying to try to establish a database or trying to establish a sample sufficiently large of Irish caricature is involved as almost global survey of museum holdings and the collection and the figures on which I will be talking to you about presently are based on the holdings of the National Library of Ireland, the Victorian Albert Museum, the Bodleian and the London Library in the UK. There's also smaller collections in the Welcome Library, the National Maritime Museum, the National Arm Museum but what I found really quite intriguing and satisfying so when I embarked on this exercise was the amount of material that has to be found its way across the Atlantic. The Library of Congress for example has a particularly good collection of caricature mainly English but in the midst of this when it's been possible to identify Irish material the same is true of the New York Public Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chicago Institute of Art, Lewis Walpole Library in Yale and the Brown University and given that I'm here it would be remiss to be not to call out the Boston Public Library and Boston Museum of Fine Art both of which I think hold one or two nothing spectacular but nonetheless there are some there. Now I've mentioned all those institutions partly to illustrate how widely scattered Dublin published single street caricature is but also to highlight the contingent character of the figures I'm going to offer you in other words I'm still not clear in my mind as to whether one has been able to assemble a reasonably full inventory of what was published or if it's or the extent to which it is less than complete. The problem is compounded by the fact and it comes to assessing the nature of caricature in Ireland. One that cannot as in England focus on the artist the Gilray, the Rowlandsons and so on indeed in a majority of instances one cannot even identify by the engraver that information is provided on London based caricatures. It's not that we can't identify some of the those people responsible the names Alexander McDonald's perspective of an individual who's active in the late 1870s 90s early 1800s and we broke us member of that extraordinarily talented family it was also involved and I've put up two examples of not especially remarkable images to illustrate but there's a large anonymous category. What one is obliged to do in that context then is focus on the publisher. Now this is where the absence of the extension of the Hogart Act which provided some sort of protection to caricature producers in England from 1735 is relevant. Why though where are our caricature producers so careful and why was so much produced anonymously? It may well have got to do with the rich tradition of print piracy that we identify in Dublin but I suspect it's probably something more to do with the application of the law of seditious libel as a means of corralling and carving a bit of carving debate. At any event if we take this forward and try to try to calculate what were is the ratios and proportions of material that is derived and that is domestically produced and disaggregated we get some suggestive figures based on what William Allen was doing in the 1780s predominantly I know he was active slightly longer than that what you can see is that the majority of how his images are copies is reliance on Bunbury is almost half the images we identify some of them are exceptionally good quality but nonetheless they are copies is reliance on others. The proportion which is domestically generated is like modest number numerical terms 11 but then the total inventory isn't exactly huge. When you move forward though you can see that the proportion of Irish-made images is increasing and an analysis of the surviving sample of McCleary side-bottom and Le Petit publications which is shown on the table on the screen now would illustrate that that only is the figures of increasing but it ranged considerably. Joseph Le Petit overwhelmingly is reliant upon English images while some of these of high quality mentioned his Hogarth derived images the proportion that he commissioned domestically from Irish artists and engravers was was modest. By contrast with side-bottom you can see the percentage has arrived to almost a quarter and William McCleary is closer closer to a third. The point about this is that I think it suggests that the competition between the two that we've touched on previously has a legacy, has an impact and it leads to some really strikingly effective essays in satire I would suggest amongst them. We've previously looked at the image of John Philpott Curran as master of the scrolls with a pun on his term as master of the rolls. The two lawyers here on the left are Burston and Leonard McNally who is probably better known in certain quarters because of his role in prosecuting well basically as a betraying the Ned Irishman and as a prosecuting council and the image to the right which is really one of my favorites which is the vigorous doctor it's called or alternative known as Dr Whistle and I've tried as I might I haven't been able to identify who that actually is. My perception that it is particularly effective is reinforced by the fact that it's one of the few Irish images that is also reproduced in London in other words they the copying tradition is one way rather than overwhelmingly rather than rather than rather than two the two ways but there are other trends there are images that that stand out that are a product of this competition. Side bottoms produces satires on the presentation the controversial presentation of a petition against Catholic Relief in 1813 in the process labeling the two lord mares of Dublin and London Dr Noodle and Noodle and then there's the there's the race to get the caricature it's just as it in terms of it brings a perspective onto this issue at this point in time I think that is singularly is singularly insightful. If McCleary then produced proportionately the highest number of caricatures of Irish origin he probably provides then the fullest point of entry into the Irish single sheet caricature tradition. He certainly by the late teens early 20s has taken a monopoly in the publication of caricatures of Prince of Wales these are copies of English exemplars but you add put those on top of the dandy images you can begin to get a sense of just how one how dominant he is and but also basically how how how alert he is to what the Irish market was prepared to bring on board. The latter two images that are on screen now are again more of the dandies the dandy cock and stays the first one and the dandy and the dandy Z which is the female dandy. While all of this is interesting in terms of what was copied what is also revealing is to what is not copied. It is striking for example how few of James Gilray's major political caricatures which are what attract the highest price in the present were copied the famous one of you know the goose pie etc are images that are simply you don't you don't you don't find. We see little also of Piracy Roberts iconic anti-nidapoleonic corpus of images. It's not that either Gilray or Roberts were shunned that is that is manifestly not the case we can see but what was seemed to have appealed more in terms of Gilray were his social satire if you like. The series here is two images one on the satire on female grooming and the second is satire satire on male grooming is the progress of the toilet and dandy the dandy dressing. His caricatures on medicine brisk, cathartic, taking physics, easing the toothache etc are also were also reproduced. The pointed short anyhow is why it was the sheer number of English images that was produced in Ireland underlines the similarity of interests that the caricature buying community in both locations shared they were not identical and this is an important point I would suggest. We do not know enough about the circulation of caricatures to pronounce securely but it seems reasonable to conclude not only that the caricature buying community was not representative of the population of large but it itself was also fragmented and that those who were interested in buying caricatures of dandies for example were probably not those who were interested in buying caricatures of soldiers or indeed the political caricatures and featured Daniel O'Connell or the Catholic question. The point in these in other words maybe necessary ten whilst exploring this shared cultural community in terms of the interest in imagery that binds Dublin and London is to disaggregate it into many smaller communities or cultural spheres to identify what was going on. But on balance and in conclusion one has to observe of the Dublin single street caricature the single sheet caricature tradition that it wasn't as large or as innovative as as London equivalent because Ireland produced no individual equivalent to William Bunbury early on Richard Newton in the 1790s or subsequently then the great geniuses that were Gilray, the Grooke Shanks and Thomas Rowlandson. But the city of Dublin did possess skilled engravers particularly skillful colorists who if you could identify them would add greatly to our understanding of the world of which they were a feature. This cannot be done we will have to continue to prioritize the images of themselves securing the knowledge that as a cultural artifact it has much to say both about the world out of which it emerged and the concerns and preoccupations of those to whom it spoke. Hopefully this one is by way of last image. This is a commentary on the Rockites who in the early 1820s were an agrarian protest movement of some consequence. For those who viewed these who bought these were largely from the Anglophone literate urban cultural community. They had disposable resources but this was a community that reveled in the fun and enjoyment that came from satirizing others and that I suggest is one of the reasons why it continues to have an applicability and relevance that we try and pursue it today. Thank you. Richard. Yes thank you for that very interesting talk. I'd like to ask you to unpack a little bit perhaps one or two of the images politically. I was thinking if John you know current and master of the scrolls and what's going on there I mean is this satir about him being a lawyer you know is it the ascendancy side is it the Catholic background what's the politics why is he riding a horse master of the hounds master of the scrolls I just don't know what's going on. I was thinking as I was looking at it of thoroughly you know the structure who was from a Irish kind of national background and a local Dublin boy who became a sculptor imitated English sculpture at the end of the 19th century did Albert and Victoria but there was that there was a subversive intent there was a satire built into his representations of British empire and British life so he was imitating it he was a brilliant imitator but he also then turned it around as Ronan Sheehan shows in his novel for these agents and Joe Curie has written a lot about that too so I'm just wondering if in all this work of um portraiture there is something similar going on in terms of an Irish or an Anglo-Irish indeed and you know playing with the the dominant English format and doing something with it or is it just you know the statistics of someone you were producing around somebody who produced in England I mean what's the difference what's the point and my second question is if this was going on as a very you know flourishing movement in in portraiture and satirical portraiture you mentioned Ireland was a city of laughing and at the same time you know one would have the midnight court and a whole culture of laughter in Irish gaelic culture and I wonder is there any access of that kind of laughter to you know that continues on subsequently right down to Muslim golly you know in catering honesty is is there any evidence of that particular culture in this kind of satirical portraiture or was that linguistic difference always kept I well I'll do the second part first actually I think in the main they're quite they're quite separate and quite cut off from each other I think they're quite cut off sorry yes I think they're quite cut off and quite separate I mean it is a chronological I mean well midnight court 1780 so in one sense you might suggest that actually that it it it it it coincides temporarily with the beginning of of this phenomenon but the world in which they are these the occupy this is an anglophone cultural realm to my to my mind and I think basically the the my point in terms about its cultural subversiveness or its or not necessarily subversiveness it's it's the significance of the willingness to laugh at great institutions and need to certain degree you know integrate men but though I come back in a second is has to be seen within the context in which it operates it's it's it's it's uh it's not engaging in a major resort trying to offer a major radical agenda for for change we're operating in an environment here before Foley and before the the nationalist tropes and the nationalist image images and the national nationalist perceptions that take heart in the 19th century have really taken anchorage and I think even I don't even think they would actually have much appeal to the majority of the people who are purchasing these I'm still wrestling I had to be said they've said with the you know getting a sort of handle and actually who they were aimed at and I'm releasing a slightly pessimistic conclusion in certain instances that a lot of those that are produced in relation to the army are reflective of the fact that the the army establishment in Ireland post 1815 is that it's you know it's it's three times what it was before 1800 and that there there is there is a there's enough of an audience there and there's sufficiently inward-looking for for that to sustain and justify the the the the production the I mean that's tied in I still that's tied in also with the the whole question of precisely what are the runs of these of these prints and and some of them one one can conclude reasonably confidently not least based on the frequency which will encounter them in different collections and which they still appear as available for auction or are to be found hanging in in what remains of the houses of the Anglo-Irish which is where you're more likely to encounter them that they may well have been sufficiently numerous to suggest that there were the print runs were reasonably reasons substantial some of those I suspect that you know the existing one copy and some I know on this of titles there's no I have been able to locate a copy at all it may not have been extended it's extended very far so which ties in with your which your first point really in terms of what what how do we make of these these characters of individuals I was I was tempted to you know it's probably not necessarily the wisest the best one to to to display but I was I was trying to provide two messages with with this image the one is the the fact that they they were copying it and their copies are are on the fist but not exactly very dissimilar to to to each other and secondly is that there is a by implication one can get a perspective from the the image itself that it's not especially ferocious a Philip at current by this stage did not the word and commenting on his on his on his ostensibly catholic background I mean I was a long time in the back they weren't even commenting on his you know his his troubled relationship with his daughter or with indeed true true true Emmett that's something that another generation of people looking back on current found interesting about him they were commenting on the fact that after all the years basically endeavoring to be in in in in all these years been in politics and been an opposition figure he'd effectively he'd become master of the roles he was an officer of the law and and in that capacity he obviously had to you know there was a certain amount of travel involved I assume I don't know but there is another one of John Toller who's who in Lord Lord Norbury who you know from another who is known from the Emmett context as well also on is called a tolerable horseman which is a nice not a really nice pun but it's a low key pun on on his name also in horseback I think basically it's there's a preoccupation during this year with horses that we can only understand from in the late 20th century or beginning 21st century perspective of those of those people who are enthusiastic about cars and it's that it's that it's that version there's another phenomenon about this which I didn't go into which is there's this biographical I mean there was back to the William Cleaver image there is there are dozens of of figures some of whom now unfortunately it can't be named because at least they have their I haven't named them as yet including Dr Whistle who are contemporaries about town and who for whom there was a market just in producing a caricature image in the same way as Martin Turner might thought they're more more they're more invariably more Tom Matthews perhaps a bit better way they might be better parallel who are which you know just you know exaggerating the individual and that in itself it's it's I don't think they sustain always an awful lot more analysis than than that but while at the same time I mean maintaining and based on the differences that are there that that is something it isn't significant or I'm suggesting it was significant that a lot of Gilray's you know with most savage political caricatures aren't reproduced and while it's some of his more social caricatures are and one can replicate that so it's rather a sort of a longish answer to to your question but that I yeah I I'm inclined to think perhaps one of the things that we need to ultimately to try and come to acknowledgement of is that is the extent to which a pre the emergence of nationalism the extent to which Britain aren't were bound or at least large elements of the populace I should say the Anglophone populace of both communities were bound in this sheer cultural political and and and parliamentary sphere as well and and if we see that in that context it it's it's not necessarily a context which people looking from a modernist perspective will necessarily find fulfilling but that doesn't take away from its actual its existence so I have two questions one is the fact some of these images are exactly the same and others are mirror images of one another makes me wonder about the actual technologies but people would usually to produce them I wonder if you could say some things about that and my second question is do we know anything at all about what people did with them after they involved do they keep them at home where they explain where they looked at once and throw away they pass around you know anything about that or were they frank yeah yeah no that's a really that's both those are a key a key questions and the technology I mean the first point about it is I would I would it's not an accident that these these these images emerge over the same time in Britain and Ireland basically the technology allows it it's not an accident also that by the time you get to the 1820s with with lithography it's possible to move on to the next phase it seems to it doesn't entirely explain the speed at which it seems to decline in Ireland but there's a technological dimension which allows this to be done now how they're done in technological terms is really quite this is something well it's it's very elusive we know that there's a fairly vibrant a culture of engraving in Dublin and before this comes along that many of those who were engraving for the various magazines were engraving very ordinary and you know benign classical and rustic scenes for for the various magazines of the day and so on the broadcast being the case in point move into into that because frankly it's work and and and so what what they what they would seem to be doing in a majority of instances they're they're getting English they get an English image and effectively they engrave that do a copper engraving of it they cut the copy of the put it on on piece of copper and grave it that's one of the reasons they're reversed and so that's that as partly the the explanation but beyond that I look it's it's there is there's a myriad of aspects of of these professions and these activities that are impenetrable and because the papers that you would require you need the working papers of an engraver or of a publisher and I and I mean I threw it out there into the to the room I don't even I can't even locate and the side bottoms birthdate I haven't an idea I know and I stumbled upon it almost by accident when McCleary dies based on the abstract of a will and but I don't know when he was born I don't know about the country he was from so at times you feel like you know the famous ever so lion's image going back a generation ago about that coming to write a history of Ireland he felt like to be the ancient Israelite asked to make bricks without straw I think in many instances you know you don't even feel you got you got not lonely not have enough of the straw that but you don't have enough quantity of of the earth that is required as well or the heat isn't there now what to do with them is is an even more interesting a question in some senses and because it goes to the heart of their purpose and they're occasional there are some hints and a lot of them were purchased and basically were I suspect they were they were brought into these large these there was various social gatherings predominantly male I would I would hazard very confidently they were probably male and some of them emphatically were for a male audience and you know that in there as the evening went on they were taken out they would be poured over others were abused for certain political purposes one can determine from some images of of of guard rooms and barracks that they were they were pasted on the wall and there so and that's that's that's pretty pretty they're pretty clear actually that that's that's what they were doing they were essentially ephemeral though collections were established and and I mean this is one of the intriguing things about as I mentioned the pure upon Morgan I mean the pure upon Morgan collection what drew me there was that that's where William sorry Robert Peels the the place in every 19th century politician he built up a collection George the fourth himself built up a huge collection and even his own way was it was it was curiously was well well been satirized by it was was subventing the satirizing that was taking place of himself and and as everybody knows Gilray this is in England I'm talking about of course Gilray was was funded once canning it takes over by the by the by the by the by the by the by the administration that's how they're funded so they're they're see them but but how they've been distributed the other way in which they actually impacted upon people is that they were they were they were hung in the print sellers on windows so they were and we never see is a depiction of those without a crowd being before it so they they had a certain lure one would suggest I mean I've bought some myself from from via Australia of all places and the the the the retailer there was indicating when I was inquiring about how it is how we'd acquire these and I sort of asked a customer bone is it where to say like it stuck me down the basis of that they've been assembled in a in a in a in a in a in a in a folio of some kinds that people were collecting them so there's a variety of options some people are collecting them for for for because they in the same way as any was collect anything it's just it reflects the collecting habit others where you've been utilized for more ephemeral temple purposes someone would just use for recreation entertainment and then where I haven't didn't engage with those which I'd probably have Richard might have found that more interesting the age of those who are purely political and they were trying to give a political message I think a few things just in response to Richard's question and Richard's is not yet but they I think actually to look at it within to compare the the Gaelic tradition wouldn't quite work what I would look compared to I think I put in the context of singing at the time political singing reflects a lot late 18th century balladry also in the way you described with people taking out the cricketers and pouring over them in gentlemen's clubs would relate to the kind of singing of you know the necrion kind of society is both in London and in Dublin so that's just a comment on that one um you know it's interesting because lately these are very hot topics right and histories of various emotions and how they work you're saying a history of laughter in the city of laughter these are hot topics in historiography but the next question is laughter changes over time so ask yourself what kind of laughter are we talking about and it seems to me that these these caricatures are not about bursting out and rolling with laughter it's more of a smigger now we ask what kind of laughter it is the key point here and I think you mentioned before the puns they're loaded with puns you know you have to recognize them and you kind of laugh at them it's a certain kind of a laughter which can be qualified I think better by the detail of them but the point I was thinking was about your knowledge so you're giving us a history here from the late 18th century through the 1820s and you already told us in advance that it's quite clear you know it's very different from the cartoons we see of the 1870s in the late in the late 19th century right these are two different phenomena technologically and they're different in their frame of reference in the kind of cartoons but I'm wondering about the demise of the 1820s it seems to me it continues further and there's kind of this middle period as things move in between I mean think of all the cartoons you show the Daniel O'Connell cartoons right think of those that happened in the 1840s around Young Island and Daniel O'Connell they kind of fit into this tradition and they kind of bridge it with what's going on about to happen later with Nationalism don't they and the the other aspect with that would be that would also be a period I think the 1840s of popularizing these cartoons when some of these caricatures begin to appear in books the classic example of course would be Crookshank appearing in Max one right in Max Hall's popular history so there's a moment here where you say this is not mass produced this these are collectible items but the 1840s seem to become a period which changes and challenges that but still continues it's not no it doesn't die I mean that actually that's that is an important point and I mean I was perhaps almost as you might seem almost obsessive in talking about single sheet cartoons or caricatures because basically it's a particular type of form I mean something I was I'm conscious of not least since in a previous incarnation almost at this stage I did a collection of Gallo speeches and I mean what defined that I got partly criticized and partly complimented for in turn or that was that it's they just stop I couldn't find any after 1740 in that instance and but the phenomenal Gallo speeches been made didn't it didn't cease and ditto I mean the people's willingness to caricature to satirize doesn't stop in 1825 or even allowing for the the the Hallbrook ones of the of the cat association or the Catholic Association or need more comics of the 1840s but there is a they are they are different I think yes I think perhaps I should be a bit more emphatic and to simply state that the the 1840s are an outlier and that they're they're a bridge between as you were suggesting between what comes and goes but that the tradition what goes earlier has changed because I think I'm trying to make the point I'm inclined to try to make the point that it's it's not that people stop laughing you know we never stop laughing but what we find funny at particular point in time and how we how we how we engage with what is we perceive as as as reasonable it differs and and and varies and in that context what my perception is that what's happening in the by the time you get to the 1820s is not it's partly technological as I indicate but it's partly also there's a there's a disposition that's emerging of which which we for want of a better term just a define as victorian in which there's a much greater emphasis on on and much greater insinceriousness towards towards towards this form of of of presentation because there isn't I mean I use the word irreverence and there isn't a reverence in in in the attitude towards George III or George the fourth or many of the politicians are are indeed just the the the stereotypes that are been been highlighted in in those images in fact it's it's quite irreverent whereas the respectability that's that's emerging and the respectability that's already had a societal impact you know it's it's it's cleared out certain phenomena as in terms of popular recreation and is to intensify is to get into this realm as well now the in in in and so in that sense you know the I mean I don't see what's happening in Dublin is very different from what Gattrell basically perceived as happening in London and it's it's it's it's it's it's a different cultural realm if you just you know spend days or weeks reading newspapers from the 1820s and then you once in the 1830s or 1840s there's there's a different there's a different sense of concern preoccupation it's this is what history is about is what that's what we are trying to trying to identify and to try and and and and to and to and to and to describe but in terms of the images themselves I mean I do think there is something slightly something also that we can we can tease out I mean there's no question in my mind but that the images that Alan was producing were more genteel we're a softer they reflected partly his audience it also it was before Gilray Gilray is a game changer because Gilray does bring a you know I mean Sean Boris here basically we know this is better than I but you know in terms of Swift's Save a Indignatio Gilray brings us the Gilray brings a Save a Indignatio to bear to the world cultural realm in in in in but few others can emulate this partly manifestation of his genius but you know they I mean what he does with the reputation of Charles James Fox the leading wing politician is is is you know it's not fathomable no measurable I mean I don't I don't think any contemporary caricaturist has and even Ralph Steadman in his peak was capable of doing anything along along as as as cumulatively destructive as what Gilray did there and so there is a you know there is intensification but it doesn't quite go that far it's it's quite as personal as that I mean I suspect we would have been we'd find it much more engaging it wouldn't have been as occluded to the same degree that it has been if if that had happened I mean the only thing that comes and I didn't engage with this because it basically doesn't fit the definition of the single-street phenomenon is is what it cocks as images in the Irish mirror the only ones that in a sense that are or overtly more political in that realm and artistically I mean whatever people say about what it cocks they know people have some people have attempted to try and provide a more positive gloss on the thing artistically they're pretty unsophisticated shall we say then and though though they are no they they're reflective and it's in that context I think perhaps maybe as this moves forward this project moves forward what one will be doing is trying to work out these cultural realms these smaller communities in which which certain images attract to them and and but that the publishers those who are retailing them you know and you could go into side bottom shop on on Laura Cycle Street you could go into we're clearies on on Nassau Street and buy these images there but if you went in presumably in the same way as you were I going to a book shop if you don't go in and basically say let's want a book you know you're when you're going in you choose and you select and that people were but we were doing that there so and that's they though so their publishers were producing an array for particular clear not much they may have a particular clients in some instances but for for a general audience of people who come in and somebody who want a particular image and the world and there are I suspect there are individuals you know who who's been specialized and I there are lots more than than than than than I've shown of those biographical images which are oftentimes very gentle you know they they they're ones that lent yes lent itself to the people saying we're smiling at rather than rather than laughing outrageously and indeed in many instances you know most of us I suspect today if somebody drew a caricature of us and if it wasn't entirely offensive would actually promise it may I keep that and that may well it be also a factor that that that obtains and finally then in terms of basically you know the the tradition yes I think basically made that point earlier it is reflective of a different tradition that there are different mechanisms the world of balladry you know is something where it's it's I mean there's massive amount of balladry as well and there are these these forms of sort of human expression and human interaction that are taking shape and that as our our approach to the trying to explore the past expands we're beginning to find space for them that's a really difficult question because I mean the you may have noted the the the example I cited was of the Tory government in England using the an indeed to certain degree the the Prince Regent funding their well in the first instance funding their publication in the Irish context is less it's less it's entirely less clear-cut there are a number from the 18 teens which relate to the Catholic question which I think actually were were were were being were being subsidized to some extent or but there was there was somebody there was a physical motivation in their publication and if there was a physical motivation in their publication it's likely that there's a political there may well be a political incentive being provided that might be might be financial but it's it's like this is like nothing I know the piece of work I've done really in the sense that you're actually trying to take the product and then interpret the the process by which it's generated and it's not the it's it's it's it's not like normal it's not like what's normal it's not like political history in the sense that you frequently trace the the genealogy of a of a phenomenon or idea or even a political policy decision-making this instance and it isn't there isn't the same liberty so any answer I'm going to give you is probably going to be all three highly unsatisfactory my suspicion is there's a bit more going on than than one would know I expect a lot of it is basically pure opportunism on the part of the publisher something happens you know there for example in 1812 there was a there were again in 1823 there were attempts to launch balloons which created a sensation in the city and so there were there were caricatures of this produced and which emphasized the semi-rocuseness of the occasion you know there was there was the discovery of a spy well in in in league slip in 1794 produces the same I think they're pure opportunistic things some of the politics are opportunistic these those are very short shelf those are very short sale lives some of the rest of them then may have had a bit more so yeah there's more going on than we're ever going to recover or I'm going to recover I fear on the basis of what I'm doing today