Irish Arts Review

The Brocas Collection: An Illustrated Selective Catalogue of Original Watercolours, Prints andDrawings in the National Library of Ireland by Patricia ButlerReview by: Martyn AngleseaIrish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 15 (1999), pp. 185-186Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20493073 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

In her overwhelming emphasis on the conditions of patronage, she does not make space for a consideration of the cir

cumstances of production - the stone carving profession and its relationship to the fine art tradition. Also, in her anxiety

to redress the traditional art historical

stylistic approach she omits to conduct a

thorough qualitative formal analysis, although she is quite frank about the

poor quality of so many of the nationalist

memorials. The final chapter dealing with sculp

ture in public spaces since the 1960s sits

uneasily with the bulk of the study. The

traditional consensus of a publicly shared set of ideals gave way in the

1960s to the individualism of mod ernism. To consider recent public sculp ture properly (which is not monumental

in the classical sense), it would be nec

essary to situate it in the intellectual

and stylistic context of modernism in European and American art. This lack

of contemporary critical context becomes most apparent as the study comes up to date. It tends more and

more to become simply a gazetteer of

selected items. The study of sculpture in

public places in both the modernist (as well as the medieval) periods, stands apart from the main focus of this book, which is public monumental commemo ration in the classical tradition.

Despite these criticisms, the book pre sents an excellent study of Irish public

memorials as objects of material culture.

The book's great strength is that it places the public monument of the streets and

squares of Ireland in the context of the

political and social history of the country.

It shows how they are visual representa

tions of Irish political ideals. The very

destruction of so many fine loyalist memorials in Ireland is itself a barometer

of political fluctuations demonstrating the accuracy of her analysis. She has con

clusively investigated the close interde

pendence of Irish public sculpture, ideology and social class.

PROF JOHN TURPIN is the author of A School of

Art in Dublin Since the Eighteenth Century, A History of the National College of Art and

Design (Dublin 1995).

The Brocas Coliection:

An Illustrated Selective Catalogue of

Original Watercolours, Prints and

Drawings in the National Library of

Ireland BY PATRICIA BUTLER ................................................................................

The National Library of Ireland, 1997 (p/b) L14.99

184 pp. 0-907328-26-1 ................................................................................

Martyn Anglesea

AMONG THE NATIONAL LIBRARIES of

these islands, the National Library of

Ireland has always had an awkward and

anomalous position, that of a poor rela

tion. It was set up in 1877, under the aus

pices of the Royal Dublin Society, which then still occupied Leinster House, and

moved into its present building adjacent in 1890. Not the least of its problems was

the close proximity of Trinity College Library, which was already Ireland's copyright library, and remains so. The

British Library and the National Libraries

of Scotland and Wales are copyright

libraries, entitled to a free copy of every

publication issued. Dr Patricia Donlon, Director 1989-97, to whom this volume is appropriately dedicated, adopted a vig

orous promotional policy to publicise the

Library's rich collections, particularly of illustrated books. It is not generally

known that the Library has a massive

collection of prints and drawings, num

bering over 90,000, inherited mostly from the RDS and the Joly Collection. To

some extent, the late Rosalind M Elmes

catalogued the topographical prints and

the portraits during the 1940s, in two

volumes which are still useful.

At the end of their analysis of the

complicated problem of the Brocas family

(in The Watercolours of Ireland), Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin

state: 'A large corpus of Brocas material

has recently been found in the National

Library and deserves far greater attention

than we have been able to give it'. The

corpus is indeed large, comprising over

2,500 watercolours, drawings and prints. In 1990, Elizabeth Kirwan began the

mammoth task of cataloguing them, and

Patricia Butler was brought in as a con

sultant for research and cataloguing. The

result was an exhibition in 1997 and this

handsomely-produced publication, evi dently generously sponsored by Mr Dermot F Desmond. It purports only to be a

selective catalogue of key items, the main

bulk of data accessible on the Library's

online catalogue. Patricia Butler has already established her reputation in Irish art-history by a seriously-flawed book, Three Hundred Years of Irish Watercolours

and Drawings (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1990), which is now in its paperback edi

tion. With its more manageable theme,

this Brocas catalogue makes a happier

impression, but while the introduction is well-written and satisfactory, the ensuing thematic sections seem a hotch-potch of

ill-digested information. Six members of the Brocas family

worked as painters, draughtsmen and engravers. The first generation consisted of James Brocas (c1754-80) and his

brother Henry Brocas senior (C1762 1837). There followed Henry Brocas's four sons, James Henry Brocas (c1790-1846), Samuel Frederick Brocas (ci792-1847),

William Brocas RHA (c1794-1868), and

Henry Brocas junior (c1798-1873). The last of these brothers lived long enough to have met W G Strickland. James

Henry Brocas was the outstanding topo

graphical draughtsman among them, his fine detailed Dublin streetscapes repro ducing well inside the catalogue and on

the cover. The most varied artist, William

Brocas RHA, found a generous patron in

the Monaghan landowner, Henry

Westenra, 3rd Baron Rossmore. Henry

Brocas senior and junior operated a sort

of family mafia as drawing masters in the

Royal Dublin Society's Schools. William Brocas RHA did some topo

graphical work in Wales, and it is good to

see Welsh placenames spelled correctly. However, Dolgellau (p. 60) is not the

capital of Gwynedd, which has never had

a capital. The distinctive polygonal tower

(p.107) is clearly Caemarfon Castle, not

Conwy as stated. The New Town of

Edinburgh was laid out not in the 17th

century as stated on p.58 but in the late

18th century, after the Jacobite Rebellions. Among the portrait drawings, the young

Theophilus Lucas-Clements of county Cavan (p.85), is surely wearing Greek

1 85

IRISHt ARTS REVIEW

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BOOK REVIEWS

John Thomas SERRa, Bullock Castle, Dalicey from 200 Years of Watercolours by Adrian Le Harivel and Macusnia Goacher. '...painted in delightfully-clean tones, the scene

is without litter and quite unsmelly...'

rather than Turkish costume. The fustanella skirt with its 400 pleats sym bolises the years of Ottoman occupation of Greece, and was originally wom by the

Greek guerrillas who resisted the Turks. The Anglo-Irish aristocracy would have been pro-Hellenic and anti-Turkish. David Garrick's Drury Lane perfor mances did not take place between 1710 and 1734 as stated on p.118. He was not

born until 1717 and his London stage debut was not until 1741. The so-called Study of a Standing Female Nude (p. 68) is

actually a sketch after the Medici Venus, presumably from a cast. Punctuation throughout the book is eccentric, com

mas appearing in odd places where they are not needed, and not appearing where they are needed. Also the increasingly common practice of omitting the definite article (e.g. 'watercolourist John Varley', 'London-born artist Robert Edge Pine') strikes me as journalese rather than acad emic usage.

The catalogue is beautifully printed, though the images are very mixed in

quality, varying from James Henry Brocas's excellent townscapes and some spirited watercolour portraits by William

and Henry Brocas junior to inferior sketches after other artists, made as engravers' drawings. It is questionable whether so much trouble should have been taken in reproducing engravings and caricatures pirated after people like Reynolds and Gillray. A list of the entire collection need only have been appended in small print to add to the usefulness of the publication as a reference book.

MARIYN ANGLESEA is the author of Portraits and

Prospects: British and Irish Drawings and Watercolours from the Ulster Museum (Belfast 1991).

200 Years of Watercolours ...............................................................................

BY ADRIAN LE HARPVAL AND MACUSNIA GOACHER ...............................................................................

Natial Gallery of Ireland 1997 p/b ?3

43 pp. 0 903162393 ...............................................................................

Anne Crookshank

200 Years of Watercolours is much needed as only a specialist in the subject would know about a large number of the artists

and a slide test would leave me with a

very low mark; but the lesser-known and usually not-so-good paintings in a collec tion tell much about changing tastes and fashions in art.

There are some masterpieces. The John Robert Cozens is an exquisite view of the Bay of Naples depending on the artist's marvellous handling of tones using a few simple colours. Then William Pars Laufenburg Switzerland, also nearly monochromatic, is painted with supreme delicacy and quietness despite the foam ing river. Pars's half dozen views done in Ireland in the next year, 1771, have the same distinction and are among the finest watercolours ever done in this country, Whistler's captivating Nocturne in Grey and Gold tums out to be a depic

tion of a London fog and its near abstract

air leads us to the bravura of Nolde's Rain

over a Marsh which looks as wet and

windy as when he painted it. It would be useful if the National

Gallery had one of Francis Danby's views of the Avon Gorge which enchant the

eye with their dramatic romanticism and would show up the pedestrian compe tence of the same view by Samuel

Hieronymous Grimm. There is a lovely Rowlandson, a fine, fresh Sargent which I have never seen before, and one of James

Mahony's excellent watercolours of the Dublin industrial exhibition of 1853.

186

IRISH ARTS REVIEW

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