Sackville Street, Post Office & Nelson’s Column by George Petrie

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sackville Street, Post Office & Nelson’s Column by George Petrie Angela Griffith (bio) George Petrie Sackville Street, Post Office & Nelson’s Column (1821) copper engraving; engraved by Thomas Barber Click for larger view View full resolution This tunc appears in Celtic Illuminative Art in the Gospel Books of Durrow, Lindisfarne, and Kells by Stanford F. H. Robinson (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co. Ltd., 1908), held in the Celtic Collection of the University of St. Thomas Libraries. in the early years of the nineteenth century, as the Napoleonic Wars limited Britons from touring Continental Europe, leisure travel increased across the British Isles. With the hopeful expectation that the legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 marked the end of political instability in the country, unprecedented numbers of travelers came from the British mainland to the “Sister Isle.” Tourists mostly wished to experience destinations that reflected their own perspectives and mores. These attitudes were consolidated by travel literature marketed to them. From the beginning of the 1800s, commercially printed illustrated guidebooks played a fundamental role in how the urban and rural space was read by increasing numbers of consumers. These volumes, largely published in England, were created with both the visitor and the local population in mind. While they informed and attracted (and assured) the tourist, residents wanted to read about where they lived—and to see neighboring attractions described positively, both textually and visually, on the printed page. These books also had a political and societal function, as they masked realities such as poverty or political unrest. And as George Petrie’s engraved illustration of Dublin’s fashionable Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street) demonstrates, they also expressed to a British readership that the so-called Second City of the Empire was thriving—modeling itself on and aligning itself with the First City, London. The production and dissemination of printed books greatly increased in the [End Page 156] industrial age. Their subject matter also expanded, and travel books became a popular genre among the British middle and upper classes. Comprising descriptive accounts of regions across the British Isles and further afield, illustrated guides were hugely in demand, and the quality of the illustrations, and the reputations of the artists and engravers who made them, became an important distinguishing factor in advertising these works. Publishers recognized that the role of the illustrator and the engraver had become increasingly important, as book markets demanded images that were well designed and finely engraved and that adhered to popular aesthetic tastes. The English publisher Henry Fisher claimed that the aim for his series of national and international illustrated travel guides was twofold, that of “Instruction and Amusement.”1 New steam technologies increased production levels, contributing to growth in the reach and impact of published materials, eventually leading to relative affordability and to increased transportability as the century progressed. Click for larger view View full resolution The most popular illustrator of Irish subject matter among British publishers was the artist George Petrie (1790–1866). In this image of Dublin, the viewpoint is at eye level, as the reader “walks” across the bridge spanning the Liffey toward a busy street scene with fashionable figures strolling leisurely, the city’s grand throughfare stretching before them. Following the tenets of William Gilpin (1724–1804), author, artist, cleric, and influential definer of the popular [End Page 157] picturesque aesthetic, Petrie’s engraved illustration presents details vividly through the exploration of textural variety.2 A sky of billowing clouds with beams of sunlight breaking through creates a vibrant atmosphere. In response to public demand, publishers requested that their artists add more details to their topographical designs so as to create visual interest and to divert and entertain the reader. Petrie’s Sackville Street illustration, one of seventeen in total, was first published in G. N. Wright’s An Historical Guide to Ancient and Modern Dublin, by the London-based company Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, in 1821. Wright’s text provides a detailed description of Dublin’s history, buildings, and civic institutions. In 1835 the Irish publisher William Curry, in another Dublin-themed volume, titled The New Picture of Dublin . . . , reused Petrie’s Sackville Street image as a frontispiece...