Irish history in colour

In Hinde-Sight: Postcards from Ireland’s Past
Paul Kelly
Gill Books
Sept. 3, 2021
225 pages
ISBN 978-0717190041

Paul Kelly’s father, Patrick emigrated to California in the early 1950s. He returned to Ireland often and from here sent his family lots of postcards. These illustrated “[B]rilliant emerald hillsides, sapphire seas, cloud-flecked blue skies, splashes of scarlet in flowers and fashion”, and the postcards let him share with his family the historic and natural wonders of the homeland he always held dear. From the age of nine, Paul travelled with his father on those trips and his father instilled in him “the same longing for the scenes of his childhood” and the father’s love for Ireland was passed on to his son.

Many of the postcards were taken by John Hinde to whom generations of Irish people owe a huge debt of gratitude for capturing in colour the Ireland of the 1950s and 60s. In 2019 Paul Kelly published the aptly titled Return to Sender, the fruits of travel around Ireland capturing scenes from John Hinde postcards and placing the old and the new alongside each other – some had changed a lot, some a little, some not at all. The success of that book prompted a more detailed work with well over a hundred scenes revisited and photographed, leading to the 2021 publication of In Hinde-Sight. A lot of this work was done in an Ireland still in the grips of the Covid pandemic – this meant that some of the scenes are deserted and Kelly did have difficulty finding people to provide access to certain sites, reflecting how some of them had altered significantly over the years.

For those of us old enough to remember the John Hinde postcards of the 1960s, the book is a fascinating, if slightly nostalgic reminder of a different Ireland. We hear and read constant criticisms of the backward Ireland of days gone by – this book serves as a reminder if we needed it that Ireland is a beautiful country. As well as savouring the beautiful scenes and the comparisons between then and now, the book’s introductory chapter tells us some details about the life and times of John Hinde himself. He was born in 1916 of Quaker stock, had been expected to go into the family business but discovered his passion for photography at an early age. He was a War Photographer during the Blitz and later in the 1940s was pioneering the use of colour photography. He even spent time with well known British circuses and set up his own circus in Ireland but the wet summer of 1956 ended his dreams in that area. That same year he set up shop over the house he and his wife rented in Dalkey, and the rest is history.

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Creating History: Stories of Ireland in Art
Brendan Rooney (Ed.)
Irish Academic Press and National Gallery of Ireland
2016
298 pages
ISBN 978-1911024286

In Creating History: Stories of Ireland in Art, leading historians and art historians assess vital works of art from the seventeenth to mid twentieth centuries in a fascinating selection of essays, situating them and the episodes they represent in a broad political, social and aesthetic context. Works by John Lavery, Sean Keating, William Orpen and several others are looked at from various perspectives – history, revolution, assembly, allegory, eviction, lamentation and others. If nothing else, this could be a coffee table book with lots of paintings by famous Irish artists, but it is much more than that.

The front cover depicts the painting by Charles Russell of the scene in what is now O’Connell Street in Dublin of the gathering in 1875 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of the Liberator. In October 2016 the National Gallery of Ireland held an exhibition comprising fifty-four paintings spanning the seventeenth century to the 1930s, depicting or inspired by episodes in Irish history from the arrival of St Patrick to the establishment of the Free State. This was part of the Gallery’s contribution to the Decade of Centenaries running from 2013 to 2023.

Among the seven articles are: “History Painting: the Depiction of Conflict in Irish Art”, “The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife: Entertaining History in the Interests of the State”, “The Persistence of Vision: Picturing Eviction in the Nineteenth Century” and “The Occupation of Living: Jack Yeats and the Irish Revolution”. The editor is Dr. Brendan Rooney, Head Curator and Curator of Irish Art at the National Gallery.

In a time when the past is a foreign country especially to those under forty, I would love if every living room in the country had a copy of these books on its coffee table.