The Robinson Collection stands apart as the finest assembly of graphic satire in institutional possession in Ireland. The handiwork of Nicholas Robinson, who devoted several decades to its assembly before its donation, in 1996, to the Library of Trinity College Dublin, it is the most comprehensive collection of its kind.
It is also one of the country’s less well-known cultural treasures, for though the digitisation of the images means they can be accessed at the click of a mouse, it does not mean other guides are redundant. It certainly does not diminish the appeal of this selection from the larger collection of 1,300 engravings relating to Ireland between 1780 and 1830.
Comprising 105 plates, the volume provides a stimulating guide both to the Dublin-produced caricatures that form one part of the Robinson collection and the English caricatures on Irish subjects published in London that account for its other big strand. Since this was the age of James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and Isaac and George Cruikshank, it is appropriate that those who engage with this elegantly produced volume are regaled with some of their classic visual commentaries on Ireland and Irish affairs.
This necessarily involved creating as well as perpetuating stereotypes, and plates such as Gillray’s Paddy on Horseback (1778) and Elmes’s Irish Bog Trotters (1812) attest to its deep anchorage in history. They are outnumbered by political plates, as in keeping with the form. There is hardly a political event between Free Trade (1778-80) and Catholic Emancipation (1829) for which one will not find an illuminating English commentary.
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Caricature and the Irish: Satirical Prints from the Library of Trinity College, Dublin c 1780-1830
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The number of Irish-made engravings is smaller by comparison. But one of the many merits of the Robinson Collection is the insights and perspectives Irish graphic satire offers on personalities such as “Honest Jack” Lawless and Daniel O’Connell, and events like the presentation of the Protestant Petition (1813), the notorious Bottle Riot (1822) and the Orange Order’s resistance to the interruption of their tradition of political parading (1823).
Readers will identify their own favourites. The fact that I found the depiction of the Protestant firebrand Harcourt Lees firing a literary fusillade from the bare pedestal of the Statue of William III on College Green at the pro-Catholic Lord Lieutenant particularly captivating is testament to how much can to be gleaned from this captivating selection.
James Kelly is professor of history at Dublin City University
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