Gilbert Stuart Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G Miles The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Yale University Press New Haven and London 2004 pp 338 h/b £40/e57.60 ills 92 col/ills183 b/w ISBN 0 300 10495 2 Philip McEvansoneya The fact that the American portrait painter Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) spent a period of six years in Dublin between 1787 and 1793 is not as well known as it might be. However, in this impressive new book, published to coincide with an extensive exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington (27 March —31 July 2005), Stuart’s Dublin period is seen to play a pivotal role in the development of his career. After a modest training in Rhode Island and in Edinburgh, Stuart embarked for London. Soon after his arrival he came into contact with the American painter Benjamin West, later to be the second president of the Royal Academy, who had preceded him there by twelve years. West took Stuart under his wing, providing more training and facilitating his debut at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1777. Stuart soon enjoyed a prestigious clientele despite competing with Reynolds, Gainsborough and Romney, amongst others. Yet Stuart suddenly left London for Dublin in the autumn of 1787. It is likely he did this to avoid his creditors: Dublin had earlier been a bolt-hole for the insolvent English painter Francis Wheatley. In London Stuart had painted a number of sitters with Irish connections such as the MP Isaac Barré and Lord Dartrey. He may also have hoped to build on his acquaintance with the then lord lieutenant, the duke of Rutland, who had praised his work in London. Although Rutland died at about the time Stuart arrived in Dublin, his artistic reputation surely preceded him and he quickly established himself, perhaps helped by newspaper references to him as ‘an English gentleman’. His timing was good, there not being much native competition standing between him and opportunity— Robert Hunter and John Trotter were nearing the end of their practice, Hugh Douglas Hamilton was still in Rome and Thomas Hickey was in India. Indeed, Stuart soon put paid to what competition there was, Robert Home for example returning to England within a year of Stuart’s arrival. Stuart became the most sought-after portraitist in Dublin, admired for his fluent grasp of the grand style of portraiture where high officials such as John Fitzgibbon, the lord chancellor of Ireland, were concerned, and equally able in the perceptive and sympathetic treatment of more informal commissions, such as Catherine Barker or William Burton Conyngham. About ninety works from Stuart’s Dublin period can be listed—a pretty good rate of productivity but only a minority are now traceable. Stuart left in 1793 as abruptly as he arrived. He did not return to London but went back to America which had won its independence since his departure. He took his high European reputation with him and, assisted by Irish contacts, immediately enjoyed prestigious patronage in New York and later in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston. He became a kind of court portraitist to the new republic, his sitters including the first five presidents of the United States. Indeed, one of his portraits of George Washington will be familiar as it was the source of the image of Washington that appears on the US dollar bill. This commendable book gives the most comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of Stuart’s life and work, albeit with an understandable emphasis on his lengthy American career. It is admirably well researched, clearly and engagingly written and profusely illustrated, the colour images being of very high quality. It provides new information about and insights into his work. For example, it clarifies which of the two figures is which in Stuart’s Irish double portrait, Anna Foster and Charlotte Dick, and provides fascinating detail on the network of relationships between his many sitters. Given the number of loans from Ireland and Britain to the exhibition which gave rise to this publication, it is to be regretted that no gallery in either country was able to host a showing. Dr Philip McEvansoneya is Head of the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin.   Landscape Design in 18th-century Ireland Finola O’Kane Cork University Press 2004 pp224 h/b e59.00 ills 110 col ISBN 185918362X Sandy Pratt Large, beautifully-produced books about gardening in all its aspects thankfully appear at a tremendous rate. Here, then, is a particularly fascinating one, handsome and immensely erudite, which sparklingly brings to life the origins of three great estates and one sea-side villa, all close to Dublin, in that most enthralling of centuries. It was a time of massive enthusiastic planting. Horticultural treasures were pouring into England and by the second half of the century there were some 50,000 plants and trees flourishing at Kew. Previously large gardens in Ireland were laid out in the Le Nôtre manner but the friendship between Dean Swift and Alexander Pope was arguably responsible for a movement away from the formal French fashion, to a freer style, a style more in-keeping with the Irish landscape and the Irish character. Pope himself was putting this into practice in his famous garden at Twickenham but Swift thought that the garden at Breckdenston, Lord Molesworth’s place at Swords, ‘embodied more of his ideal landscape...than Alexander Pope’s at Twickenham’. Then, as now, there must have been great rivalry in the gardening world. The descriptions of methods of gardening at Breckdenston are somewhat reminiscent of ours today... ‘pinks at the edge of the border, as thick as they can stand’ and ‘a typical parterre was surrounded by a border with flowers.’ (Le Nôtre thought that flowers were for nurse-maids). Lord Molesworth poured money into his obsession and eventually found himself with financial problems, as many gardeners have done, before and since. His wife was only too glad to step in the breach (he being so often in England) and she is the first of the three remarkable wives who all have a prominent role, an all-important one, in the stories of these places. Carton, in Kildare, originally laid-out by the earl of Tyrconnell was bought by the Kildares, later Leinsters, in 1750. Having offered the project to Capability Brown, who turned it down, they proceeded on their own, very wisely, as it gave them so much pleasure. They were delighted with their results having taken advice from everybody who could possibly have been of help, Collinson, Hamilton, Bartram (all eternally famous gardeners) and members of their family, who were also engaged in elaborate plantings. The influence of Louisa Conolly on Castletown, adjacent to Carton, with her adored sister in residence, was enormous and beneficial. The drawback of Castletown was the flatness of the terrain. She broke it up with plantings of shrubberies, a lake, making vistas and a garden of great charm. The Castletown account books give interesting lists of the plants and trees bought and garden expenses from 1763 to 1776. I notice a question mark after 8lbs Spanish marotts. Could they have been chestnuts? Lady Louisa loved Castletown, dedicating her life to it and the people who worked on the estate. Her goodness was boundless, admired and recognised. Having laid out the grounds she turned to building (a church and two schools) and the education of hundreds of children. Frescati at Blackrock was very different indeed to the above estates. Acquired by the duke and duchess of Leinster in 1776, theirs was a far-sighted idea of making a school by the sea for their many children. The sea bathing would be healthy and the children would learn about agriculture and horticulture. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (so admired) would have approved. Gardening by the sea is not always easy but they seem to have made a considerable success of it. Frescati will always be associated with the romantic figure of Lord Edward FitzGerald, for he was one of those children—indeed his mother’s favourite. The many quotations reproduced here touchingly prove his love for horticulture and nature. Breckdenston and Frescati have vanished, Castletown is cared for, its neighbour Lyons, briefly mentioned, is once again a thriving farm, magnificently restored. Finola O’ Kane counsels us to remember ‘there are many ways to make a garden and many more ways to use a garden. We only have to remember them...’. Life is lived forward and is understood backwards. This splendid book helps us to remember and understand and we can, on reading it, realise how rewarding, how pleasurable remembering and understanding can be. Sandy Pratt is a garden architect who resides in Spain.    Medieval Dublin V Edited by Seán Duffy Four Courts Press 2004 pp300 p/b e24.95 fully illustrated ISBN 1-85182-802-8 Roger Stalley In each of the last six years the Friends of Medieval Dublin have organised a symposium devoted to the latest research on the history of the city. The events have been thoroughly inter-disciplinary, the speakers including archaeologists, historians, art historians and specialists in architectural history. Thanks to the efficiency of the editor and the enlightened support of Dublin City Council, the proceedings have been published at commendable speed. Over half the text in the fifth volume is devoted to reports from recent archaeological work. Most excavation nowadays takes the form of rescue archaeology, inevitably with somewhat fragmented and limited results. Putting the pieces together from different sites and relating them to the historical picture is therefore a critical exercise. The discoveries on a small patch of land in Ship Street Little (Linzi Simpson) might not seem much in themselves, but when related to the overall configuration of the city, they become far more instructive. This particular site lay just beyond the great ditch that ran around the medieval walls. The ditch was fed by water from the river Poddle, the course of which was diverted in c.1200, leaving the old river bed free for ‘development’. Amongst the finds was a bone ‘trial’ piece from the Viking era, decorated with a series of intricately worked interlace and animal patterns, carefully analysed in an appendix (Ruth Johnson). Reports from two other excavations also involved ditches, both surrounding church sites: one concerned the ancient church of St Peter’s (John Ó Néill), which was situated in the vicinity of Aungier Street to the south-east of the original ‘black pool’, the other surrounded the church of St Michan’s in Oxmantown (Rosanne Meehan). The most substantial archaeological report (Alan Hayden) is devoted to a site excavated in 1990 at Arran Quay on the north bank of the Liffey, where two sets of timber revetments (both 14th-century) were discovered, along with a later stone-lined frontage, all part of the gradual process of channelling the river as it flowed through the city. The excavation was rich in finds and these included a 14th-century gold finger ring, dozens of leather shoes, combs, clay pipes etc., along with 372 pieces of decorated floor tiles, the latter dumped into the river after being scooped up as debris from one of the neighbouring medieval churches (probably the Dominican friary of St Saviour’s). For the architectural cognoscenti there is a pioneering article (Michael O’Neill) on the relationships between St Patrick’s Cathedral and the parish churches owned by the cathedral in the vicinity of Dublin. The late 14th-century works exercised considerable influence, not least in the area of window tracery. Unfortunately much of the vital evidence was removed during the Guinness restoration of the cathedral, but the form of the original tracery has been recovered thanks to the discovery by Dr O’Neill of a spectacular set of drawings made about 1845, a fine detail from which adorns the cover of the Proceedings. The rest of the book is more varied in content. There is a detailed review (Emmet O’Byrne) of the ethnic diversity that characterised Dublin and its immediate hinterland, along with an account of the tangled relationships that existed between the various factions. The Christ Church martyrology, or list of saints, is subjected to some ingenious detective work (Pádraig Ó Riain) and is shown to have a German archetype at its core. Medieval history is usually presented as serious business but there is a spectacular antidote to this in Alan Fletcher’s publication of a parody of the Christian mass, entitled the ‘Mass of the Drinkers’. The original Latin is provided together with an English translation and appropriate notes on the Latin mass itself. So when we get to the Lord’s prayer instead of ‘Pater noster, qui es in celo, sanctificetur nomen tuum’ we get ‘Pater noster qui es in ciphis, sanctificetur vinum istud’, wonderfully translated as ‘Our father who are in the cups, hallowed be your wine’. This is bracing stuff and all the more remarkable since the text comes from a Franciscan anthology of c.1330. Though not strictly related to Dublin, it gives a flavour of the humour and festive atmosphere that might have been found on the streets and within the walls of the city’s religious houses. The volume ends with an intriguing tale (Raymond Gillespie) about the medieval Tholsel and a fictional account of its foundation compiled by Robert Ware in the 1670s. Dublin V is inevitably something of a pot-pourri: while some chapters are aimed at specialists, others will be read with pleasure by anyone with an interest in the history of the city. As the volumes mount up, a veritable encyclopaedia of ancient Dublin is in the process of creation. Roger Stalley is Professor of the History of Art at Trinity College Dublin. 1854-2004    The Story of the National Gallery of Ireland Peter Somerville-Large The National Gallery of Ireland 2004 pp 477 h/b e49-95 ills 84 col/ ills 31 b/w ISBN 1-904288-08-1 Ciarán MacGonigal Having been, for the duration of a long lunch, director designate of the National Gallery of Ireland, this is for me a fascinating account of one our great national institutions. I grew up in the shadow of the gallery. We lived in Ely Place, at the top of the street, and as a child I used to accompany my father to the doors of the NGI. He represented the RHA interest on the board of the gallery for forty years. Years later I was myself the nominee of two taoisigh for two terms of five years to the board of the gallery. The names which stand out for me over the years from the gallery are Tom McGreevy, Jim Geiran and James White. Set in sequence by each director’s tenure, this book offers a vivid, disturbing and fairly full account of the gallery’s history. I say fairly full in that there are moments when well-known narratives, on the margins of history, are not dealt with and more recent events are often side-stepped. The author doesn’t pick up on the nuances of the period post-Homan Potterton and ignores much by way of contemporary controversies, but has a real feel for the earlier period. He is much happier and on safer ground with the well-signposted events away from the distraction of contemporary events. The author excells in revealing the quite extraordinary interaction between successive directors and their boards of Governors & Guardians. The relationship, between the board and the incumbent director is well set out in the shifting sands of personal responsibility and most particularly from the time of Sir Walter Armstrong. The interaction between the board of the day and each director is very much one of master to servant, board members standing very much on their rights, and unfortunate directors having to take what they could get by way of personal enhancement and dignity. The author reproduces some quite extraordinary and often bizarre not to say unbelievable correspondence between the board and directors. Outstanding for sheer nastiness, unpleasantness and supreme bitchiness is the stream of notes, letters, memos and other complaints from Tom Bodkin to all and sundry. He comes across in these records as unpleasant, a wrecker of others’ careers and reputations, a plotter and a general mischief-maker. As Sir Hugh Lane’s amanuensis he built a large part of his own career in that role, and made a thorough-going nuisance of himself. The fascinating account of the Milltown Gift is fairly fully recorded, and the story on the margins about how it was finally achieved is not here recorded, and awaits another day. The difficult times during the War of Independence and the creation of the State is however very much what happened to all the other institutions while the new State was trying to shape itself and its policies on all fronts simultaneously. The directors of the gallery were until late in the tenure of Tom McGreevy, part-timers and allowed to deal in their fine art trade. This had the obvious advantage for the gallery in accessing material which might not otherwise have come its way. The disadvantages are all too obvious, and not least amongst these is the capacity for mischief-makers to accuse directors of lining their own pockets and selling on works which were unmarketable. There was some occasional truth in this latter. However in the main some clever, able and astute directors made overall good purchases for the gallery. The same directors had lapses of taste, judgement, and sometimes more. But we all have 20/20 vision in hindsight. The problem of money for purchases—either too little or too much remains. The certainties of taste in a given period are all accounted for in the board papers, and the author is fairly neutral in his assessment of these to achieve what is on balance probably a slightly dulling effect overall in the telling. The continuous and often numbing rows about taste, hanging the collection, attributions, bad taste, no taste, are all fully recorded in this biography of a building which is also a national institution. And to coin a phrase, ‘they haven’t gone away.’ The 19th-century desire for public instruction, education and edification allied with a local need for a national gallery ring through in this account of the gallery’s history. I could have preferred to segue from author’s text to letters on file in a clearer layout. The author’s editors might have proofed his text for the accompanying illustrations and some other facts. The illustration on page 184 avers that Edward, 6th earl of Milltown was the last earl; he was the penultimate earl, correct in the text. He was also a Knight of St Patrick, not Grand Master. The final heir to Russborough of the Leeson family subset, Sir Edmund Turton 1st bart, MP (1857-1929), was a kinsman of the 7th earl, and not a peer as page 241 asserts. It might have been more useful to explain how Mrs Randal Plunkett came to have the Jack B Yeats Bachelors Walk–In Memory at Dunsany Castle. This is a book you dip in and out of, although the indices aren’t as complete as I’d have liked (e.g. the details on the sales at Killua Castle and Charleville Castle are not indexed). But these glitches aside this is a really splendid and engaging account of the National Gallery of Ireland and highly recommended as an account of 150 often turbulent years, of a major Irish cultural institution. Ciarán MacGonigal is a former member of the Board of Governors & Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland.   Forty Shades of Green: A Convergence of Irish Art and Craft eds Brian Kennedy, Simon Cutts and Erica Van Horn; designed by Colin Sackett Coracle for the Crafts Council of Ireland and Cork 2005: European Capital of Culture. pp 94 h/b e15.00 ills 109 col/ills 7 b/w ISBN 0 90663024X Paul Caffrey Brian Kennedy has cleverly selected and arranged Forty Shades of Green as a showcase of the best of contemporary 21st-century Irish craft, displaying work by thirty-seven Irish-educated makers, designers, craftsmen and artists at University College Cork’s new Glucksman Gallery. No-one could fail to be delighted by the excellence of the work catalogued here, but disappointed by the commissioned essays that do not attempt to address the issues raised by the exhibition. The selected work is characterised by a natural blurring of the demarcation lines between art and craft, by sensitivity to the inherent qualities of the materials chosen and the facility for expressing ideas through skilful use of new and original combinations. The catalogue’s first part, ‘texture line surface’ records textile and sculptural pieces in a rich variety of materials. Martina Galvin uses knitted filament and silver wire; Diane Ryan woven and knitted steel cable; Anita Elliot knitted thread and pierced canvas and Linda Bailey combinations of woven hair, thread and wire. Edmund McNulty’s work in wool is outstanding. Inspiration comes from many sources. Pamela Hardesty’s faith inspires her works in glass which recall woven textile. Caroline Madden’s objects reflect her interest in boats and Gothic architecture. Celine Traynor’s silver jewellery evoke concepts of bridge construction and geometric patterns and contrasts with Angela O’Kelly’s jewellery in cut-out paper, plastic and nylon. Janice Marr uses the sewing machine as a drawing tool on fabric. The surface pattern of water is recalled by Remco de Fouw’s photographic prints. Rachel Joynt uses layers of sand to produce linear effects and Michael Boran is inspired by geometric patterns in nature and in Islamic art. ‘Shape object function’ is the rubric for the other group which has a more three- dimensional aspect. There are superb pieces made primarily in glass by leading practitioners Deirdre Rogers, Victoria Rothschild, Paul Devlin and in jewellery by Seliena Coyle and Inga Reed. Kevin O’Dwyer and Richard Kirk are virtuoso silversmiths. Ceramics are well represented by Robert Lee, Sarah Flynn, Zeita Scott, Annemarie Sheridan and Rob Monaghan. Wood is sensitively used by Liam Flynn, Laura Mays, Glenn Lucas and Roger Bennett in a variety of objects such as vessels and bowls. The pieces most resonant of the craft tradition combined with innovation are the basket- inspired pieces by Joe Hogan and the superb woven willow baskets by Alison Fitzgerald. The catalogue is intellectually idiosyncratic. Eoin McNamee uses a stream of consciousness to list things that conjure up the colour green (‘alas my love...’, ‘grow the rushes o...’). In his short story Chlorophyll, Dermot Diamond, scientist and university vice-president, contrasts the natural world, scientific endeavour and humanity’s inevitable decline and decay. Less successfully, Marianne Mays of the Open University provides us with her musings on aspects of Irish history, the colour green, and on ecology-based theories. This catalogue is a lost opportunity. As the exhibition is very much one-person’s selection, it could have provided an explanation of the curator’s choice, and the exhibition’s purpose. Nothing of any relevant craft or design theory is included. Craftspeople themselves, long on ideas and argument, deserve better. This work could have provided an overview of the crafts in Ireland today, addressed some of the issues in the crafts and contextualised this exhibition. This catalogue falls short of these objectives and is outshone by the inventive vigour and technical accomplishment of those whose work it purports to serve. Dr Paul Caffrey lectures in the history of art and design at the National College of Art and Design.Walter Osborne in the West of Ireland    Julian Campbell James Adam Salerooms pp 127 p/b ills 45 col/ ills 21 b/w ISBN 0-9549189-0-8 e15 Tim Robinson In the 19th century European artists, tired of the grey of industrialisation and commerce, realised that there was a handy Orient to the west of them. The Atlantic fringe, increasingly accessible by mail coach and then by rail, was home to communities seemingly of Biblical simplicity, speaking languages as antique as classical Greek, wearing the colours of a stormy dawn, inhabiting landscapes sculpted by the eternal elements. To the cultural nationalists of Ireland, the Gaelic west was the fountain of youth that could revivify a jaded civilisation; George Petrie and Frederick Burton were among the early visitors drawn, like such scholars and antiquaries as Samuel Ferguson and John O’Donovan, by this vision. The still medieval streetscapes of Galway, its picturesquely squalid fishing quarter the Claddagh, and its wild hinterland of Connemara, attracted illustrators and landscapists: Samuel Lover, Aloysius O’Kelly and Augustus Burke among the Irish, David Wilkie and Erskine Nicol, both Scots, among those from further afield. Walter Osborne visited Galway and Connemara on at least six occasions in the 1890s. An exquisite work in the Hugh Lane Gallery, of a full moon as tender as a Chinese lantern with a candle in it, floating above a city almost dissolved in the mists of the ocean, is perhaps the first of his west-of-Ireland works. In June 1892 he made a brief excursion to the fishing village of Roundstone fifty miles further west, subsequently spent several longer periods there, and made it the site of an ambitious synthesis of his perceptions of the region and its people, Life in Connemara, A Market Day. Such paintings are a sheer pleasure to look at, before any conscious analysis or contextualisation, and a great attraction of Julian Campbell’s study of Osborne in Galway and Connemara is its generous allowance of well-reproduced colour plates. (My only complaint about the book would be that some of the reproductions of details from paintings are at the same scale as those of the complete works, which is a waste of an opportunity to show us the qualities of Osborne’s brushwork; also that the bibliography could have done with a visit from the proof reader.) Campbell’s text has four main sections: an account of Osborne’s various expeditions to these parts, a round-up of the other artists who took the same way in the 19th century, a brief study of the subjects they favoured, and a catalogue of Osborne’s paintings and drawings of Galway and Connemara. The first-mentioned section reads like the fourth or fifth chapter from a full biography of the artist, and since it is clear that a number of relevant items, such as a Roundstone sketchbook of 1897, have come to light since the publication of Jeanne Sheehy’s studies referred to by Campbell, it would be good to have such a book; but, failing that, a summary of Osborne’s career both before and after the decade of his Galway trips would have been helpful to a general reader like me. The brief annals of other artists’ visits are very useful, though many of their names would be unknown to all but the most assiduous haunter of dealers’ galleries. Among the recurrent themes of western life recorded by these outside observers, seaweed-gathering is prominent, a reminder of the fact that kelp-burning, for the production of the alkalis such industries as glass, linen and explosives manufacture depended on, was a principal activity of coastal Atlantic communities, and that Connemara life was therefore closely integrated with the industrial Europe these artists had turned their backs to. Osborne’s own little oil, Gathering Seaweed, Connemara, is acutely and sympathetically observed; the bowed figure of the man perched on the heaped cartful, the heavily hanging fronds of seaweed, the stolid horse, all speak of weariness at the end of a long day’s labour. But Osborne keeps his distance; details are muted, and there is usually a respectful emptiness of foreground between artist or spectator and the observed; by contrast I am reminded how some of Sean Keating’s portraits of Aran men are so hyper-real they seem to be invading one’s own personal space. The sketch of Osborne by Nathaniel Hone reproduced in this book suggests a sensitive but reserved personality. Julian Campbell tells us that he listed among the items to be packed for a short visit to Connemara two knickerbocker suits, turn-down collars, six white collars, slippers, writing case, umbrella, etc. He had no intention of going native; nevertheless his attitude to the western folk was more perceptive than the acquisitive gaze of the lover of the picturesque. Tim Robinson is a writer and artist.   The Blessington Estate 1667-1908 Kathy Trant The Heritage Council pp 240 ills 98 b/w e15.99 p/b ISBN 1 901737 519 Michael McCarthy Published with the support of the Heritage Council this stylish paperback of one hundred and ninety pages of text is supplemented by an appendix of the holdings of the tenants of the estate in 1850. Notes and sources, bibliography and, unusually, a set of discursive notes on the illustrations add a further forty pages before the Index closes the book. Illustrations in black and white are almost one hundred in number and they are integrated with the text, which is well-printed. They are a mixture of maps and portraits with samples of documents and illustrations from nineteenth-century journals of social and political affairs. The scholarly apparatus that counts for a quarter of the book bears witness to its origin in a local history study undertaken in the Masters programme of NUI Maynooth. From this, the clearly-written history of the estate in twelve chapters that proceed chronologically to chart its development derives its strength, and is offered as ‘a microcosm of the Irish landed estate system’, which is probably a just assessment. Unlike other estates however the Hill-Downshire family who owned it from 1778 had larger land holdings in the north of Ireland and Blessington was administered from there for the second half of its history. The records for this part of its history did not suffer the ravages that befell records in the south of the country and the author has made full use of them in research in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The papers relating to the Boyle family are more fragmentary as well as much more sparse and this is reflected in the apportioning of only the second chapter to the fortunes of the estate in the earlier century. The first chapter sets the story of the Blessington estate in the context of successive waves of invaders from the Normans to the Cromwellians resulting in the rebellion of 1798 and the consequent land wars of the next century. The author is quite clear-sighted in recognising that class division was reinforced by nationalism and religious affiliation to produce a legacy of resentment. Her hope is that love of place will lead to more close study of local history to provide a background of tolerance for future generations of the population of a Blessington that currently faces an acceleration of change physically and in terms of population (pp.189-190). Such even-handedness characterises the author’s tone in her discussion of the landlord system. There is as much attention given to the lot of the tenants as there is to the life and times of the owners of the estates and their agents. There is clear recognition that at Blessington as in other estates tenancy was usually reserved for the Protestants and the Catholic Irish need not expect to have any claims to land. When the time came for reform of holdings it usually took the form of consolidation with consequent evictions. The famine accelerated a process of land clearance already under way and between 1841 and 1851 the population of the estate, which was one of the better estates in this respect, had declined by a third. The discussion of the famine and its aftermath is considerably helped by reference to the travels of the Halls in Ireland and to the publication of the diaries of Elizabeth Smith, a resource unique to historians of this estate. This is a very readable account of its subject and should meet the objective proposed by the author of appealing to amateur and professional historians as well as to the general reader. Michael McCarthy is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at University College Dublin.