Peter Murray recalls the remarkable, unconventional career of Elizabeth, Lady Butler whose intense feeling for humanity is documented in her paintings
The artist Elizabeth Butler, celebrated in her lifetime, still commands respect for her vivid depictions of war and conflict. Recording famous British military engagements, her paintings are in museums such as Tate Britain, Manchester City Art Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, and also in Buckingham Palace. Powerful visual evocations of the heroism and sacrifices of ordinary soldiers, they can still make for uncomfortable viewing. Her painting of an eviction in Co Wicklow makes her one of the few artists who represented such a politically-charged subject. Now in the Folklore Department in UCD, Evicted is one of the very few works by Butler in an Irish collection (Fig. 2). Along with her husband William, a high-ranking officer in the British army, Elizabeth Butler managed to achieve recognition both as a defender of Empire while also being acknowledged as a critic of British administration in Ireland.
Eleanor Flegg visits ceramicist Mark Campden’s Kilkenny studio to witness the process behind his gleaming table-ware
Paula Murphy examines the background to Oisín Kelly’s immortalization of Big Jim Larkin commissioned by the workers of Ireland
Technical developments enable artistic development’: John Behan reflects on the circumstances which spurred his move to sculpture, in conversation here with Brian McAvera