Felix M Larkin recalls the work of John Fergus O’Hea, the principal artist of the Weekly Freeman cartoons in the 1880s in Ireland
T he cartoons of John Fergus O’Hea in the Weekly Freeman newspaper in the 1880s are among the most enduring of contemporary commentaries on Irish politics and society. They are still reproduced to good effect to illustrate historical and other studies, and exemplify the observation made by the Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell that ‘cartoons can say things that are perhaps less easy to say in a more straightforward journalistic context’.
Unravelling the sequence of carving on the stones has been challenging but has been helped by the fact that there are so many examples to study, writes Elizabeth Shee Twohig
