Two new titles tackling the careers of Irish women artists, albeit with separate aims, are reviewed by Nicola Gordon Bowe
Since 1987, when the pioneering exhibition of Irish Women Artists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day mounted by the National Gallery of Ireland and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, presented and catalogued work by over 250 artists, others have been discovered, identified or have emerged. Unburdened by the prejudices of a suspicious, reactionary, and generally male critical establishment, a new generation of artists, practitioners, art, design and cultural historians, postgraduate students, as well as buyers of Irish art, have become aware of the important roles played by certain women in expanding and upholding the visual arts in 20th-century Ireland.
David Davidson pays tribute to Bill Doyle, Dublin-born master photographer, who in these fond studies has left an indelible record of his country