Until recently little attention was paid to the role of art in constructing the “story” of the
Irish nation. This wide-ranging study of Irish pictures and sculpture opens up the subject by
providing a fresh interdisciplinary approach. Each work is analyzed beyond its strictly art
historical relevance. A deeper investigation into the context in which a work was produced
reveals much about the aspirations and ideological ambitions of artists, those commissioning
works, and the viewing public. The study of such diverse topics as the representation of the
Irish peasant, the behind-the-scenes tensions in setting up a national gallery for Ireland, the
erecting of political monuments, Church art, West of Ireland landscape painting, and the difference
in nationalistic fervor among artists as diverse as Albert G. Power and Jack B. Yeats unveil
fascinating testimony about Ireland’s collective national “needs” and its constructs of identity.