Transcript - English Matters

Irish Art
Pre-Christian Ireland
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7000 –2000 B.C.
Court cairns: consist of a stone forecourt area, with chambers used for burials, covered
with a long cairn. They were built from c4000 BC and are found throughout Ireland.
Dolmen
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The word Dolmen means stone table in Breton. Most were built around 2000 BC along
Ireland's East Coast.
The most obvious of early Stone Age tombs are dolmen.A large slab top three or more
large stones. They can weigh up to 100 tons. It was an enormous feat
of engineering. There are more than 1400 in Ireland.
They are mentioned in Irish legends too. Diarmuid and Gráinne allegedly slept under
one when they eloped.
Newgrange
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Newgrange, built around 3,200 BC and recently restored, is a great
circular mound of earth and stone 250 feet in diameter encircled by a
ring of standing stones. The interior is solid except for a single stonelined and -capped passage 62 feet long and 3 feet wide which
terminates close to the centre of the mound in main chamber with a
corbelled vault 20 feet high and three recessed chambers.
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The entrance, in front of which is a massive curbstone (10 feet long, 4
feet high) carved with spirals and lozenges, incoporates a roof box
which allows the sun, at sunrise on the morning of the winter solstice
on December 21, to penetrate the full length of the interior passage
all the way to the main chamber. A similar carefully calculated
phenomenon is also found at Abu Simbel in Egypt.
Bronze Age
2000 – 500 B.C.
Iron Age 500B.C – A.D. 400
Broighter Boat
Broighter Collar
Early Christian Period
Skellig
Kerry Coast
5th & 6th Centuries
Gallarus Oratory Co. Kerry
Stone Carving
Fahan Mura Slab
Carandonagh Cross Co. Donegal
High Christian Period
North Cross Aheny
7th & 8th Century
Cross of Moone Co. Kildare
Ardagh Chalice
Tara Brooch
Viking Invasions
9th & 10th Centuries
Round Tower
Muirdeach’s Cross
Monasterboice
The finest of the high
crosses.
Manuscripts
The Book of Kells
The Medieval period
11th & 12th Centuries
Cross of Cong
Eighteenth Century Irish Georgian Period
James Barry
Neoclassical Painter 1741-1806
Walter Osbourne 1859 - 1903
Influenced by
French
Plein-air Painting
William Leech 1881-1968
Paul Henry 1876-1958
Jack Butler Yates 1871-1957
Son of John Butler Yates and brother of poet W.B.Yeats
Louis Le Brocquy