Images of the famine: Art, monuments, and exhibitions from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century

Contemporary visual representations of the Famine were primarily, and affectingly, found in the illustrated news of the day. The ILN impacted how the Famine has been visualized ever since. Direct depiction by Irish artists was rare in the toughest years of the late 1840s. Subsequent decades were marked by continued mass emigrations and intermittent severe food shortages. Visualizations of these themes are explored in late nineteenth-century works. In the twentieth century, key commemorative events instigated reflective representations of the Famine. The first notable instance was apparent at the Thomas Davis Centenary Exhibition of 1946 in Dublin. Otherwise dominated by celebratory iconography, tone, and subjects, some artists presented alternate meditations on the genre of history painting by way of imaging the Famine. In the mid-1990s, a rise in Famine-themed public art resulted from the sesquicentennial commemorations and ranged from public commissions to privately sponsored, both in Ireland and abroad. Counter-monumental approaches were made manifest as early as the 1960s and later in multi-referential, multi-media installation series in the 1990s. Since then, contemporary artists continued to take diverse material and subject approaches to draw out internationally resonant emphases.