All You Need to Know About Irish Art

The history of Irish art begins around 3200 BC with Neolithic stone sculptures in the megalithic tomb of Newgrange, part of the Brú na Bóinne complex, County Meath. At the beginning of the Bronze Age in Ireland there is evidence of the Beaker culture and of a general metallurgy. Commercial links with Britain and northern Europe introduced La Tène culture and Celtic art in Ireland around 300 BC. C., but while these styles changed or disappeared later under Roman subjugation, Ireland was left alone to develop Celtic designs: notably Celtic crosses, spiral designs, and the intricate interlocking patterns of Celtic knots.
The Christianization of Ireland in the 5th century AD. C. saw the establishment of monasteries, which acted as centers of studies, and led to the flourishing of the style of island art with its highly decorative illuminated manuscripts, metalwork and stone (high crosses). However, between 1200 and 1700, Irish art was relatively stagnant, and Irish culture was relatively untouched by the influence of Renaissance art.
Beginning in the late seventeenth century, talented artists began to emerge in the fields of fine arts, particularly painting portraits and landscapes. In the early eighteenth-century, prosperity increased, and new cultural institutions were created, such as the Royal Dublin Society (1731) and the Royal Irish Academy (1785). In the Victorian era, with a lack of sponsorship and better opportunities to meet abroad, many Irish artists emigrated to London (portraitists) or Paris (landscapers), which drowned the nascent indigenous scene. At the beginning of the 20th century, things began to improve. Opportunities began to emerge at home; The Celtic Revival movement saw a renewed interest in aspects of Celtic culture. Hugh Lane established the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, the first public gallery of its kind in the world, and with a greater patronage, a new generation of local and emigrated talents was formed. A solid base for the regrowth of art in Ireland. The foundation of an independent Irish state in the early 1920s did not significantly alter the state of visual arts in Ireland; in the years after Independence, the establishment of the arts (exemplified by the Royal Hibernian Academy committee) was dominated by traditionalists who strongly opposed attempts to align Irish art with contemporary European styles.
Irish personal gold ornaments began to be produced in approximately 200 years on each side of 2000 a. C., especially in the thin crescent-shaped discs known as lunulas, which were probably first manufactured in Ireland, where more than eighty of the hundreds of known examples were found. A range of finely decorated gold discs, bands and plates, often with holes, were probably attached to the clothes, and objects that look like earrings were also found. Around 1400–1000 BC, torcones and heavier thin bracelets were found. The Final Bronze Age of 900–600 a. C. saw the peak of the surviving Irish prehistoric goldsmith's shop, with magnificently worked pieces in simple but very sophisticated designs, particularly in a type of dress that looks like a double-pointed trumpet curved around so that the two bell mouths point approximately at the same direction. There are also a series of large gold necklaces, representing a development of the lunula, with round plates at each end, and a large corrugated "U" shaped body, geometrically decorated along the ridges and channels of the corrugations. The gold work practically disappears in the Iron Age, except for the late and enigmatic Broighter Hoard of the 1st century BC, which seems to mix local and Roman pieces.
Although Ireland tends to be strongly associated in the popular mind with Celtic art, the early continental style of the Hallstatt style never reached Ireland, and the subsequent La Tène style arrived in Ireland very late, perhaps from around 300 BC. C., and has left relatively few remains, which are often described by art historians along with their British contemporaries as "Insular Cellular". Buried blacksmithing does not last long in Irish conditions, and gold is very rare, so survivals are usually bronze. Petrie's crown, the Loughnashade trumpet and a series of records whose function is mysterious are among the most striking pieces. The decoration of a series of bronze pods, many of which are located on the Bann River, has inspired a lot of discussion, as they seem to be close to other parts of places as far away as Hungary, and the possibility of a master has been raised immigrant. The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin has most of the main findings of the entire prehistoric period, with others in the Ulster Museum in Belfast and the British Museum in London.

By: Preeti Narula
Content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_art