The Reading Figure in Irish Art in the Long Nineteenth Century

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'Cusack's book draws the reader into an imaginary world of readers, contextualizing representations of mostly women readers through larger concepts of class, cultural, and gender identities in modern Ireland. With a prevalence of women artists representing female sitters, Cusack probes aesthetic and iconographic strategies for representing interiorized thought while deflecting penetrability in the era of the New Woman.' - Dr. Emily Burns, Auburn University, US 'In this highly original study, Tricia Cusack argues that the reading figure in art offers a lens through which to apprehend politics at a variety of levels, from the micro-politics of gender to public suffrage agitation, and offers vivid evidence of the emergence of the "New Woman" in sections of Irish society. Reading evidence with creativity and care, and developing valuable typologies of reading figures in Irish art, Cusack argues persuasively for the emergence of a distinctive Irish portraiture tradition over the long nineteenth century, and for treating it as both an index and builder of important gendered identities in the Irish context.' - Kevin James, University of Guelph, Canada This engaging and erudite volume fizzes with ideas and originality and elsewhere: Cusack's engaging style makes light work of dense material, while never compromising on erudition, in a cohesive overview that integrates histories of literature and visual art by Emer McGarry, in Irish Arts Review, Summer (June-August 2022), pp. 116-117. In the current publication, we learn much about the position of women in society in the long nineteenth century. ... Cusack engages with the development of women and their intellectual pursuits in the period and identifies how the depiction of women reading-mostly by women artists-is used to underline this. [...] The author is to be applauded for the extensive research undertaken for this study of the reading figure in art, as is evident in the considerable and diverse bibliography, and she has tracked down an immense number of paintings to enrich her discussion. -Victorian Studies