The Port of Cork Collection on display in Cork

February 25 2022

Image of The Port of Cork Collection on display in Cork

Picture: @crawfordartgall

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, Ireland, will be opening a new display tomorrow dedicated to a collection of 17 maritime painting the gallery was gifted in November 2021. It seems that the collection had been amassed by the company in charge of the city's Port, a site which has a long and rich history.

According to the gallery's website:

This significant collection consists of 17 maritime paintings, a ship’s register (1912) from The Cork Harbour Commissioners referencing both the Titanic and Lusitania, an illuminated address to Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891), and a silver Admiralty Oar from 1686. 

Now visitors will have the opportunity to encounter a selection of paintings from the Port of Cork collection, including works by George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson (1806-1884), Henry Albert Hartland (1840-1893), Robert Lowe Stopford (1813-1898), and Seán Keating (1889-1977).  Although not attending to certain social or political realities of late nineteenth-century Ireland, these artworks do act as a visual reminder of that time.

They also underscore Cork Harbour's links with empire, its international significance for commerce and trade, and ever-present story of migration. Glimpses of half-remembered histories are framed within these heritage views of Cork Harbour. Each artist provides an insight into the Port of Cork's operations, from Atkinson's extraordinary rendering of naval vessels to Hartland and Stopford's depictions of commercial shipping and leisure craft. Perhaps unexpectedly, Keating's elevated View of the Port of Cork draws us into Cork City itself and remembers the busy working quays of recent memory.

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