A Vanishing World

The Irish Country House Photographs of Father Browne

Robert O'Byrne (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

104 Seiten

2024
Messenger Publications (Verlag)
978-1-78812-707-3 (ISBN)

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These beautiful photographs display Fr Browne’s customary understanding of composition and offer a sympathetic insight into what was by then a fast-vanishing world. This is a priceless record of the Irish country house at a critical moment in its history.

Jesuit priest and amateur photographer, Fr Francis Browne is renowned for his images of the Titanic. However, much less well-known are the pictures that Fr Browne took of Irish country houses over a decade from 1946 onward.

At the time, these buildings were still private properties, mostly in the hands of their original families and not open to the public. Somehow, this gentle-mannered priest gained the confidence of owners and thus unique access to their homes, free to roam with his camera around the buildings and record their interiors, at the time when they were filled with treasures accumulated over generations.

Fr Browne photographed more than 50 such houses, providing us with a record of how they looked on the cusp of change. Since then, some of the buildings he visited have been entirely demolished, giving a particular poignancy to his images. Others have been sold, along with their contents, and their family histories forgotten. Only a handful continue to be owned by descendants of the people who once welcomed Fr Browne.

For this book, architectural historian Robert O’Byrne has selected 20 houses, some of which may be familiar to readers, some likely to come as a revelation. All of these beautiful photographs display Fr Browne’s customary understanding of composition and offer a sympathetic insight into what was by then a fast-vanishing world. As with so much of his work, they demonstrate that he was a pioneer, investigating a world that had, until then, been largely unknown. This is a priceless record of the Irish country house at a critical moment in its history.

Robert O’Byrne is a writer and lecturer specialising in the fine and decorative arts in Ireland, and the author of more than a dozen books. A former Vice-President of the Irish Georgian Society, he is currently a trustee of the Apollo Foundation and the Artists Collecting Society. He writes a monthly column for Apollo magazine, and is also a contributor to The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. Since 2012 he has written an award-winning blog, www.theirishaesthete.com.

Adare Manor, County Limerick

Castletown, County Kildare

Corbalton, County Meath

Curraghmore, County Waterford

Dromoland Castle, County Clare

Dunsany Castle, County Meath

Frenchpark, County Roscommon

Glananea, County Westmeath

Gormanstown Castle, County Meath

Herbertstown, County Meath

Howth Castle, County Dublin

Killeen Castle, County Meath

Killruddery, County Wicklow

Knocklofty, County Tipperary

Lismore Castle, County Waterford

Malahide Castle, County Dublin

Mount Congreve, County Waterford

Ormond Castle, County Tipperary

Rockingham, County Roscommon

Shelton Abbey, County Wicklow

Erscheinungsdatum	28.09.2024
Verlagsort	Dublin 2
Sprache	englisch
Maße	305 x 240 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Fotokunst
	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Hausbau / Einrichten / Renovieren
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	1-78812-707-2 / 1788127072
ISBN-13	978-1-78812-707-3 / 9781788127073
Zustand	Neuware