Drawings of Irish Antiquities

The Royal Irish Academy Library’s collection of c.7,000 antiquarian sketches and drawings covers the period between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. The drawings - mainly watercolours and sketches in ink or pencil - range from the depiction of Irish landscapes to places and objects of archaeological and architectural interest.

The collection includes works by the following artists:

• Gabriel Beranger, c.1729-1817
• Reverend Joseph Turner, d. 1835 (not yet catalogued online)
• Sir Richard Colt Hoare, 1758-1838
• George Petrie, MRIA, 1790-1866
• John Windele, 1801-1865, (not yet catalogued online)
• George Victor Du Noyer, MRIA, 1817-1869
• William Frederick Wakeman, 1822-1900
• Thomas Johnson Westropp, MRIA, 1860-1922

The library also holds the collection of nineteenth century Ordnance Survey drawings and sketches which were prepared by the researchers employed by the OS as part of their work of recording antiquities in the landscape. Among the artists employed by the OS were George Petrie, MRIA (1790-1866), George Victor du Noyer (1817-69), and William Frederick Wakeman (1822-1900). The collection of OS Sketches in the Royal Irish Academy comprises over 1,000 drawings. (Shelf-marks are in the range 12 T 1 – 12 T 17).

These holdings are supplemented by the Ordnance Survey Memoir drawings, a collection of over 1,600 drawings incorporated in the Memoirs collected by soldiers of the Royal Engineers working on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map project. The majority of drawings feature in sections on ancient topography by civilian memoir writers including John Bleakly, James Boyle, Thomas Fagan, Charles W. Ligar, John Stokes, J. Butler Williams and J. Hill Williams. These occur both within the body of the text of the memoir and as appendix drawings. Drawings vary in style, from outline sketches of antiquities by writers gathering information for the fair sheets, to ground plans in a military topographical style by Charles W. Ligar and J. Butler Williams, to charming ink and wash views by Lieutenant Edward W. Durnford, to accomplished drawings by James Boyle illustrating the ruins of megalithic monuments, churches, castles and other antiquities. Perhaps John Stokes draws the most interesting subjects, with over 500 drawings revealing the artist’s evolving artistic skills. Although the Memoirs were published by the Institute of Irish Studies, the Queen’s University of Belfast during the 1990s, most of the drawings were not included in the published version. All drawings are now catalogued and accessible through the Royal Irish Academy’s Prints, Drawings and Artefacts Online Catalogue, and the Academy plans to publish a catalogue of these drawings, with selected illustrations, in 2011.

Detailed records of the drawings and selected accompanying images are accessible via our online Prints & Drawings Catalogue.