ABSTRACT
Romanticized notions of the past have often been drawn upon in art, with the cultural revivals that occurred in Europe at the fin-de-siècle fundamental in the establishment of independent national identities separate from the inherited art and culture of the imperial ruling powers. From the 1830s to the 1930s, several European countries, including Ireland, developed movements in cultural nationalism that eventually supported political independence. Within the Irish context, both Jeanne Sheehy and Nicola Gordon Bowe have noted the development of a kind of nostalgia for a “golden age” of Irish art – in line with a growing movement in Europe as a whole – which looked to the medieval past for evidence of a national style. The Irish Celtic Revival saw a resurgence of interest in Celtic and medieval history, language, mythology, and art, using recognizable symbols and decorations alongside contemporary iconography to construct an identity that was distinctly national. However, Celtic Revival art is peripheralized on the boundaries of Irish art history, which is itself marginalized from the modern art canon. Using the Irish Celtic Revival and peripheral treatment of Irish art history as a case study, this chapter demonstrates the relationships between cultural revivalism in art and national identity construction, while also contributing to modern discussions about the concept of returning to a real or invented “golden age” as a means of proclaiming present greatness, arguing in favor of the need to include these fundamental cultural revivals within the modern art canon.
