Reply To: ‘Dutch Billys’

A wild goose chase, but an interesting one all the same.

That’s the problem with art, it can be a useful record in one sense, but in another, you can never be certain it was an accurate reflection (or in this case whether it existed at all).

These Flora Mitchel paintings from the 1950’s depicting Bride Street.

You might assume then, that the two houses of interest had truncated gables right up to the 1950s. However, this photograph of the same stretch in 1900 shows the houses with flat parapets.

Same photograph at zoom.

Reference:
http://www.theiveaghtrust.ie/?page_id=644

Now the gables may have been partially re-instated at some point in between, but more likely, the artist appreciated the houses for what they were, applied ‘licence’, and re-instated some aspects of their past.

The strange thing is, ‘Bride street’ as depicted by Flora Mitchel is not unlike O’Colmains ‘Old Dublin street’. I wouldn’t be surprised if he re-worked it, incorporating aspects of Fishamble Street – The elbow, incline, lamp post etc.

But I don’t think I want to go there! I reluctantly agree to move on.