CAG.2633 John Joseph Tracey, A Scene of Bygone Days, 1845, oil on canvas, 63 x 75 cm. Purchased, 2010.

This WORK OF THE WEEK presents a mystery, albeit recently solved!

Widely known as the cover image for the bestselling Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork University Press, 2012), for many years this painting has been called The Eviction and thought to be the work of Daniel Macdonald (1821-1853).

It dramatically depicts the eviction of a tenant farming family against a rolling Irish landscape. Compelling new research, however, has uncovered not only its original title, but also an entirely different artist.

In an article published in History Ireland (July/August 2023), art historian Niamh O’Sullivan reflects on current contexts for this historic work and outlines a summary of her painstaking research that has led to a reappraisal of the painting and reattribution to Macdonald’s contemporary, John Joseph Trac[e]y.

Thanks to this new research, we can now definitively re-identify The Eviction as A Scene of Bygone Days (1845), a rare example of Tracey’s work in public ownership and a still rarer depiction of Famine-era eviction.

From an early age, John Joseph Tracey (1813-1873) attended the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) school, where he won prizes in 1830 and 1831, and soon after began to exhibit at the Royal Hibernian Academy. By the 1840s, the artist’s subjects had moved from the classical to the rural, with his prize-winning The Irish Peasant’s Grave (1843) – also in the Collection – being purchased by the Royal Irish Art Union and subsequently lithographed.

Crawford Art Gallery welcomes this new attribution and thanks Niamh O’Sullivan for her research in restoring a lost name to the Irish artistic canon.

A Scene of Bygone Days (1845) by John Joseph Tracey is currently displayed on our Gibson Landing (Floor 1).

The Arts House: Conor Tallon chats with curator Michael Waldron about a work from the Collection every Sunday morning on Cork’s 96FM and C103 Cork.

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