Everything about George Petrie Artist totally explained
George Petrie (
1790 –
1866), was an
Irish painter,
musician,
antiquary and
archaeologist of the
Victorian era.
Of recent Scottish ancestry, his early years were spent in
Dublin where his father was a portrait painter. After an abortive trip to
England in the company of
Francis Danby, he returned to Ireland where he worked mostly producing sketches for engravings for travel books.
In the late 1820s and 1830s, Petrie significantly revitalised the
Royal Irish Academy's antiquities committee. He was responsible for their acquisition of many important Irish manuscripts, including an autograph copy of the
Annals of the Four Masters, as well as examples of insular metalwork, including the
Cross of Cong. His writings on early Irish archaeology and architecture were of great significance, especially his
Round Towers of Ireland of
1845, and he's often called "the father of Irish archaeology". His survey of the tombs at
Carrowmore still informs study of the site today.
From 1833 to 1843 he was employed by
Thomas Colby and
Thomas Larcom as head of the Topographical Department (the antiquities division) of the
Irish Ordnance Survey. Amongst his staff were
John O'Donovan, one of Ireland's greatest ever scholars, and
Eugene O'Curry. During part of this time Petrie was editor of two popular antiquarian magazines, the
Dublin Penny Journal and the
Penny Journal.
Another major contribution of Petrie's to Irish culture was the collection of Irish airs and melodies which he recorded.
William Stokes' contemporary biography includes detailed accounts of Petrie's working methods in his collecting of traditional music: 'The song having been given, O'Curry wrote the Irish words, when Petrie's work began. The singer recommenced, stopping at a signal from him at every two or three bars of the melody to permit the writing of the notes, and often repeating the passage until it was correctly taken down . . .'
As an artist, his favourite medium was
watercolour which, due to the prejudices of the age, was considered inferior to
oil painting. Nonetheless, he can be considered as one of the finest Irish
Romantic painters of his era. Some of his best work is in the collections of the
National Gallery of Ireland.
Bibliography
- The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland, M.H.Gill (Dublin 1855), reprinted (Farnborough 1967), (Heppenheim 1969)(External Link
)
- George Petrie and Charles Villiers Stanford (ed), The complete collection of Irish Music: Boosey & Co. (London 1902-5).
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