“Sold by the Irish Players at $1.00 Towards A Building to Save Sir Hugh Lane’s Pictures for Ireland, April 1913.”

“Sold by the Irish Players at $1.00 Towards A Building to Save Sir Hugh Lane’s Pictures for Ireland, April 1913.”

Promotional pictorial handkerchief printed on linen. With printed drawings of many of the Abbey Theatre’s players and directors.

The unsuccessful fight from 1908 through 1914 to get funding for the Municipal Gallery highlights fault lines among the participants in the Irish Literary Revival and the political struggle against the British. Many participants promoted not just Irish identity and freedom but also a vision of modernity in the culture and the society at large. Other participants rejected that view and had a deeply conservative vision of the meaning of Irish myths, pushing for the return of the primacy of the Catholic Church in Irish society and politics. These divisions would reappear after the founding of the Irish Republic.