The Artists

Background

Anatomical and descriptive illustration has played an important role in medical education and scholarship since antiquity.

From the skeleton, musculature, arteries, veins, nerves and viscera, the visual depiction of the human body traces the broad development of artistic practice and is found in finely illustrated manuscripts dating to the 4^th and 5^th centuries BCE.

This is mirrored in the development of printing from the sixteenth century. Colour was added to etched illustrations through polychrome woodcuts and hand tinted mezzotint, and from the nineteenth century though lithography and later, photography.

In contrast to this printing history, medical illustrations in the RCPI collection are single sheet watercolour illustrations and pencil sketches. Each illustration signed by the artist and inscribed with information on the patient depicted.

Likely requested by the attending physician, these were probably used in a teaching setting – introducing the medical student to the presentation of an ailment – and as illustrations to published articles.

J Connolly

Little is known about the history of medical illustration in nineteenth century Dublin. The naive style of these works suggests that the artists – in this instance J Connolly and William Burke Kirwan – had limited training in anatomy. It might also suggest that this form of artistic practice was considered as being relatively low status.

Despite this, both artists were prolific and examples of their work can be found today in several institutional collections.

The precise identity of ‘J Connolly’ is also unknown. Given the nature of the work, it can be said with some certainty that this was likely a man: a ‘John Connolly’ was active as a landscape painter in the 1820s, but there is currently no evidence to link him to these medical illustrations.

William Burke Kirwan

Countering Connolly’s enigmatic status, William Burke Kirwan did come to prominence in nineteenth century Ireland, but not for his talent as an artist and illustrator.

The son of a picture dealer, Kirwan established his reputation as a miniaturist in Dublin during the 1830s and 1840s. He exhibited miniatures and watercolours at the Royal Hibernian Academy.

In 1852, Kirwan reached notoriety after the suspicious death of his wife, Maria Louise Crowe (1842–52) during a day trip to Ireland’s Eye, a small island off the coast of Country Dublin.

Kirwan was arrested and found guilty of her murder. The initial death sentence was commuted and Kirwan was imprisoned on Spike Island, spending part of his sentence at a penal colony in Bermuda. He was released in 1879, and died the following year.