Claire Ó Nualláin

PhD Student

“As our national character is now forming”: Antiquarianism, the Fine Arts, and Protestant Identity in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

Supervised by Dr Kyle Leyden and Dr Esther Chadwick

Funded by AHRC/CHASE

My research considers the role of antiquarianism in the construction of a pseudo-history of ancient Ireland by the Protestant landowning classes in the second half of the eighteenth century. By the latter half of the century, this group strove to elevate perceptions of the Irish nation, fashioning a Protestant Irish identity through the construction and appropriation of an heroic ancient Irish past, and seeking to improve and ennoble the nation that they had come to understand as their own.

This thesis interrogates the significance of this imagined former state of civic perfection in the progress from patriotism, to radicalism and rebellion, and eventually, to union with Britain, examining antiquarian watercolours, prints, landscape paintings and history paintings produced ca. 1760-1850.

Through this thematic analysis of a range of visual sources, I also investigate the relationship between technologies of representation and the production of knowledge in eighteenth-century antiquarianism, visual culture and fine art.


Education

  • PhD Student
    The Courtauld Institute of Art (2024 – present) 
  • MA, Eighteenth Century Studies (Distinction)
    King’s College London (2019 – 2020)
  • BA, History
    Trinity College Dublin (2014 – 2018)

Professional Experience

  • Curatorial Assistant, Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford (2021-2024)
  • Heritage Centre Intern, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Dublin (2019)

Conference papers and talks

  • ‘”Rescuing from oblivion the antiquities of this country”: Reading agendas in antiquarian watercolours, 1770-1792’ Eighteenth Century Ireland Society Annual Conference (Trinity College Dublin, June 2025)
  • ‘”Illustrious Persons”: Immortalising the Faces of Bureaucracy, Robert Nanteuil 1623-1678’, Curator’s lunchtime lecture series (Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford, February-June 2023)
  • ‘”A nearer acquaintance with her neighbouring isle”: The figure of Hibernia in negotiating an Anglo-Irish cultural identity in late Eighteenth-century Ireland,’ Distance 2020 Postgraduate Conference (CECS, University of York and ERCC, University of Melbourne/ Online, August 2020)

Research Interests:

  • Eighteenth-century British and Irish art
  • Antiquarianism
  • Collecting, patronage and display
  • Visual and material culture
  • Enlightenment and Romanticism
  • National identity

Citations