art schools. In the early 18th century drawing masters advertised classes in Dublin. The most important establishment was that of Robert West, whose drawing school was supported by the
Royal Dublin Society from 1746. It added further schools or classes in ornamental drawing in 1756, architectural drawing in 1764, and modelling in 1811. Drawing alone was taught, based on copying engravings of the old masters and casts of the antique. The society was in receipt of state funding and managed the schools successfully, making a major contribution to the development of Irish art, especially landscape painting. The best students went on to study in Rome or London. Many became craftsmen who played a decisive role in the building and furnishing of Georgian Ireland. In Cork the beginning of art education can be traced to the arrival in 1818 of a collection of plaster casts of Vatican marbles—made under Canova's direction—and given to Cork by
George IV, but the school fell into abeyance in the 1830s. From 1829 Irish fine art education took place principally in the antique and life schools of the
Royal Hibernian Academy. These schools, which continued until 1940, were subvented by the state and the Academy students went on to study on the Continent.
During the 19th century the Board of Trade, and from 1854 the Department of Science and Art, promoted the establishment of schools of design in the United Kingdom. Under these auspices the Royal Dublin Society schools of drawing became a school of design in 1849. In 1877 this was nationalized and renamed the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. A Cork School of Design was established in 1850, funded municipally from 1856, and in 1884 it was provided with purpose‐built studios by the brewer W. H. Crawford. Schools of design were also established in Waterford in 1852 and in Limerick in 1854. The Belfast School of Design, oriented to the linen industry, opened in 1850 but, due to disagreements with the state, it ceased to function and was closed in 1855. In 1870 it was re‐established, and municipalized in 1901. In Derry a school of design was set up in 1874 and was, like the others, absorbed municipally following the passing of the Technical Instruction Act of 1899. By the late 19th century, schools of design had become general art schools of design had become general art schools where women were a substantial part of the student body. Mainly they taught still life and drawing of ornament, rather than fine art figure drawing. From the early 20th century the arts and crafts were also important.
In 1900 the Department of
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Dublin, took over supervision of art schools. After
partition and the
Anglo‐Irish treaty, the Departments of Education in Northern Ireland and the Free State took control. In 1930 the Vocational Education Act restructured all the technical colleges, including art departments, in the Free State but the institutions did not develop much in the period 1930‐60. Major changes came in the 1960s. First the Belfast School of Art, which moved into a modern building in 1968, became part of the Ulster Polytechnic and later of the University of Ulster. In the Irish Republic the National College of Art, as the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art had become in 1936, was reconstituted by statute, following serious student disturbances, as the National College of Art and Design (1971). From 1969 the Regional Technical Colleges (later Institutes) were established, incorporating the old technical school art departments, as in Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, and Athlone. The Dun Laoghaire School of Art, Co. Dublin, emerged in the 1960s from a technical college and specialized in film and the new media, becoming an Institute of Technology. The College of Marketing and Design, Dublin, became a school of the Dublin Institute of Technology with a particular strength in interior design. The National College of Art and Design, which had moved from its historic site in Kildare Street to new buildings in Thomas Street in 1980, had the widest range of specialisms and was the first institution in the state from 1980 to introduce degrees in art and design at undergraduate and later at postgraduate levels. It became a recognized college of the
National University of Ireland in 1996.
Bibliography
Strickland, Walter , A Dictionary of Irish Artists (1913)
Turpin, John , A School of Art in Dublin since the Eighteenth Century: A History of the National College of Art and Design (1995)
John Turpin
