Ireland-1846

Barbara Bodichon was a pioneer feminist and educational innovator, as well as an accomplished artist who exhibited regularly in public. This work shows both her skill as a watercolourist and her concern with the issues of the day, since it alludes to the disastrous failure of the potato crop in Ireland between 1845 and 1851, when millions of Irish people either died of hunger or emigrated to America or Australia. The scene depicted is an imaginary view of the west of Ireland with abandoned cottages and a ruined monastery, while the ghostly masts of ships in the sky presumably refer to those that will take the desolate figure in the foreground away from Ireland and famine to safety.