Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Róisín Curé has drawn all her life and this is her third book on urban sketching. She currently teaches the mindful and colourful practice of urban sketching to students through workshops all over the world, and online; the latter is always live, in keeping with the spirit of urban sketching, which is about living life in the now. She is based in Co. Galway.

Dublin in Sketches and

Stories Róisín Curé

Contents Introduction 1

Winter 129

Spring 5

Epilogue 165

Summer 31

Acknowledgements 166

Autumn 73

Introduction It’s a pleasant evening in summer, and the brother and I are

huge metal sign: it’s for Dr Steevens’ Hospital. The brother and I

sitting in a snug in Neachtain’s pub on Cross Street, in my home

have just been talking about it, and I take it as, well, a sign.

town of Galway. Earlier in the year, I’d published an illustrated memoir of life in Galway, and we were discussing the possibility of doing something similar with Dublin as my theme. The

The truth is, though, that I have absolutely no idea how ambitious the plan is. Better that way.

I didn’t know what kind of book I would end up creating. My

brother, a keen reader of history and lover of all things Dublin, is

primary aim was to sketch the city from life, but I knew I would

giving me a potted history of Dublin City.

like to know the stories behind the buildings, and to that end,

‘You really know the entire history of Dublin, don’t you?’ I say, amazed by his vast knowledge.

‘No, not really,’ he says, ‘only from the seventeenth century onwards.’

the brother’s help and knowledge would prove to be invaluable.

He has a way of making the past seem as present and as real as if it happened yesterday. And so, the resulting book reflects two kinds of conversation: one between myself and the brother,

‘Really?’ I say. ‘Not before that?’

about the city’s past, and another between myself and the city’s

‘Well, the Dublin you see dates from around the seventeenth

inhabitants, who are Dublin today, in flesh and blood.

century in its street layout and major public buildings,’ he says.

We start to form a sort of plan for a book to represent Dublin,

To draw Dublin was easier said than done. Much easier.

To sketch a capital city and strike a nice balance between the

past and present, but one that would be achievable for a non-

grandiose and the intimate was no small ambition. Everyone

resident working alone. He names buildings and institutions and

to whom I mentioned the project had their own ideas about

my mind starts to swirl. On my way out of Neachtain’s, I pass a

what should be drawn. Many thought the aim was to capture

Introduction 1

magnificent, stately buildings: they were the most commonly

finer weather, I was attracted to magnificent façades

suggested subjects and, for the most part, they were my drawing

of architectural tours de force. Sometimes it was a

destinations. But, as an urban sketcher, I’m interested in telling

person’s clothing, a nice pose or a small architectural

the story of a city.

detail that caught my eye, and every now and then someone

I have experienced Dublin at four stages in my life, each

would tell me that under no circumstances could I leave out

distinct: as a child, a teenager, a young adult and now, as a person

a certain place. So, this book is like a walk in the footsteps of

in middle age. Most of my memories of Dublin are shrouded in a

millions of people over the centuries who have trodden the

mist more than thirty years old, but back then, I wouldn’t have

streets before me, with the addition of pens, paper and paint.

known how to describe the city anyway. The Dublin I am going to offer to you here is a Dublin exactly as I found it.

Over the course of a year, I caught the bus from Galway to Dublin each week, staying a few days at a time, capturing what I saw in my sketchbook. I would sit or stand in front of something nice, for anything from twenty minutes to two hours, and sketch in pen and ink, then paint it in watercolour on the spot. Then I would hop on that same bus home, and even though I loved my sketching days in Dublin, there was nothing like the feeling of sitting back in that calm, comfy bus, as it pulled out from Aston Quay and then onto the motorway towards Galway.

I love to sketch from life, and I do it as often as possible.

When you sketch your subject from life, you are immersed on all sides, above, below, all around, in your surroundings. You are in your own sunlit reality show, where people entertain you with stories of their own lives, where you experience the timelessness of the seasons. Pigeons woo their reluctant womenfolk in spring, the sun warms your back in summer, leaves land gently on the pavement beside you in autumn and you freeze almost solid in winter, and it’s all real life. Sketching on location is living in the here and now, slowly, and in its most beautiful, most colourful, most vivid way.

I couldn’t sketch all of Dublin, or even more than a tiny fraction. I left out great swathes of beautiful streets and characterful quarters. So this is just a taste of the city: in winter, I drew places where I could sit indoors, and in

2 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

The Dublin of My Past The first Dublin I knew was a city of spectacle: my parents took

village: it came to a halt on grimy Poolbeg Street, making the

their large brood to the places that make Dublin special to a

arrival in the glory of Grafton Street all the more impressive. My

child. They took me and my many brothers and sisters to shows

school friends and I would meet there on a Saturday to wander

at the Gaiety Theatre at the top end of Grafton Street: in my

up and down the street. We’d spray ourselves with clouds of

child’s eye, I see a night-time Dublin of pantomimes, bright lights

every pungent perfume Switzers had in stock, and loiter in a café

and elegant streets, tubs of neon-striped ice cream, sparkling

– invariably a Bewley’s thick with cigarette smoke but tolerant of

sets and dazzling costumes. They took us to art galleries: I

hordes of vivacious teenage girls.

can picture high ceilings and enormous rooms of impressive

As a young woman, I attended the National College of Art

canvases in the National Gallery on Merrion Square, where

and Design (NCAD) on Thomas Street, and Dublin became my

my eyes were opened to a whole new world. They took us to

playground. It was a heady time; the first opportunity I’d had

museums where we learned that life didn’t start with our first

to meet people like me. My friend Juanita and I would be sent

memories, and where everything smelled of old varnish, a hint

to look for ‘objets trouvés’ to make various art pieces. We were

of damp plaster and time.

given total freedom to roam the city, scouring scrap heaps for

As a teenager, I was allowed to catch the bus to town on my

rusty metal – and all on official college business!

own. Dublin was the last stop for the No. 44 bus from Enniskerry

Introduction 3

My Sketching Odyssey I left Dublin for Europe after my stint in art college and never returned. When the idea came up for a book of sketches of Dublin, I felt a curiosity about the city I had once been so immersed in: had I become so used to country ways that I would find it unbearable? Would I feel vulnerable sketching alone on the streets? What difference would a thirty-fiveyear gap make to my feelings about the capital?

I could never have foreseen falling in love with Dublin all over again. I rediscovered a beautiful city of wide streets, classical buildings and a buzz that is hard to describe. I spoke with many people along the way, nearly all of whom were young and male and had fallen on hard times, or older and male and had overcome hard times. Very few women spoke to me. However, being female and middle-aged is an advantage as an urban sketcher. No one ever asked me to move on or told me I couldn’t sketch where I wanted. Many security staff went out of their way to give me lengthy explanations about my subject, which was always helpful – and I was almost invariably treated with great kindness.

I hope you will join me as I meander through the streets of Ireland’s capital, listening, talking, looking, drawing and painting whatever takes my fancy.

I won’t be giving you the official tour – I don’t know what that would include. But I hope that the brother’s imparted knowledge will leave you a little the wiser and, above all, I invite you to share Dublin through my eyes.

4 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Spring

The Grand Canal

‘Patrick Kavanagh asked to be commemorated by water,’ says the brother. ‘Not entirely sure what he said. Look it up.’ I do, and I find

It’s a beautiful, sunny evening in April. I see a man sitting on a

the poem ‘Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin’. Here

bench by the canal. I begin to cross the lock to get to the other

is an extract: ‘O commemorate me where there is water, / Canal water,

side – I’m looking for the statue of the poet Patrick Kavanagh.

preferably, so stilly / Greeny at the heart of summer …’ It ends with the

‘Excuse me,’ calls a foreign man – possibly German – from whom I had asked directions, ‘there is the statue, just there.’ He tells me not to cross the bridge.

Turns out the man on the bench is the statue. A closer

words: ‘O commemorate me with no hero-courageous / Tomb – just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by.’

I’m painting the last stretch of a tree’s shadow on the path when a short, slightly plump man stops beside me to have a look. He is dressed

approach shows the green and dark brown of copper, and I get

in a turquoise T-shirt and black shorts, his calves a chunky, gleaming

sketching. I think about Paddy Kavanagh while I sketch, how I

white. He is carrying two plastic bags heavy with cans of beer.

loved his poetry in my school days: his poem ‘Stony Grey Soil’,

‘I would give whatever money I have left in the bank to be able to

about his somewhat bleak childhood in Monaghan, was my first

do tha’,’ he says. ‘It’s a gift from God. From God!’ he says, leaning in and

realisation that the reality of a rural life might not be all it was

raising his voice insistently. ‘A gift from God.’ He continues along the

cracked up to be.

path.

6 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

The Four Courts The brother tells me that the Four Courts was the location for the start of the Civil War. ‘The Public Records Office was established there, and rebels

I sit just off the pavement opposite the entrance of the Four Courts to sketch, thinking about the criminal types who might come in and out. I wonder whether they will be more

used piles of records as protection against bullets,’ he says,

likely to offer me mischief, since they are definitely criminals,

‘and they also stored their ammunition close by. The Free State

or less likely, since they may be trying to turn over a new leaf.

shelled the Four Courts, and irreplaceable documents recording

Eventually a man does swerve slightly towards me, as if to

all kinds of important transactions from throughout the ages

approach: he is big and stocky and looks Eastern European. I

were destroyed in an explosion.’

wonder if this will be my first negative encounter in Dublin.

I hear my mother’s voice in the background.

But he’s on the phone, and without breaking his stride, he

‘They say the documents were scattered as far as Wales by

points to the ground under my little stool. I have dropped my

the blast,’ she says.

newly topped-up Leap Card.

Spring 7

Smithfield ‘Smithfield is the location of the Duke of Ormond’s cattle

beyond its medieval walls. Fifty years later the final conquest of

market,’ says the brother. ‘Traditionally it was Dublin’s main

Ireland by Britain was completed, and the walls weren’t needed

cattle market. It was the territory of a faction called the

any more. Then the city had a stroke of luck in getting the Duke

Ormond Boys, the Catholic butchers of Smithfield, who fought

of Ormond as viceroy for a goodly stretch. He had been exiled

the Liberty Boys from across the river with their cleavers. The

in France with Charles II and returned with all sorts of ideas of

Liberty Boys were Protestant and weavers.’

how a proper city should look. He laid out St Stephen’s Green,

‘Did they bring needles?’ asks my mother, joking.

commanded buildings to face the Liffey (whereas previously

‘Yes,’ says the brother, ‘big ones, the size of daggers. But

they were built facing away from the river because of the smell),

things would get serious and the whole city would close down

commissioned the Royal Hospital and did a few other things

while the fighting was going on.’

that influenced the way the city developed for a hundred years

He says that large-scale faction fighting was repressed in

to come. Just as well; by the time his grandson became viceroy

the late eighteenth century, after nearly a hundred years, but

at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Dublin’s population

Smithfield still saw trouble on market days until relatively

had expanded eight-fold, becoming the second city of the British

recently.

Empire.’

Smithfield Plaza has now been regenerated. It’s very nice, with modern lights and lots of trees in planters, and it’s generally not at all ‘gritty’. The day I sketch, there’s a reasonably nice atmosphere. It feels quite business-like, with office workers having lunch on the grass, and tiny working-class houses surrounding the main square, full of what I imagine to be traditional Northside Dubliners. Pigeons are relentless in their pursuit of lady pigeons, dancing and ducking and cooing.

‘They haven’t had the memo that no means no,’ I say to my younger daughter.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘and it’s even worse – April is Sexual Assault Month.’

Later, the brother tells me a little more about the Duke of Ormond, and it explains a lot about the built city of Dublin.

‘In 1600, the city was tiny,’ he says, ‘and had hardly grown

8 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Spring 9

10 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

National Museum of Ireland Natural History When I was a girl, and my parents wanted to give me a treat,

behind me; I relate to their excitement in my mind’s eye. There

I always asked if they could take me to the Natural History

are two giant deer skeletons just inside the door. The smaller

Museum. I spent many birthdays there, and my First Holy

children have all sorts of ideas about what they are. I frequently

Communion when I was seven years old. I remember a huge

hear, ‘It’s a dragon!’, but my favourite is from a little girl, about a

American man giving me a silver dollar on the street near the

year old, having learned her first words. ‘Cow!’ she says, pointing

museum just because he liked to see a little girl in a white dress

her tiny finger at the huge beasts.

on her big day.

The museum was full of atmosphere to me: that smell …

Down the main hall on the left, squid in jars of brightblue liquid are like a cross between Victorian curiosities and

I didn’t know much about the world beyond my family and

trapped aliens. They’re tiny, not huge as you might think from

my school, but I knew I was fascinated by animals. And in the

my drawing, but I like juxtaposing them with the enormous

Natural History Museum my imagination could run unchecked.

skeletons, painting their bright colours and trying to copy the

I didn’t really notice that everything was stuffed; the animals

delicate writing on the yellowed labels.

were beautiful and fascinating to me.

The day I visit, I sit and sketch near the front entrance, and hear little gasps and cries of ‘Wow!’ from the children who file in

Spring 11

Guinness Brewery Breweries were growing rapidly in the eighteenth century, and

As teenagers, many of us had never had Guinness before, and

city-based breweries grew at the expense of smaller rural ones:

my first taste was in our local, The Clock, a couple of doors down

those in the cities were connected to markets by roads and

from the college. We drank it with a splash of blackcurrant

canals in a way that rural ones weren’t, allowing distribution

syrup – sacrilege! – because the bitter taste took a while to get

from the former across the country. There was lots of money

used to.

to be made from brewing in the eighteenth century. With

The art college was once part of the Guinness factory and

profits made from the burgeoning industry, in the following

it felt marvellously industrial. Huge pipes like a steampunk

century the Guinness family restored much of medieval

fantasy in an old engine room, spanning many floors, were

Dublin, including St Patrick’s Cathedral, and they landscaped

painted in 1980s-style primary colours, and red-brick buildings,

St Stephen’s Green. They also, famously, looked after their

darkened over time, rose from narrow cobbled pathways that

workers very well.

threaded their way through the campus. Everywhere there

My first experience of third-level education was NCAD

was activity from art students: massive sculptures, and the

on Thomas Street, close to the Guinness factory. The smell of

din and smells of welding; huge canvases painted in an intense

brewing was everywhere, and you had to grow to like it, because

silence and a fug of solvents; clay-spattered, gentle types making

you couldn’t escape it.

exquisite pots in the craft department; six-foot-plus chaps from

12 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Fine Art dressed in full Viking regalia. To a seventeen-year-old from a convent school, it was exhilarating stuff.

Coming into Dublin on the bus from Galway, the route takes you along Wolfe Tone Quay, where you have a fine view of the smokestacks of the Guinness Brewery. One beautiful spring evening, I sit across the river from the brewery and start to sketch. White smoke curls up from dark brick chimneys. As I sketch, a gleaming silver truck drives through the gates and turns left, westwards to the M50, en route to deliver stout across the country. The air is redolent with roasting hops, and I am seventeen again, blissfully ignorant of all the foolish mistakes ahead of me.

I sit on a stone bench just outside a small green area called Croppies Acre Memorial Park to sketch (croppies were the rebels of the 1798 Rising, fighting for independence from Britain: they were named for their short haircuts). It is tiny, but lovely. There is a beautiful sculpture that forms part of a fountain in the pond. It is called Anna Livia, the figure representing the River Liffey. The statue, which originally lay in a kind of bubbling stone bath on O’Connell Street, was quickly nicknamed the Floozy in the Jacuzzi. A group of roughish-looking older men are having an impromptu party at the edge of the fountain, enjoying the warm spring sunshine. They drink beer and play songs that were popular in Dublin in the 1980s – their heyday, I suspect. Not mine. For a minute I’m a teenager again, before that wonderful year in NCAD, and the songs evoke feelings I’d rather not remember. Then there’s a good bit of Bob Marley. It’s goodhumoured for a while, but after an hour or so the music has stopped, a few scuffles are breaking out and I’m glad I’m on the far side of the railings around the park.

Spring 13

Neary's Pub ‘In the nineteenth century,’ says the brother, ‘Dublin’s ruling classes became increasingly concerned that the city’s populace was drinking far too much. Law and order were under threat; drunkards roamed the streets, property was being damaged, citizens were being injured.

Something had to be done, starting with the regulation of the sale of alcohol, which was haphazard and had been more or less left to the free market. Thereafter, you could only get a licence to sell alcohol if your premises was valued above a certain amount. That gave rise to public houses being embellished and resulted in some very ornate buildings.’

Neary’s is a good example of that: it really is gorgeous, with cast-iron arms holding magnificent lamps outside the entrance. I sit and sketch, and while the day has been sunny, it’s getting very cold now. Beautiful girls, determined to show off their youthful comeliness, wear the lightest summer dresses, with no sleeves, spaghetti straps and billowing skirts in diaphanous fabrics, and my heart goes out to them. Perhaps their youth makes them tough, or perhaps, in the words of my Donegal friend’s mother, ‘false pride feels no pain’.

14 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Wellington Monument Walking up the hill from the gates of the Phoenix Park, the tulips are magnificent.

They are like drag queens, each more flamboyantly beautiful and dramatic than the last. The roar of traffic through the park, past the beautiful gardens, seems a little incongruous, but once I step off the main thoroughfare it’s easy to find large areas of green lawn. The Wellington Memorial is simply enormous, but I turn my sketchbook through ninety degrees and it’s nice to draw.

Families picnic on the grass in front of it, or play ball, or simply hang out on the sloping sides of the monument.

The Wellington Monument, or, more correctly, the Wellington Testimonial, was erected to commemorate the Irishborn Duke of Wellington’s victories over Napoleon. It took more than forty years to build, from 1817 to 1861, because the money ran out part way. Wellington didn’t live to see it completed.

‘I don’t think he would have cared much,’ says the brother. ‘Of Wellington’s Irish birth, Daniel O’Connell famously said: “Just because you are born in a stable does not make you a horse”.’

Wellington and his ancestors had lived in Ireland for centuries but did not consider themselves Irish, rather members of the British aristocracy. In fact, Wellington dismissed Ireland as ‘a nation of scoundrels’.

Spring 15

‘We are a nation of scoundrels,’ says my older daughter, Honor, laughing.

‘I thought the Wellington Monument was modern,’ I tell the brother, ‘from its very modern style.’

He tells me that obelisks were trendy at the time. Napoleon had recently returned from a campaign in Egypt, and the Rosetta Stone had been discovered, opening up the history of Ancient Egypt through the translation of its hieroglyphics. That had led to an explosion in Egyptology, and that obelisk style was everywhere at the time.

16 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Heuston Station Heuston station was completed in 1844, just before the Great

‘Why, at a time when resources were hard to come by, did

Famine began. It was believed by rural populations that the

they bury precious and useful objects in graves with the dead,

smoke and vapour of the trains brought the blight with them:

never to be seen or used again?’ I ask the brother.

in the 1840s, microbes were still unknown and there were many

He tells me it was a normal part of life to leave grave goods

theories about how disease was spread. The station is beautiful,

with the dead: it was hugely important for people to believe in

a wonderful example of Italianate architecture.

an afterlife and that the dead went on somehow; far easier than

When the railway line was cut, a Viking cemetery was excavated in the process. It is one of the oldest cemeteries

embracing the alternative.

I find drawing the façade difficult and wonder why I decided

ever found in Dublin and dates to the late ninth century. Many

to sketch Dublin. Then when it’s done, I forget all about that and

exhibits in the National Museum come from there, including

go to find some other lovely thing to sketch.

some swords and spindles found in graves.

Spring 17

Chez Max and the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Society Building The brother took his daughter and lots of family on both sides to

‘restorations’ on church frescoes, famously undertaken by

Chez Max to celebrate her birthday a few years ago, and I really

elderly Spanish ladies.

like the cosy feeling of its position next to the gates of Dublin

I realise though that the only difference between us is the

Castle. I buy a cappuccino and the French waiter is extremely

level of skill, for I too am thrusting my artistic efforts under the

friendly and accommodating – his easy manner reminds me of

noses of strangers.

friendly, confident waiters I encountered in Paris when I went there after my time in Dublin.

Next to Chez Max is a charming pink building that I have always found delightful. Carved into the plaster are the words ‘Sick & Indigent Roomkeepers’ Society’ and I wonder about all those poor roomkeepers who apparently ended up there. A large man in his forties, dressed in Prog Rock fashion, stops to see what I am doing. Two gangly youths accompany him.

‘See here, boys,’ he says, ‘there are many types of brickwork in the city.’ He gestures to the boys. ‘These are my sons,’ he says, and I feel a sense of togetherness between them. The sons half smile and nod, awkward and shy. It’s the simplest of introductions, but it’s the sort of small connection with strangers that is a part of urban sketching.

A pair of men stop to look.

‘That’s actually not bad,’ they say, and I feel myself bristle. I know this type. One tells me all about his own painting interests.

When he asks me if I paint with oil like him, I lie, and say I do.

He wants to show me his work, but I go on sketching and do not meet his gaze. Unperturbed, he whips out his phone and thrusts picture after picture under my nose.

‘Look at this one!’ he keeps saying. Not looking isn’t an option. I see a series of paintings of the countryside local to him, and some racehorses. The images are poorly painted and offend my artistic sensibilities.

‘This one is of Our Lady,’ he says. I try not to look, but I can’t get away from the phone. I see an image reminiscent of those

18 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

View up the Liffey to O'Connell Bridge ‘There’s a bench on Rosie Hackett Bridge,’ says the brother, ‘that

chink of light on the far side. Two men, whom I presume are

could have been specially put there for sketchers.’

construction workers, sit and chat near me. One of them smokes

True, it could have been, for someone taller or shorter than I

incessantly, but I only become conscious of this in the closing

though, as there’s a handrail that perfectly obscures my view. I

minutes of my sketch, and suddenly I can’t bear it. I can only

sit on the backrest and sketch.

assume I have become so absorbed in my sketch that I’ve been

To my left, a tent dances in the wind. It’s tethered to the railings – someone’s lodgings last night. Three currachs make their way upriver, each bearing two rowers. They pass under

unaware of anything else.

The bridge is named after Rosie Hackett, who was a founder member of the Irish Women’s Workers’ Union in 1909.

the central arch of the bridge, silhouetted against the dazzling

Spring 19

20 Dublin in Sketches and Stories

Dublin Castle I walk through the gates to Dublin Castle. To my right, the ground rises in an elegant sweep to arches leading onto a large courtyard, the State Apartments, built by Lord Chesterfield in the 1740s. In front of me stands an ornate chapel and a round tower. In the morning light the scene is very romantic and I feel lucky to have chosen a nice day for it. I am there early on a Sunday, and the paved area all around the chapel and leading up to the arches is deserted but for the very occasional passer-by. I sketch, time ceases to exist, unmarked by changes in weather or light or the build-up of crowds. I am soon lost in line and colour.

The tranquillity of the scene is rudely disturbed by a clattering across the cobbles. Hurtling towards me is a wheelchair, pulled by a galloping black and white pit bull terrier, its eyes bulging, mouth open in a wide grin, tongue lolling sideways. The occupant of the wheelchair is a young man in a red baseball cap and tracksuit. He has only one leg. He is urging his dog to go faster, with highpitched cries of ‘Hiya! Hiya boy! Go ooooon!’ And the dog is the picture of joy.

They speed past me, through the main gates, swerving slightly at the last second so that I think everyone might go flying on the uneven cobbled ground, but they make it, more or less upright. The young man may not have two legs, but he is having as fine a time as anyone on this beautiful sunny morning.

I tell my husband about the spectacle.

‘Sort of like a Dublin chariot,’ he says, which sounds marvellous in his public school accent.

Chapel Royal In the early nineteenth century, Francis Johnston, official architect of the Board of Works, designed the chapel at Dublin Castle so the viceroy could hear an Anglican service in surroundings commensurate with his dignity. The English king, George IV, visiting Dublin in 1821, attended a service in the chapel and so it became the Chapel Royal. It fell out of use after independence in 1922.

‘It cost £42,000 to build,’ says the brother. ‘It’s hard to describe just how vast an amount that was, but it was the equivalent of several millions. In the 1940s, it became a Catholic place of worship for the armed forces, but it’s been deconsecrated since then.’

Spring 21