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Thrilled to see the whole collection.

Up to now I was relying on Felix Larkin’s talk in the Print Museum and his book. Both of which were excellent but perforce selective. We can now add the above blog post. Felix deserves great credit for stimulating interest in Shemus and for his analysis of a representative selection of his cartoons.

I was already impressed with the Shemus cartoons from my initial contact above, but what struck me now looking through the whole collection, admittedly fairly cursorily, was the wide variety of styles of presentation. They include the traditional quick outline style, very nice worked pen drawings and broad pencil portraits. They make me very curious about his later straight art work.

I felt the same about the Brewster cartoons, though his cartoon style is more constant, but very finely worked. I am following up Brewster’s straight work and have tracked down one piece already, a portrait of an Irish peasant.

It’s great to see the current interest in, and availability of, the cartoons of Shemus, Brewster and Kavanagh. Each have their own styles and points of view and while they cover different periods, with only a slight overlap between Shemus and Brewster, their different treatment of some of the ongoing issues of the day is fascinating.

Full marks again to the National Library for continuing to digitise so much material and making it available to the widest possible audience.