Dawn of a New Realism
Memories of
Edwardian splendour and of nineteenth-century plein air luxuriance co-existed, from about 1910, with another thread in Irish painting. This was a new realism, part of a larger movement to rediscover and reclaim distinctly Irish
subjects. It was generally advanced by artists such as Paul
The most common focus of new artistic interest in Irish subjects was the articulation of a peculiarly Irish landscape and mentality in the West of Ireland. The West was regarded by both writers and painters
as a land of fundamental difference, articulated against the Englishness of the colonial power. The West was also thought to be a primitive "other" within Ireland, uncorrupted by anglicisation,
urbanisation, and industrialisation. The West thus provided a way of access to the true Irish past through its language, its folklore, and its way of life. This movement first came about in the early years of the
twentieth century; with independence and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, national identity was increasingly attached to the landscape. 
Henry and Seán Keating who maintained stronger physical and emotional ties to the
Irish land than did their more internationalist counterparts. Their interests often focussed on everyday Irish life, particularly scenes of domesticity or economic impoverishment. Realism also crept into the work of the
Edwardians, notably Sir John Lavery and Sir William Orpen, both of whom made paintings that depicted the First World War. These war paintings suggest the dilemma the war posed for the
Irish, who were drawn into it by their relationship with the British just at the moment that nationalism was literally exploding at home. The Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, coming just eighteen months before
the war's end, was the most violent example yet of unrest at home, and led first to the War of Independence, to independence in 1922, and then to bloody Civil War.
Paul Henry, Seán Keating, and Jack Yeats all turned to the West to find landscape and subject matter that would be defined first and
foremost as Irish. Yeats's early paintings are often devoted to exploring icons of the Irish countryside or Irish life. Charles Lamb's Dancing at a Northern Crossroads
might be seen as the perfect embodiment of this desire, a vision of rural virtue and a pastoral ideal. Other works set in the Irish landscape adopt inescapably political subject matter. Keating's