Finn MacCool
Richard Hamilton British
Not on view
Reminiscent of a nineteenth-century photograph, Hamilton’s treatment of the belligerent “citizen” in the tavern scene from James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is based on a picture of the imprisoned Irish nationalist Raymond Pius McCartney. McCartney, who is also the subject of Hamilton’s painting The citizen (1982–83; Tate, London), was among the IRA members who went on a notorious hunger strike at H. M. Prison Maze in Northern Ireland in 1980 (he was released in 1994). Here, Hamilton conflates the real-life McCartney with Finn MacCool, the
hunter-warrior of Irish legend whom Joyce’s citizen cites as a Gaelic inspiration.
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