Religion Pays: The Business of Art Industry Entrepreneurs and Splendour in the Spaces of Nineteenth-Century Irish Catholicism

During the nineteenth century legislative reforms and religious revival in Ireland brought about significant change in the practice and position of Catholicism. This fostered a consumer revolution in religious art and architecture as architects, religious figures and a Catholic bourgeoisie aspired to recreate the architectural magnificence and status associated with Catholic churches of the medieval period in Ireland and Europe. The characteristic splendour of these interiors owes much to commercial producers of religious art from Britain and Europe. Makers of stained glass and decorative mosaics, in particular, dominated the Irish market even after the establishment of an Irish Arts and Crafts movement from the early 1890s and continued to thrive well into the twentieth century, even as Irish artist-designed church art grew more popular with patrons. This essay takes a fresh approach to analysing the spaces of Irish Catholicism by exploring the ‘backstage’ of religion from the perspective of commercial church art business history. It draws out two themes central to this Roundtable: the ways in which local sacred spaces and landscapes were impacted by transnational exchanges and processes, and the relationship between physical space and imaginative space in architectural production.