Justice to Ireland

One of my favorite things in the Graphics Collection at the Connecticut Historical Society is an 1866 hand-colored lithograph by E.B. & E.C. Kellogg of Hartford entitled “Justice to Ireland.”  It shows an allegorical figure of a woman personifying Ireland wielding a sword and waving the Fenian banner, while trampling on the prostrate body of a man in armor wearing a crown, presumably representing the British king.  It’s unlikely that the Kellogg brothers were proponents of Irish independence, but they certainly anticipated a ready market for patriotic Irish prints among the many Irish emigrants who came to the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.  To find out more about Irish subjects by the Kellogg firm, go to http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/connecticut-historical-society/wearing-green