An unknown creator of picturesque Ireland: Luttrell Wynne, the ‘Gentleman of Oxford’

Authors of travel narratives attempting to convey in words their discoveries and observations increasingly turned to images to support their text. In this they were encouraged by publishers and the public, developing in time a dedicated art industry and new book forms. This conference focuses attention on the various uses of graphic art in topographical and ethnographical writing by travellers from the Early Modern period to the present, and the relationship between text and image.
The topics proposed by the participants, from Italy, Switzerland, America, France, Greece and Ireland, range from the iconography of specific areas, such as Switzerland, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Western Mediterranean, Ireland, to the work of particular individuals, notably Jonathan Fisher, Luttrell Wynne, Beranger and Bigari in Ireland and W.H.J. Browne in the Arctic. Among the areas covered are the National Library of Ireland’s resources for research on travel, the implications of evolving media for both text and image, including their online presence. Present-day topographical writing and the images it engenders are the focus of a session devoted to Tim Robinson’s Connemara trilogy.