Donnybrook Fair

Revealing his interest in landscape and in genre painting, William Sadler II treats one of Ireland's most rabelaisian scenes. Set in open countryside near Dublin, Donnybrook Fair was an annual August celebration, repressed by the authorities in 1855. But Sadler, painting earlier in the century, captures its mixture of bacchanalian high spirits and threatened violence: men and boys wield sticks and spill their drinks; mothers feed babies; a crowd sets upon a man on horseback. A recruiting officer's tent behind the Union Jack reminds us of the imperial military presence.