Irish Fisherman 

John Wesley Jarvis made this pencil drawing of an 'Irish Fisherman' in the early nineteenth century. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the artwork singles out the ethnicity of the working man? This was a time when ideas about national identity were becoming increasingly important and when the different peoples within the British Isles were being defined and categorized. The man’s dress tells us something of his status. While he is clearly working class, elements of his dress such as the top hat and the cut of his jacket, show him to be relatively well-off. He seems to have been drawn from life, but one wonders whether the artist had an agenda to show the dignity of labor or whether he was simply making a record of a particular social type? The art historian looks at census records, newspapers and other historical documents to find out about the circumstances in which such an image was made, and the meanings it might have had at the time.