1798

Created by Oliver Sheppard

Date: 1904
Usually date of exhibition rather than production

Object class: sculpture

Object type: statue (perhaps a pike man)

Material: metal - bronze

Technique: cast

Description: '"1798" - Statue in Bronze, to be erected in the town of Wexford'.

Commissioned by the '98 Committee' of Wexford - these committees were established to organise and coordinate a number of different activities during the centennial year of the 1798 rebellion. The Wexford pikeman
'represents a peasant striding out confidently into conflict'. The committee had written to Sheppard with particular instructions as to the work to be executed, apparently accompanied by a photograph of a drawing made by a local priest, advisor to the committee. The letter stated that 'the general idea is a figure in bronze, six feet high on a suitable pedestal and should represent a leader - a farmer of that period - dressed in knee-britches, shirt, no coat or hat, but a pike in his hand'. The committee sent a subsequent letter to Sheppard stating that the 'insurgent peasant' should be shown 'in a defiant attitude' and that the sword and standard suggested by Sheppard be replaced by 'the simple pike'. A pike head was later sent to Sheppard, as a model. Extracts from Judith Hill, Irish Public Sculpture, pp. 121-25.

Notes: This work was probably commissioned, to celebrate the centenary of the 1798 Rebellion. A number of commemorative statues were commissioned about this time and were usually erected on pedestals in town squares around the country. This particular one was erected at the Bull Ring in Wexford town, on the East Coast, a location which was used during the rebellion as an armaments area, where the rebels pikes and other weapons were forged and sharpened.

Citing this record

'1798', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/object.php?id=msib3_1218643100, accessed 27 Feb 2021]