MANUSCRIPT. “Leonard”, Ballylin,Ireland 1849. Drawing book in portrait format. Blank paper book in the original blue wraps, approx. 20 cm x 12 cm, illustrated title page, followed by pp 24 of illustrations in watercolour and pencil, many annotated in ink. The first illustration shows a man in a frock coat and top hat netting Salmon, with the pencil caption “Salmon traps at Galway”. A further topographical illustration shows “Catching turtles at Cuba”, a third shows a dockside scene, and the majority of images are of animals and insects [ crocodile, penguin, rhinoceros, beetles and butterflies etc], all of them rather well executed, and in most instances presumably copied from books or prints. Some scenes, such as a pencil sketch of a sea anemone, might have been drawn from life, and the salmon traps and dockside scene also. Unsurprisingly, with just the single forename to go by, we have not traced the artist.
[To put the drawing book in historical context, the Irish famine of the 1840’s was still ravaging the country, with over a million deaths from starvation and want, with a further 1.25 million emigrating as refugees. By 1849, many thousands of poor cottagers had been forcibly displaced under the guise of relief legislation, and whole areas were cleared of people for agricultural gain- effectively a genocide. It seems likely then, that Leonard was one of the fortunate sons of one of the few well to do families in Ballylin.]
