A critical moment in Irish history, the Great Irish Potato Famine, known in history books around the world, the last European famine. Between 1845 and 1852 there was a period of excessive hunger, disease and exile in Ireland, known as the Great Irish Potato Famine. During this period the Island of Ireland lost between twenty and thirty percent of its population. Although late blight devastated potato crops across Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland, where a third of the population depended entirely on the potato for food, was intensified by a number of political factors , social and economic which remain the subject of discussion. Irish historical discussion. The famine was a watershed in Ireland's history. Its effects lastingly changed the demographic, political and cultural landscape of the island. For both natives and those of the resulting diaspora, the famine entered popular memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements. Currently, we are celebrating the one hundred and sixty-ninth anniversary of the most catastrophic event in the history of nineteenth-century Europe, the Irish Famine. That said, however, memories of this catastrophe are clouded by the lack of visual material. In fact, this issue applies to much of Ireland's history before the end of the 20th century and is something that has been commented on by art historians, but never made explicit. All in all, it was the Famine that most likely garnered the greatest responsiveness from the contemporary artist, unlike other events in Irish history of that period. Most people are aware of the graphic representations in the Illustrated London News and similar periodicals of the time. You have to ask the question, with a preo...... middle of paper ......newspaper prints. This survey touches on only a handful of paintings, covering a variety of types, from the wretched to the cruel, and can be seen as a pictorial catalog of the difficulty of British views on Ireland. By portraying the Irish poor as charming or the middle class as similar to their British peers, the Irish could come across as non-threatening and symbolically domesticated. The artist, in an attempt to deal with the events of the great Famine, accepted and indeed hid within the lines of conformity, refusing to face the reality of the situations, which were more often than not handled in a mean manner by those in custody. As for the Irish artist, he revealed the greatest insight into the complications between the two nations. They saw themselves as different; assumptions about the art and subject matter left much to be desired.