A critical period in Irish history, the Great Irish Potato Famine is known in history books around the world, the last famine of 'Europe. Between 1845 and 1852, Ireland experienced a period of excessive famine, disease and exile, known as the Great Irish Potato Famine. During this period, the island of Ireland lost between twenty and thirty percent of its population. Although the blight ravaged potato crops across Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland, where a third of the population depended entirely on potatoes for food, have been intensified by a series of political, social and economic factors which are still the subject of much discussion. Irish Historical Discussion. The famine was a turning point in Irish history. Its effects have lastingly modified the demographic, political and cultural landscape of the island. For both the natives and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered popular memory and became a rallying point for various nationalist movements. We are currently celebrating the one hundred and sixty-ninth anniversary of the most catastrophic event in the country's history. 19th century Europe, the Irish famine. However, in saying this, the memorials of this disaster are blurred by the lack of visual material. In fact, this problem applies to much of Irish history before the turn of the 20th century and has been commented on by art historians, but never made explicit. Overall, it is the Famine which has probably provoked the greatest response from the contemporary artist, unlike other events in Irish history of this period. Most people are familiar with the graphic depictions in the Illustrated London News and similar periodicals of the period. We must ask ourselves the question, with a preo...... middle of paper ......newspaper prints. This survey touches on only a handful of paintings, which cover a variety of typographies, from the wretched to the cruel, and can be seen as an illustrated catalog of the difficulty of British views on Ireland. By depicting the poor Irish as charming or the middle class as similar to their British peers, the Irish could be given the impression of being harmless and symbolically tame. The artist, in his attempt to deal with the events of the Great Famine, accepted and even hid within the lines of conformism, refusing to address the reality of the situations, which most often were mismanaged by those who were in power. As for the Irish artist, it was he who revealed the greatest insight into the complications between the two nations. They thought they were different; assumptions about art and subject matter left much to be desired.