MHBD's Blog: Westland Row

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Westland Row

I had a great time around Westland Row, sketching for our Bloomsday Sketchbook project. Our sketchbooks are getting quite full, actually, so it will be lovely to see them on display around Bloomsday! If you've followed our adventures via the Dublin Sketchers blog, you'll see there is quite a variety of styles and interpretations!

For me it's an opportunity to (re-)discover lesser-known corners of Dublin, trying to see the city as if I was James Joyce himself - what would he notice if he was writing Ulysses now, in 2018? First, he probably wouldn't be in Trieste - he'd probably have got an arts grant to sustain him and his family while working on his avant-garde project, without having to leave Dublin. So he wouldn't be working from memory, but maybe you'd see him taking notes while walking around the streets of the capital!

Anyways, comparing myself to Joyce is somewhat ambitious. I'm not of that caliber. Nowhere near. But I do sketch from direct observation - no working from photographs for me, except to finish a piece at home, adding darks or colours. And the more I sketch, the more I love my city.

Since I had already been inside St Andrew's Church, I decided to go around the back, following into Leopold Bloom's footsteps. (I'm telling a little lie here, since I entered South Cumberland Street from the South, rather than from Pearse Street, unless you count when I drove through the street looking for parking a little earlier!)

I've lived in Dublin over 30 years, but I can safely say I had never been on South Cumberland Street. Well, I think it's worth a visit. From an urban sketcher's point of view anyway. Lots of buildings, windows, roofs, a covered railway bridge, parked cars, a fire escape that caused me endless trouble to draw, street lamps and overhead cables. It certainly was a challenge to sketch! And yes, there is an entrance to the church "from the rere". But it was locked.

"The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the swing door and entered softly by the rere."

(Darks added afterwards)

You can't do Ulysses and Westland Row and ignore Sweny's Chemist. Actually, you don't even have to know anything about James Joyce to go visit - that's certainly the impression I got from a lot of the tourists who visited that Sunday afternoon. It's such a busy spot on a Sunday that it is quite challenging to actually see what's in front of you, let alone sketch it. If you're lucky and PJ is there, he will ask you where you're from and he'll speak a few words in your language. He spoke French - very well -, Russian - mine is rusty, but he sounded convincing -, and Lithuanian - I can't comment there -, in the time I was there. And he sang a song in Irish, accompanying himself on the guitar - twice! Japanese seemed to stop him, though!