A troublesome 'genre'? histories, definitions and perceptions of paintings of everyday life from early nineteenth-century Ireland

This article interrogates the historiography of early nineteenth-century paintings of Irish life and offers some suggestions as to how historical approaches to this type of painting can be re-examined and reassessed. By using one case study (The Patron of the Seven Churches by Joseph Peacock) it investigates the perception of the everyday aesthetic amongst historians, critics and audiences over the past two centuries and emphasizes the contribution that an interdisciplinary approach can make to scholarship in this area.