Galway in Irish Art: The Claddagh, Lough Corrib, Salthill and the Bay

Galway in Irish art is a story of water: the Corrib running out into the bay, the quays at the Claddagh, the black-hulled hookers working the bay, and the long lake that stretches north towards Mayo. Painters, draughtsmen and photographers have been drawn to the city and its edges since the nineteenth century, and the pictures that survive record a place that has changed a great deal.

This guide follows Galway through the prints we carry, from Walter Osborne's quayside figures to the summer ritual at Salthill. For the mountains and bogland west of the city, see our companion guide to Connemara and the West in Irish Art.

The Claddagh and Walter Osborne

The Claddagh (An Cladach, "the seashore") was a fishing village just outside the old city walls, where the Corrib meets Galway Bay. Its thatched cottages were cleared in the 1930s and replaced with council housing, so almost nothing of the old village remains to look at. Artists are the reason we know what it felt like.

Walter Osborne, the Dublin Impressionist, travelled west in the early 1890s and drew and painted what he found. Women on a Galway Quayside shows three women sitting close together on the stones, wrapped in rust and red shawls, with a fourth figure standing nearby. Nothing happens in the picture, which is its strength: it is an hour of ordinary waiting, observed with real tenderness. Osborne's wider story is on his artist page.

Osborne's Galway Market Scene and his graphite portrait A Galway Man belong to the same body of work. Together they make a good trio for a wall, one busy, one quiet, one a single face.

The Galway hooker

No boat is more tied to the bay than the Galway hooker, black-hulled with russet sails. It carried turf, kelp and cargo across water that rarely forgives mistakes, and its shape became a symbol of the west coast. The Galway Hooker photographic print catches one at sunset, the sail glowing against the sea.

Lough Corrib: Burton and Petrie

North of the city, Lough Corrib opened another subject to nineteenth-century artists. Frederic William Burton drew The Upper End of Lough Corrib with wide skies, distant mountains and still water. It is an unusually quiet picture from a painter best known for the medieval romance of The Meeting on the Turret Stairs; you can read more on his artist page.

George Petrie, the antiquarian and painter, took a more dramatic view. In Hen's Castle on Lough Corrib the ruin sits far below a mountain wreathed in rain. Burton gives you the calm of the lake, Petrie its weather, and between them they cover most of the moods Corrib has.

Salthill, then and now

Galway's modern art is less about painting and more about habit. The diving tower on Salthill promenade has been a fixture of Galway summers for generations, and it is as much a rite as a place to swim. The Salthill Diving Tower print turns that into a bright, summery image that suits a hallway or kitchen. For the wider tradition of Irish swimming spots, see Sea Swimming in Irish Art.

Choosing a Galway print

If you want history, start with Osborne: the quayside is the strongest single image of the Claddagh we know of. If you want a view that works in a modern room, the hooker or the Corrib lake scenes sit easily with neutral walls. And if the print is a gift for someone from Galway, the diving tower is hard to beat.

Browse the full range in Irish Landscape & Seascape Art Prints, the Irish Historical Art Prints collection, or the complete Irish art prints hub.