The Great Sugar Loaf (501 m-1,644 ft)
Ireland
In Powerscourt House, Co. Wicklow with the Great Sugarloaf mountain, 1760, oil on canvas,
The mountain
The
Great Sugar Loaf (501 m-1,644 ft), not to be confused with Sugar Loaf in Brazil or with Sugar Loaf Mountain in USA neither with the Pain de Sucre in France... is the 404th–highest peak in Ireland on the
Arderinscale, however, being below 600 m it does not rank on the
Vandeleur-Lynam or Hewitt scales].
The mountain is in the far northeastern section of the Wicklow
Mountains, in Ireland, and overlooks the village of Kilmacanogue. The
profile of the mountain means it can be mistaken for a dormant volcano.
It owes its distinctive shape, however, to the erosion-resistant
metamorphosed deep-sea sedimentary deposit from which its quartzite
composition was derived.
According to Irish academic Paul Tempan,
the term "sugarloaf" is widely applied in Britain and Ireland to hills
of conical form, in much the same way that the name pain de sucre is
used in France. Tempan also notes that there is a widespread
misconception that the term refers to a kind of bread, when it refers in
fact to the stalagmite-like form in which sugar was sold up until the
19th-century, prior to the advent of granulated sugar. The traditional
method for making a sugarloaf was complex, involving repeated
purifications, moulding and a leaching process gradually to refine the
mass of sugar, by ridding it of its associated molasses and eventually
all trace of colour, leaving it a glistening white. This form of sugar
is still used in the German alcoholic drink, Feuerzangenbowle. Tempan
notes that a 1935 article by Eoin MacNeill in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (JRSAI), on placenames mentioned in the Togail Bruidne Dá Derga, suggested that Irish: Ó Cualann could refer to "sheep of Cualu", but considered it unlikely.
The Painter
George Barret Sr. RA was an Irish landscape artist best known for his oil paintings, but also sometimes produced watercolours. He left Ireland in 1762 to move to London where he soon gained recognition as a leading artist of the period. He exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain and was able to gain patronage from many leading art collectors. Barrett with other leading members left the Society in 1768 to found the Royal Academy, where he continued to exhibit until 1782. Barrett appears to have travelled extensively in England including the Lake District and the Isle of Wight, Wales, and Scotland to undertake commissions for his patrons. He suffered from asthma and this caused him to move in 1772 to Westbourne Green, at the time a country village to the west of Paddington. While he earned considerable quantities of money from his paintings, he has been described as being ‘'feckless'’ with money. He was helped in 1782 by Edmund Burke, with whom he had become friends when Burke attended Trinity College, Dublin. On Burke's recommendation he obtained the appointment of master painter of Chelsea Hospital, a post he held until his death in 1784. At the time of his death his widow and children were left destitute, but the Royal Academy granted her a pension of thirty pounds a year.
2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
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