Picturing the Past
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| The Discovery of the Potato Blight, Daniel McDonald |
This painting, painted in a Romantic style, showcases the devastation of an Irish family who have just discovered that their potato crops have the blight. The blight, a fungus that completely ruins this essential crop, is literally a death sentence to this family who depend on the potato to survive. Ireland's recent population explosion due to the cultivation of the potato turns out to be a death sentence when this horrible disease shows up. An Irishman would live almost entirely from this crop and its failure was a sentence worse than death; it lead the family to slowly starve and be taken by the many epidemics sweeping the country. The countries greatest gift turned on them without a second thought, and an entire nation nearly starved to death.
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