Purchased by the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College on August 12, 2020 from Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.

The Irish Parliament in Session! This unusual photograph has just reached this country. It shows the opening session of the Irish Constitutional Assembly in the Mansion House in Dublin. The Sinn Fein members occupy the chairs, while the gallery and the rear of the hall are crowded with spectators, Dublin, Ireland.

The First Dáil was Dáil Éireann. It convened from 1919 to 1921. It was the first meeting of the unicameral parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic. In the December 1918 election to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Irish Republican Party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in Ireland. In line with their manifesto, its MPs refused to take their seats, and on January 21, 1919, they founded a separate parliament in Dublin called Dáil Éireann ("Assembly of Ireland"). They declared Irish independence, ratifying the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that had been issued in the 1916 Easter Rising, and adopted a provisional constitution.

Credited in plate with typeset credit and title on label affixed to verso.

Ferrotyped prints are processed in such a way that they are shiny. The print has a sensitive surface, usually thinner, because it was put through a press while still wet.

Ferrotyped prints have a sensitive surface, usually shiny and thinner, because they are put through a press while still wet. Ferrotyping makes the surface of the photograph smoother. Light does not scatter as much on a smoother surface, so this increases contrast. That makes ferrotyped images better for press photography.

This object has the following keywords:

• Dublin
• Irish Constitutional Assembly
• Irish independence
• Mansion House Dublin
• Politicians
• Politics
• Sinn Fein
• Spectators
• World War I

This object is a member of the following portfolios: