Snap Apple Night - Daniel Maclise 1833

The original caption in the first exhibition catalogue:

There Peggy was dancing with Dan
While Maureen the lead was melting,
To prove how their fortunes ran
With the Cards ould Nancy dealt in;
There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will,
In nuts their true-love burning,
And poor Norah, though smiling still
She'd missed the snap-apple turning.
On the Festival of Hallow Eve.

In 1832 Daniel Maclise made an excursion through Oxford and the midland counties of England, before travelling to Ireland, via Holyhead. Accompanied by Crofton Croker, he arrived in Cork, where they were guests of honour at the All Hallow's Eve party which was held annually, in a large barn, by Fr. Mathew Horgan, parish priest at Blarney. Fr. Horgan (1774-1849) was well-known as an idealistic, scholarly and energetic pastor, who shared his interest in Irish language and history with Cork antiquarians John Windele and Abraham Abell. Maurice Craig records the earliest example of the Hiberno-Romanesque revival in Ireland as being the round tower built by Horgan in the churchyard at Ballygibbon, near Blarney, in 1837. Horgan also designed churches at White Church and Waterloo in the Diocese of Cloyne, as well as the former Cobh Cathedral. The evenings festivities of 1832 at Fr. Horgan's barn were to be the inspiration for a large painting entitled Snap Apple Night, which Maclise exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. Maclise's biographer, Justin O'Driscoll describes the party:

It was the invariable custom of the good priest to invite a large party on All Hallows Eve; it was a social gathering where persons of superior position in society were to be found unaffectedly mingling with the poorest peasantry of the parish. Crofton Croker and Maclise were invited to this entertainment, and whilst the young artist, charmed with the novelty of the scene, surrendered himself heart and soul to the enjoyment of the night and joined in the harmless hilarity that prevailed, he contrived to sketch every group in the barn.

Snap Apple Night or All Hallow Eve, painted by Daniel Maclise, was engraved by James Scott to his Excellency the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

Daniel Maclise was born in Cork, Ireland in 1806. He moved to London in 1827 to pursue painting. First he painted portraits and later was commissioned to paint large frescoes for the House of Lords. He illustrated several books. Maclise died in 1870.

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