Antique & Vintage Postcards

Suffused with the warm rose and violet tones of an Irish twilight, this Raphael Tuck & Sons "Oilette" card renders the isle of Dinis amid the lakes of Killarney in a sweeping panoramic composition worthy of its Wordsworth epigraph — "Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar, / Heard by calm lakes." A lone white sail drifts across still water beneath a haze of pink-tinged mountains; autumnal trees frame the foreground, birds wheel overhead, and the entire scene breathes the melancholy beauty that made Killarney the most romanticised landscape in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland. The card is number 9745 from Tuck's "Killarney" Oilette Plate-Marked series, unused, with the full back text describing Dinis as "an ideal spot wherein to realise the beauty and charm of Ireland's lake district." A pencilled "$2.00" dealer price is visible on the back — a relic of this card's collecting history.