The genius of George Petrie is perhaps obscured by having been dispersed over so many fields, Painter, antiquarian, historian, scholar, academician, archaeologist, musicologist: in each of these areas we encounter his achievements. 

Petrie, more than any other single individual in the 19th century, traced the cultural profile by which Ireland is still identified today, dominating the newly emergent field of Irish studies in tje fist half of that century.