International studio (56.1915)

Studio-Talk


DUBLIN.—The death of Sir Hugh Lane
has deprived Ireland of the greatest of
her benefactors in the world of art.
For many years past he had worked
assiduously through good and ill report to further
the appreciation of art in Ireland and the develop-
ment of the Irish school of painting. The Dublin
Municipal Gallery of Modern Art owes its existence
to his generosity and his enthusiasm, and many
Irish painters have found, through him, recognition
and fame.

In this Municipal Gallery over one hundred
pictures, drawings, and pieces of sculpture testify
to Sir Hugh Lane’s insatiable generosity. The
removal of his loan collection some two years ago,
owing to the failure of the scheme for a new
Gallery building, will be fresh in the public mind.

This conditional gift consisted of some eighty works
of art, including several important examples of
Manet, Renoir, and other Impressionist painters.
It is the earnest hope of all lovers of art in
Ireland that Sir Hugh Lane’s dream of a new
Gallery for the collection he initiated in Dublin
may yet be realised, and that the pictures which he
intended to be its chiefest ornament may yet find
their home there.

Since the publication of the 1908 catalogue, now
out of print, some forty or fifty additions have
been • made to the Municipal Gallery collection.
To mention but a few, there are (amongst the
pictures of foreign schools) Daubigny’s beautiful
landscape, Un coup de Vent-, M. Maurice Wage-
man’s seascape, Sur la Plage, and Boldini’s brilliant
Portrait of a Lady. Amongst the English ad-
ditions are a fine landscape and a
portrait, The Blue Girl, by Mr.
Wilson Steer; Mr. Orpen’s
splendid portrait of Mr. Birrell;
Mr. Brangwyn’s masterly piece of
decoration, Mars and Venus-,
Prof. Brown’s landscape, The
Severn Valley ; Mr. Gerald Festus
Kelly’s portrait of a girl in a red
dress, At the Stage Door -, Mr. W.
Russell’s clever interior, The
Barber’s Shop; Mr. Lavery’s at-
tractive open-air portrait of his
wife painting; and Miss S. C.
Harrison’s dignified portrait of
Mr. and Mrs. Haslam. The
additions to the sculpture in this
Gallery include Rodin’s portrait
bust of Mr. George Bernard
Shaw; a bust of Lady Gregory
by Jacob Epstein; of Tolstoi by
N. Aronsen ; and of the late
Captain Shawe-Taylor by Mr.
Derwent Wood.

PORTRAIT-BUST

BY E. CALDWELL SPRUCE
(See Leeds Stnaio-Talk, p. 279)

A little over a year ago, on the
retirement of Sir Walter Arm-
strong, Sir Hugh Lane was ap-
pointed Director of the National
Gallery of Ireland, and in the
short twelve months of his direc-
torate he presented thirteen im-
portant pictures to the collection
which he had previously enriched
by several important gifts. The
later additions which this Gallery
281