Portrait of Hugh Lane in Spanish costume

Just as the auction season begins to gather pace, a number of dealers are currently holding exhibitions of Irish, or Irish-related, art. Among the more curious items on show at the moment is this portrait of Sir Hugh Lane, founder of Dublin's municipal Gallery of Modern Art, where the picture was temporarily displayed last winter. Showing Lane in a Spanish costume, the oil was painted by Frank Millet, an American artist who had trained in Europe and acted as an advisor to New York's Metropolitan Museum. An inscription in the sitter's hand on the back of the canvas notes that the work was presented to Lane by Millet's widow after the painter had drowned in the maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912. The portrait is now on exhibition at Jorgensen Fine Art along with examples of work by, among others, Roderic O'Conor, Rose Barton, and Mary Swanzy.

Almost directly opposite Jorgensen's on Molesworth Street, the Molesworth Gallery next Wednesday opens a show of work by Alethea Garstin (1894-1978). The daughter of Co Limerick-born Norman Garstin, with whom she shared a joint retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland in the year of her death, she was described at the time by fellow artist Patrick Heron as "the greatest surviving impressionist".

Meanwhile, the Peppercanister Gallery on Dublin's Herbert Street is also now running a spring show featuring a large number of Irish artists, such as Sir John Lavery and Harry Kernoff. Highlights here include an oil by Gerard Dillon called Boys in the Bathroom and an ink study of a woman washing the floor by Mainie Jellett.