Irish HistoryTo mark the 150th year of the founding of the National Gallery by Act of Parliament in 1854, the board commissioned this engaging and important book. It is a judiciously illustrated and clearly written narrative. It does not concern itself with theories of what a museum might be or with issues of colonialism or national identity, but it provides much material for those who do.
The author begins with the actual opening day, January 30th, 1864. His evocation of the scene where the elderly bachelor Earl of Carlisle unveiled Farrell's statue of the gallery's great patron, railway magnate William Dargan, indicates that this institutional history is going to make congenial reading. Queen Victoria's visit many years earlier to Dargan at his residence, Mount Anville, was noted in newspapers as the "first by a British sovereign to a commoner". We are guided as if visiting the gallery on that first day, past the then much-prized plaster-casts and the four sculptures, which included a bust of the recently deceased Catholic archbishop of Dublin. His portrait was the only purchase of an Irish picture at the time.
The book is structured around the achievements and acquisitions of the 12 directors and their boards, preceded by a survey of the fine arts in Ireland before the Act and a vivid account of the preparations to open. There is close comment on the architecture. Likenesses of people can take on an added interest when contextualised. Horace Hone's miniature of the fourth Duke of Rutland, for example, takes on a poignancy with the account of this lord lieutenant's ambitions for a public gallery, his generosity to the poor and his early death. Alas, "only a trickle of paintings and pieces of sculpture bought by wealthy Irishmen on the Grand Tour would find their way into the NGI".
The salary of the NGI's first director, George Francis Mulvany, (£300 per annum) is compared with that of the director of the National Gallery in London (£1,000 per annum), which had a purchase budget of £10,000. In Dublin, the allocated purchase grant of £1,000 was unchanged until 1938. Disappointment that the next two directors were not Irish was voiced. But Henry Doyle bought Irish pictures and Sir Richard Wallace (of Wallace Collection fame) gave The Marriage of Aoife and Strongbow during his directorship. The author quotes from the wonderful letters of Lord Powerscourt, a board member for 40 years, who often accompanied Doyle on acquisition trips. Powerscourt's donations included his portrait by Sarah Purser. She was on the board for a mere 27 years.
We read of the situations of less powerful mortals. Under the directorship of Sir Walter Armstrong, whose beautiful portrait by his friend, Walter Osborne, is illustrated, we read of the trials of the 85-year-old retiring registrar. He had only one week's holiday in his 21 years of service. The great Strickland became registrar. Later registrars included men of letters such as James Stephens - whose closure of the gallery during the 1916 Rising possibly saved it from the destruction suffered by the RHA premises - and Brinsley MacNamara.
Among the paintings art dealer Hugh Lane gave during his directorship, the El Greco St Francis was said to be a likeness of Lane himself. The famous codicil to his will was locked in his desk before he set off for the US to deal. Just before sailing he made a crucial sale in New York; had he made it sooner, he might not have undertaken that fatal voyage on the Lusitania.
An eminent picture dealer based in London, director Capt Langton Douglas had dyed his hair and deducted 10 years from his age in order to fight in the war. The board required him to select from paintings of Lane's in the gallery. He selected 41, but argued that the terms of Lane's will were not being complied with. The board, on which future director Bodkin sat, was not happy with Douglas's practice of selling his own pictures to the gallery. Bodkin wrote in a letter that W.B. Yeats, also a board member, "had no real understanding of the mentality of our race . . . He handled the Lane controversy on . . . provocative lines. Otherwise the Lane pictures might now be in Dublin".
Apart from the opening months, attendances had been poor, but during the Eucharistic Congress in June 1932, 4,000 people attended. Commenting on his love for the gallery to which he was so generous, George Bernard Shaw wrote: "I believe I am the only Irishman who has seen it, except the officials." Bodkin encouraged visitors and could, like James White, be regarded as an exponent of the "access and opportunity" school of thought.
It was the policy of the board to buy works only by dead artists. Jack Yeats was still alive when Bachelor's Walk - In Memory, Communication with Prisoners and The Funeral of Harry Boland were offered to the gallery, with the government willing to pay £2,000 of the purchase price of £2,700. The board stuck to its policy. The losses are nicely documented in this well-researched book.
The 1968 extension, the creation of the restoration department, a restaurant and special exhibitions indicate progress. By coincidence, two of the greatest gifts - the Milltown in 1902 and the Beit in 1987 - came from one house, Russborough. An impressive trend in the publication of catalogues was set by director Homan Potterton. The 20th-century paintings he acquired created a precedent for the 1987 bequest of Máire MacNeill Sweeney, which included a Picasso.
Lottery and EU money became available for the Millennium Wing, supervised by present director Raymond Keaveney. The Jesuits lent their newly discovered Caravaggio; Sir Denis Mahon gave fine baroque works; and the Consolidated Taxes Act, which enabled donors to set off the value of artworks worth more than £75,000, facilitated acquisitions in an increasingly costly art market. If the spaces for artworks in the Millennium Wing seem disproportionately small to this citizen, there is no doubt the author is justified in finishing 1854-2004 The Story of the National Gallery on a high note.
Vera Ryan teaches history of art at the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork. Her book, Movers and Shapers: Irish Art Since 1960, was published by Collins Press in 2003. Volume two is due out at the end of the year
1854-2004: The Story of the National Gallery of Ireland By Peter Somerville-Large The National Gallery of Ireland, 477pp. €49.95