LOVERS OF ART all over Ireland are indebted to Brian de Breffny (1931-1989) for launching the Irish Arts Review in 1984—the 20th anniversary of which event we celebrate with this Special Edition. Brian de Breffny was one of life’s exotic flowers whose fate wafted him back to his roots in later life. ‘Of fabled background’ as his friend Ciaran MacGonigal wrote in the Summer 2002 edition of the IAR, ‘he rather cultivated the air of mystery as to his lineage and he enjoyed the slight notoriety which accompanied his lifestyle’. Whatever about that, and his taste for living life to the full, he was a prodigious worker and during the 1970s he produced several books on art and architecture in Ireland including The Houses of Ireland (1973), The Churches and Abbeys of Ireland ( 1976) and Castles of Ireland (1977). In 1983, Brian edited A Cultural Encyclopaedia of Ireland for Thames and Hudson and according to Ann Reihill, who was his publisher from the start of the Review, it was this experience that led him to think of launching the Irish Arts Review. It has to be said that it was a brave initiative in those years before anyone had even imagined the possibility of a Celtic Tiger but he was encouraged from the start by such editorial advisors as Margaret Downes, Brian Ferran, Philip Hewat-Japoor, Gordon Lambert and Ciaran MacGonigal. The new publication was to be called the Irish Connoisseur but legal objections from the UK-based periodical The Connoisseur forced the last-minute change to the Irish Arts Review with the subtitle ‘An International Quarterly Magazine for Connoisseurs’. This sub-title goes some way towards explaining the quixotic front cover of the first edition which told more about the personal tastes of the editor than the likely content of the new Review. Typically, Brian chose to feature on the front cover a portrait of the Elizabethan adventurer, Captain Thomas Lee, by Marcus Gheeraedts the Younger (1561-1635) which is in the collection of the Tate Gallery in London. Painted by a Dutchman, the subject being an Englishman and the picture itself not even being in this country, the portrait, however eye-catching, was an unlikely introduction to a new Review of Irish Arts. But by the second edition, more localised and less exotic tastes had prevailed and the pattern for the future was set with front covers for the rest of that year featuring Patrick Scott’s tapestries, John Lavery’s portraits and the story of the Beit collection in Russborough. These quarterly editions continued through to the end of 1987 but the strain was showing on several fronts and not least on Brian’s health. At the end of that year, it was decided to reduce to annual production and GPA, then controlled by Tony Ryan, came in as principal sponsors for the first 260-page Yearbook which was published in November 1988. This was a particularly memorable edition of the IAR and it set the pattern for the following fourteen years but it was also the last published during Brian’s lifetime. He died on 11 February 1989 and is buried at Castletown Cox, the magnificent mansion on the Kilkenny/Waterford border on whose restoration he was working right up to the end. Happily, Ann Reihill provided the continuing link until the appointment in 1989 of Alistair Smith as editor. At first Smith considered broadening the scope of the Review and concentrating more on the art of other countries and events abroad. But he soon came to the conclusion, like de Breffny before him, that ‘the vigour of artistic practice and the intensity of artistic debate in Ireland is such that the Yearbook could best serve its public by focusing ever more tightly on Ireland’. He also published the first statement of editorial policy that had appeared in the IAR since its foundation. In part he wrote ‘the IAR would not be restricted by the confines of any doctrine, whether traditionalist or modernist, and undertakes to publish on both ancient and modern art, both religious and secular, on architecture and the crafts, and on art administration and politics. It is our policy to bring to our readers the best studies on Irish art and art events taking place in Ireland and to publish also the work of Irish scholars who may have extended their interest to the visual arts of other countries. Thereby we seek to reflect and document the enthralling diversity of the artistic spirit of Ireland and the Irish’. That policy continues to this day. In practice, Alistair Smith brought the IAR into the contemporary mainstream with articles on the newly-opened Museum of Modern Art at Kilmainham, the conduct of the Arts Council and the work of contemporary painters like Louis le Brocquy, Hughie O’Donoghue, Sean Scully and others and introduced reviews of the art year in Ireland. In a particularly impressive edition in 1993, he placed much emphasis on Jack B Yeats with special articles by Hilary Pyle, Brian P Kennedy and Homan Potterton. But after the1994 edition he retired to take up an appointment as director of the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester and was succeeded by Homan Potterton, the former director of the National Gallery of Ireland. At the same time, the very distinctive design for the Review was conceived by John Power who continues to design the Review, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, from his home in France! There now commenced an eight year period under Homan Potterton’s direction during which a steady stream of well researched and beautifully illustrated articles appeared annually in the Irish Arts Review. The new editor developed a stable of regular contributors including Julian Campbell, Nicola Gordon Bowe, Peter Harbison, Seán O’Reilly, Maurice Craig, Jane Fenlon, Peter Murray, Roger Stalley, S B Kennedy, Peter Lamb, Mairead Dunleavy, Michael McCarthy and many others, all experts in their own field, who together built up an invaluable corpus of work in the Review—a full index to which is now available on www.irishartsreview.com. In the spring of 2002, Homan retired and the undersigned decided to revert to the original quarterly production—a move that has been generally welcomed by readers while certainly increasing the impact of the Review in the area of visual arts and design in Ireland today. Over the past 20 years, there have been enormous changes in the arts in Ireland. There are many, many more artists at work and their work is more widely appreciated and rewarded. The substantial increase in patronage for the arts from the state, from the corporate sector and from private individuals has transformed the conditions for promising artistic talent in this country. And that same increase in patronage has enabled the Irish Arts Review (where the AIB has now followed Glen Dimplex as principal sponsor) to record many of the wondrous achievements of those working in the visual arts today, in a medium that is worthy of the art itself. The initiative taken by Brian de Breffny twenty years ago resulted in the creation of a unique forum for the presentation of the very best of Irish art, design and heritage. We hope to carry on the essence of his inspiration for the next twenty years, at least. John Mulcahy is the Editor of the Irish Arts Review