Conleth Manning considers the evidence for authorship of some missing watercolours
In the summer edition of the Irish Arts Review, 2010, this author wrote about an incomplete album of watercolours of Irish round towers, which was bought at auction in Dublin in the 1950s by a Mr Thomas Healy and subsequently sold to an unknown buyer in the USA. Before they were sold, Mr Healy’s cousins Paddy and Peter Healy documentedand took colour slides of the watercolours and these are now in the Photographic Archive of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The collection is of particular interest from an archaeological point of view because generally the towers and adjacent buildings are depicted with uncommon accuracy and attention to detail. The collection consisted of forty-three watercolours and one pencil drawing, all with individual auction nun1bers. Some pictures of towers missing from the collection must have been sold separately and then the remainder sold to Mr Healy as a job lot. Those sold individually are possibly still in private ownership in Ireland, while the ultimate fate of the remainder is unknown. Are they still together in some collection in the USA or were they sold individually there?
As Europe confronts its current refugee crisis, Kathryn Milligan looks back to 1916 when a Belgian artist was one of the 2,300 Belgian refugees who sought shelter in Ireland.
Peter Murray reflects on the cool Nordic aesthetic of Patricia Burns whose work is on view in January at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
Recent excavations at Rathfarnham Castle have brought the former inhabitants into focus, prompting Simon Loftus to recall some vivid episodes from the family’s history.