Margarita Cappock selects Mansion I by Eithne Jordan from the collection of Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane
In 2013 the Hugh Lane Gallery acquired Eithne Jordan’s large-scale painting, Mansion I. This painting featured in Jordan’s solo exhibition ‘Street’, a series of paintings of Dublin, at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2012. The mansion in question is a derelict, monumental 18th-century building, Aldborough House, on Portland Row in Dublin’s North inner city. Built in 1796, it is the second biggest Georgian residence in Dublin, surpassed only by Leinster House. The house has a dominant, oppressive appearance with its three-storey central block flanked by quadrants, which lead to pavilions. Its eerie appearance betrays its sad past as its first owner Edward Augustus Stratford, the 2nd Earl of Aldborough, died within three years of its completion, his widow Lady Aldborough died eighteen months later.
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.