The contents of Ireland’s greatest country house have been assiduously catalogued in a new publication, but what of the unique pastels by Robert Healy that captured the Conollys at leisure, asks John Mulcahy.
The history of the almost 300-year-old Castletown House at Celbridge, Co Kildare, the most important 18th-century mansion in Ireland, is well documented. Built by ‘Speaker’ William Conolly between 1719 and 1729 to designs by Alessandro Galilei, the work was executed by the Irish architect Edward Lovett Pearce. The property continued in the Conolly family until the 1960s when it was briefly acquired by a Major Wilson and soon thereafter by Desmond Guinness. In 1979 it was transferred to the Castletown Foundation and in 1994 it was acquired for the State by the OPW.
Stephanie McBride examines the startling imagery of Richard Mosse who has made infrared film his signature medium
From a rural setting in County Antrim, Basil Blackshaw has contributed a new chapter to the story of Irish art, writes Brian Fallon as the retrospective at the F E McWilliam Gallery marking Blackshaw’s 80th birthday continues.
Frederick O’Dwyer follows the evidence to unearth the design sources for Dublin Airport’s original terminal at Collinstown