Irish Arts Review, Summer 2002
At his recent retrospective in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, most of Pat Scott’s paintings were on show, but only a few of his tapestries were exhibited. Peter Lamb redresses the balance
‘Salve’, an exhibition of new work by Dorothy Cross in the Kerlin Gallery on 29 May. It suggests, says Isabel Nolan, that we are caught between states, physical and mental, between self and other, ‘between what we know, don’t know and can imagine’.
Writer, conservationist, collector and founder of Irish Arts Review, Brian de Breffny was a remarkable champion of Ireland’s cultural heritage. Ann Reihill remembers the man behind the journal and the extraordinary restoration of Castletown Cox
A desire for simplification and concentration inspired Munich-based James O’Connor to embark on his latest collection of work, an exhibition of which opens at the Taylor Galleries on 6 June
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The Per Cent for Art Scheme has been operating since 1986 but the general public seems to know little about it. This state-run programme disburses funds for public art projects and the evidence is there for all to see. Although it has not yet produced a talking point on the scale of Anthony Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’, Con Power discovers that the signs are promising
Lar Boland’s photos of ‘The Hill’, Dublin’s grubbiest flea market, evoke echoes of the grim twilight world of Monto’s slum tenements, deprivation, shebeens, and prostitution for Alan Murdoch
The Smurfit Art Collection spans three continents and contains some of the best 20th-century Irish art. Ciaran MacGonical reviews a new catalogue of the collection
Almost three hundred years after the construction of TCD’s first great library, the new Ussher Library is ready to open. Raymund Ryan finds that Trinity College ‘has balanced the maintenance of its inheritance and progressive architectural patronage with aplomb’
What strange twist of fate brought Nat Hone and Sobeslav Pinkas together in 1857 to paint the same shepherdess near Fontainebleau? Julian Campbell offers an explanation
Paul Caffrey charts the extraordinary life and travels of Irish man John Ramage, 18th-century miniaturist, goldsmith, pastellist, socialite and bigamist, whose portrait of George Washington was sold last year in New York for $1.1 million
Did Edward Glew’s painting of the colourful but notorious Donnybrook Fair borrow too much from Samuel Watson’s earlier study of the same subject? Brendan Rooney certainly thinks so
Jeremy Ulick Browne, the 11th Marquess of Sligo, recently transferred to the National Library the 400-year-old collection of family papers which numbered over 20,000 documents. Here the writer, Anne Chambers, some of whose novels are based on the papers, tells the story of this most unusual West of Ireland family and the documents that recorded their life in Westport since Elizabethan times
The National Library of Ireland recently acquired an album of thirty-six watercolours and prints made by James Cavanah Murphy in Portugal between 1789 and 1790. Michael McCarthy recalls the career and travels of this unusual draughtsman
Mary Cahill, Assistant Keeper of the National Museum of Ireland, Attributes Exceptional Importance to the Recent Discovery of Three Gold Ribbon Torcs at Dooyork on the Shores of Blacksod Bay in County Mayo
In 1801, Valentine Lawless, the 2nd Lord Cloncurry, was released from the Tower of London and started furnishing his new mansion in Kildare. Two hundred and one years later, as Peter Pearson recounts, Lyons House has been awarded the Europa Nostra Heritage Award in recognition of its glorious recreation by Dr Tony Ryan
Le Brocquy’s early masterpiece acquired by National Gallery by Medb Ruane
