Manet the match! Art galleries pair up to share works
A NEW artistic marriage has been born between two prestigious art galleries here and in the UK following the contentious bequest of renowned works.
A total of 39 paintings in the Hugh Lane bequest will be shared between the National Gallery in London and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin to allow the public to continue enjoying these works on a regular basis.
When Cork-born Hugh Lane perished on the Lusitania on 7 May 1915, it emerged that he had bequeathed his collection of 39 modern paintings – including works by Renoir, Manet, Mancini, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Vuillard and Degas – to the National
Gallery in London.
However, soon after his death, a codicil to the will was found in Lane’s desk at the National Gallery of Ireland, where he was director, leaving the pictures to this country instead.
They were to form the core of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, which Lane established in Dublin in 1908, and is known today as the Hugh Lane Gallery.
The codicil was signed but not witnessed and therefore was legally invalid; consequently the National Gallery in London became the owner of the works.
In the late 1950s, the now late Denis Mahon, a UK National Gallery trustee of Irish descent, undertook to find a compromise where the two institutions would share access to the paintings.
Beginning in 1993, eight great French masterpieces rotated between London and Dublin, four at a time on a six-year cycle. As part of the new ten-year partnership, the sharing and rotating of paintings will continue – but there will now be ten paintings rotating in two groups of five, for five years in each location.
Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu said this is ‘a unique cultural collaboration between our two countries and our two cities, Dublin and London’.