Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin Writers Museum and more Theatre

Friday October 4 started with a bit of rain, but the sun came out and it was a very nice 16C.

We decided to stay on our side of the River (North of the Liffey).  We headed out to the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane on Parnell Square.  We are about one minute from the Five Lamps, a historical landmark that is situated at a junction between five streets in Dublin's North Inner City.  It has five lanterns.  It was constructed around 1880 to commemorate General Henry Hall from Galway, who served in the British Army in India.  It originally had water fountains with basins and cups so that the locals could have a drink.  In May 1941, the German Luftwaffe dropped four bombs by mistake in the area killing approximately 30 people and injuring 90.  Three hundred houses were also destroyed, but the Five Lamps survived the bombing.

The Five Lamps

We walked along Sean Macdermott Street and passed a memorial plaque in honour of Macdermott, another victim of the 1916 Easter Rising.

We stopped at One Society for an excellent coffee and avocado toast.

Ailín with a Huskee coffee cup we brought from Toronto

On our way to the Gallery, we passed The Gate Theatre on the lower part of Parnell Square.  We noted that The Beacon, part of the Dublin Theatre festival was playing there.  We decided to get tickets for that evening.  The Gate Theatre was founded in 1928.  It was at the Gate that Orson Welles, James Mason, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Micael Gambon began their acting careers.  The first ever Beckett Festival was produced there, featuring all 19 of the stage plays over three weeks.

The Gate Theatre- lots of history

We walked up the street to the Garden of Remembrance which opened in 1966.

Entrance to the Garden of Remembrance- Dedicated to "All those who gave their lives to the cause of Irish Freedom". 

The Garden commemorates freedom fighters from various uprisings in 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867, 1916 and the 1919-21 Irish War of Independence.  The location of the Garden is where the Irish Volunteers were founded in 1913 and where several leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were held overnight before being taken to Kilmainham Goal.  The focal point of the Garden is a statue of the Children of Lir by Oisín Kelly which was added in 1971.   Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath in the Garden during her historic visit of 2011.  The widow and daughter of the garden's designer Dáithí Hanly also attended the ceremony.

Statue in the Garden

Pool in the shape of a cross

We then walked to the north side of Parnell Square to visit the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane.  The Hugh Lane Gallery is located in Charlemont House, which was designed in 1763 for the first Earl of Charlemont.  It was refurbished and extended to house the Gallery in 1933.

Hugh Lane was born in Cork in 1875 and is best-known for establishing Hugh Lane Gallery, formerly known as the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in 1908, the first known public gallery of modern art in the world.  He persuaded many leading artists of the day to donate examples of their work. He also personally financed many acquisitions.  The gallery opened in temporary premises in 1908 and found its permanent home in 1933.  Lane did not live to see his Gallery permanently located to Charlemont House, as he died in the sinking of the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat on May 7, 1915 during WWI.  

Hugh Lane Gallery houses an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary Irish and international art.  The gallery's original collection was presented by Hugh Lane in1908 and has since been enhanced by a number of acquisitions, including Francis Bacon's studio.

Outside of the Museum

In 1901, Hugh Lane saw an exhibit of paintings by John Butler Yeats (the father of the poet William Butler Yeats).  It prompted him to start a campaign to establish a Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.  As part of the project, Hugh Lane commissioned John Butler Years to paint portraits of notable Irish men and women and these works are now part of the collection of the Gallery.  The collection is superb and is found in a room dedicated to portraits.

Most of the portraits below are by John Butler Years (1839-1922), except where noted.

William Butler Yeats- c. 1886 (the son of John Butler Yeats)

Portrait of Hugh Lane 1906

Walt Kuhn (1877-1949) Portrait of John Butler Yeats RHA 1927

Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) Lady Gregory 1906

Sarah Cecilia Harrison (1863-1941) Francis Sheehy Skeffington 1916 (Skeffington was a socialist, pacifist and feminist who added his wife's surname Sheehy to his own.  He didn't agree with the violence that took place during Easter week in 1916.  Despite this, he was detained by Captain Bowen-Colthurst on suspicion of being a rebel ringleader and was shot on his orders.

My Daughter c 1877 (Lily was one of the two daughters in the talented Yeats family)

We then visited Francis Bacon's (1909-1992) studio which features the artist's 7 Reece Mews studio that was relocated from London to Dublin.  It had been Bacon's studio from 1961 until his death in 1992.  There was a room featuring a number of unfinished paintings that were found in his studio.

Seated Figure and Carpet - one of six unfinished painting - c. 1966

Three Figures c. 1982

Self-Portrait 1991-92 (found on his easel on his death)

The Studio recreated

The studio as it was in 1992

There was also a room dedicated to the work of Sean Scully, an important Dublin-born abstract painter, who donated a number of painting in celebration of the opening of the new wing of the Gallery in 2006.  A new work was recently donated in 2018

Landline Gray donated in 2018

Wall of Light Orange Yellow 2000

The Gallery also contained a small but superb collection of Impressionist and other 19th and 20th century paintings.

Francis Bacon- Kneeling Figure Back View 1982

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) Eva Gonzalès 1870

Claude Monet (1840-1927) Waterloo Bridge, Overcast Weather 1900

Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) At the Seaside 1867

August Rodin (1840-1877) The Age of Bronze

Finally, there was a Stained Glass Room which contains a number of windows by Harry Clarke, including a piece The Eve of St. Agnes, inspired by the poem of the same name by John Keats.

Mr. Gilhooley by Liam O'Flaherty for the Geneva Window, 1929 (detail)

From the Eve of St. Agnes

There was also a bust by Seamus Murphy (1907-75) of Michael Collins in the main foyer.

Seamus Murphy- Michael Collins 1949

We passed a number of Sinn Féin bookstores in the neighbourhood.  One had a memorial T-shirt to Bobby Sands, who died after the notorious hunger strike in 1981.

We walked around the neighbourhood taking a few photos with the Spire in the background.

Spire

Selfie, of course

We then headed back to Parnell Square to the Dublin Writers Museum, located just a few buildings away from the Huge Lane Gallery.  

Outside of the Dublin Writers Museum

The Museum was established to promote interest, through its collection and displays, in Irish literature and the lives and works of individual Irish writers.  The Museum focuses on the literary heritage left by writers of the past.  There is an Irish Writers' Centre next door which promotes contemporary Irish writers.

The first owner of the house where the Museum is located was Lord Farnham who lived there in 1780.  The house was sold to a Dublin merchant.  One of the later owners was George Jameson, a member of the distilling firm.  He had the building altered and redecorated between 1891-95.  The stained glass windows were installed and the salon on the second floor was created.  In 1914, Jameson left the house and the building was taken over by the City of Dublin Vocational School.  A large rear annex was added in the 1940s.  In 1985, at the initiative of Dublin Tourism, it was proposed to accommodate the Dublin Writers Museum at this location.  The Museum opened in November 1991.

There are 21 very detailed displays dealing with the history of Irish poets and writers.  One room deals with the roots of Irish poetry and storytelling and the emergence of Swift, Goldsmith and Sheridan as Irish writers with international status.  A larger room deals with the giants of the 20th century.  From Yeats and Synge and the foundation of the Abbey Theatre near the turn of the century, we move to the Easter Rising of 1916 and to 1922, the year of Irish independence and the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses, a signed copy of which is on display.  The Museum also addresses the strict censorship in the new state.  Several of the writers displayed including Kate O' Brien and Sean
O' Faolain.

Jonathan Swift

Bust of Oscar Wilde

Write up about Oscar Wilde

Poem by William Butler Yeats- Easter, 1916

William Butler Yeats

Old Abbey Theatre program- the bottom line notes that ladies should remove their hats

There were displays of correspondence, pictures and other artefacts of the writers displayed in the Museum.

Main room of Museum

Brendan Behan's memorabilia

Samual Beckett's specially designed telephone from his apartment in Paris, where he could block incoming calls by pushing the red button

Upstairs was a beautifully decorated Gallery of Writers.  There is an open area for lectures and there was a partial display dealing with Irish women writers, who have often been neglected.

Doors of the upstairs Gallery

Beautiful stained glass windows- Music and Art

Dublin has been designated a UNESCO City of Literature and it is easy to see why.  While the displays could be a bit more contemporary, the Dublin Writers Museum was well worth the visit to see the breath and scope of Ireland's literary history.

We walked down to the General Post Office (GPO). It was one of the last Georgian buildings built in the city and it opened in January 1818.

Outside of the General Post Office

During the Easter Rising of 1916, it served as the headquarters of the uprising's leaders.  On April 24, 1961, Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the uprising, read out the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside the GPO.  The building was destroyed by fire in the course of the rebellion, save for the granite facade, and was not rebuilt until 1929, by the Irish Free State government.  The building remains a symbol of Irish nationalism.

Inside the GPO

Plaque about Patrick Pearse and the Proclamation

We walked down to the foot of the Spire, before heading back up to Parnell Square.

At the bottom of the Spire

We stopped to pick up some donuts for a late dessert after the play.  They had a few vegan donuts as well as the usual suspects.

Picking up donuts for dessert

We had dinner at Kingfisher.  Ailín and I both had excellent fish and chips.  We were hungry, so forgot to take pictures.  The place was buzzing as people tend to eat early in Dublin.

Kingfisher Restaurant - "Dublin's Best Fish and Chips."

Inside the restaurant

There was a commemorative display with a famous picture of Patrick Pearse (1879-1916), one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, surrendering to General Lowe in front of the building on Parnell Street that is now the Kingfisher restaurant.  He was an Irish teacher, barrister, poet, and writer.

The play started at 7:30 p.m.   The set for The Beacon was fabulous with a glass sliding door with grasses outside and a troupe l'oeil sea view.  The setting was an island off the west coast of Ireland.  The main character was a painter, Beive, who had decided to replace the external walls of the family holiday home with huge windowpanes.  She had been rumoured to have murdered her ex-husband, who disappeared 10 years earlier at sea.  Her estranged son, Colm, who had long squirmed under her candidly feminist exhibitions and his new, younger wife Bonnie, a former art student, were paying an unannounced visit.  There is a neighbour, Donal, who is helping with the renovation, and whom had long been in love with Colm.  The play deals with a number of family mysteries, issues of conflicted sexuality and the riddles of human nature.  While a psychological thriller, dealing with long hidden secrets finally dredged up, the play grapples with the issue of what people conceal or reveal, even about themselves.

Stage set with large abstract canvas at centre stage

It was an excellent production.  We are so glad we are in town for the Dublin Theatre Festival.

We walked back to the apartment and passed a Bram Stoker Dracula painting on a wall.

The Five Lamps were lit in a beautiful blue colour--a great landmark for our apartment.

The Five Lamps at night

A very full day in Dublin.