Irish Museum of Modern Art and Irish Whiskey!

Saturday October 5 was a mainly rainy day with a high of about 16C.  We headed down to the river Liffey near the Emigration Museum (EPIC) to see the Famine Memorial.  The Memorial consists of a number of life-size bronze figures (1997) by Rowan Gillespie, known simply as Famine.  They commemorate The Great Hunger (1845-1851).  The Memorial is located at the very point in 1846 that one of the first "coffin ships" set sail for the United States.  Steerage fare on the Perseverance was £3 and 210 passengers made the first journey, landing in New York on May 18, 1846, with luckily, all passengers and crew intact.

The figures of Famine

Dedicated by former Irish President Mary Robinson in 1997

Note the plaque from former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1999 "In memory of the victims of the Great Famine and for their descendants who have done so much to build Canada."

Small shoes

In June 2007, a second series of Famine sculptures by Rowan Gillespie was unveiled at the foot of Bathurst Street in Toronto's Ireland Park by Irish president Mary McAleese to commemorate the arrival of Famine refugees in Canada.  In 1847, over 38,000 Irish men, women and children landed on the shores where Ireland Park now stands.  Although Toronto only had 20,000 inhabitants at the time, the city welcomed the newcomers.  Unfortunately 1,100 new immigrants did not survive to make Canada their new home, with many perishing during the typhus epidemic of 1847.  The figures in Dublin represent The Departure and those in Toronto The Arrival.

We then headed across the River Liffey and stopped for a coffee at Shoe Lane Coffee.

Lots of coffee at Shoe Lane

We passed the LRT station where we will catch a tram to the Railway Station on Sunday.  A very modern system, the type that was railed against by the Ford brothers in Toronto.

Light Rail Transit (Luas) in Dublin

We decided that our first visit would be to the grounds of Trinity College, Ireland's most prestigious university, a collection of elegant Georgian and Victorian buildings.  The College was established by Elizabeth I in 1592 on land confiscated from the Augustinians in an effort to stop the brain drain of young Protestant Dubliners, who were going to continental Europe for an education and becoming "infected with popery."  Trinity went on to become one of Europe's most outstanding universities with a host of notable graduates.

For nearly two centuries students weren't allowed through the grounds without a sword- and duels with pistols were not uncommon in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Trinity was exclusively Protestant until 1793 but even when the university relented and began to admit Catholics, the Catholic Church forbade it: until 1970, any Catholic who enrolled at Trinity could consider themselves excommunicated.

The grounds of Trinity College

Statue of historian WEH Lecky (1838-1903)

Campanile erected from 1852-53.  According to superstition, students who pass under it when the bells toll, will fail their exams.

Arnaldo Pomodoro Sphere With Sphere 1982/83 

The Berkeley Library, a brutalist concrete mass with an above ground bunker feel to it is 52 years old.  It was designed by Austrian-born British architect Paul Koralek who won an international competition for the building.  It was his first major commission at age 28.  The Library opened to students in 1967.  It was received well when it opened, but has its critics.   It was named after Bishop George Berkeley, an 18th century Trinity student and philosopher.  Berkeley California is also named after Bishop Berkeley.

Outside the Berkeley Library

There was a poster celebrating 50 years of the Berkeley Library--two of the three women in the picture are smoking.  It was a nostalgic poster to me as I started U of T in 1969 just prior to the construction of the brutalist Robarts Library, which was not well received and which we all called "Fort Book."

Poster celebrating 50 years of the Berkeley Library

We wandered into another building which housed the geography and geology departments.  Not many people were around on a Saturday. 

Beautiful stairway and ceiling in the building

We passed by the Old Library which houses the Book of Kells, created in around 800 AD by monks on a remote island off the coast of Scotland who fled to Kells, County Meath after being constantly attacked by marauding Vikings.  The Book of Kells was brought to Trinity College for safekeeping in 1654.   There was a long lineup waiting in the rain to enter the library for a viewing.  Apparently, only two pages of the book are available to see.  We had already decided to skip a visit here.

Lineup outside the Old Library

Statue in Library Square

Outside the Arts and Science building

Hall of Honour- 1937 Reading Room

We then walked for about 30 minutes through a part of Dublin we hadn't seen yet to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).   IMMA is housed in the old Royal Hospital Kilmainham, designed by Sir William Robinson and built between 1684 and 1687 as a retirement home for soldiers.  It fulfilled this role until 1928, after which it languished for nearly 50 years until a 1980s restoration turned it into the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

After Irish independence, it ended up as a storage facility for the National Museum of Ireland.  The restoration began in 1984 and it opened in 1991.  There was another major restoration between
2012-13.

Walking through the gates to IMMA

Entrance to the museum

The main purpose of our visit was to see the temporary exhibit entitled Life above Everything: Lucian Freud and Jack B. Yeats.  The Exhibit is part of the Freud Project 2016-21, a major five-year initiative for IMMA, where 52 works by painter Lucian Freud (1922-2011) are on loan by private lenders to the museum's collection.  During the project, IMMA will present a series of Freud -related exhibitions each year.  Freud's relationship to Ireland is one of the key interests of the Freud Project.

The exhibit takes place in a separate small building called the Freud Centre.

Freud Centre building

Signage outside building for the exhibit

The present exhibit is the fourth exhibit to be presented as part of the series.  The exhibit explored Freud's work alongside fellow painter Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957), whom he deeply admired.  Freud had a common purpose with Yeat's originality and independence and his sense of the connection between painting and life.  A pen and ink drawing by Yeats, The Dancing Stevedores (c.1900), hung on the wall beside Freud's bed for over 20 years.

The exhibit also explores Freud's connections to Dublin and Connemara in the 1940s and 1950s as well as Yeats's connections to Britain.  The galleries focused on some of their common interests including dogs and horses; double-figure paintings; realism and changes in painting styles.   Unfortunately, photos could not be taken, but I found some images from the exhibit on the Internet (see below).

It was a fantastic exhibit, especially since we had already seen a number Jack Yeats's paintings at the National Gallery and the Hugh Lane Gallery.

Yeats- Two Travellers 1942

Freud- Double Portrait 1985-86

Yeats- From the Tram Top 1927 (features Yeats himself)

Yeats- People in a Street (1936)

Yeats- Portrait Figure of an Irish Gentleman  1900-10

Freud-Girl with Roses

Freud- Girl with Beret (1951-52). It was only recently discovered that the sitter was Irish actor Helena Hughes, one of the actors at The Gate Theatre in Dublin that went on to a career in London in film and Theatre in the 1950s.

We took the tram back into the city centre and stopped for an Irish Whiskey at The Dingle Whiskey Bar, which had a lengthy list of both Irish and Scottish whiskeys.  The bartender made a couple of suggestions and we had two of the Irish single pot still classics-  I had Redbreast and Ailín had Green Spot.  Both were delicious.  It was nice to get out of the rain and warm up with the whiskey.

Our whiskey being poured at the bar-- Green Spot and Redbreast

It was a lovely cozy bar

Sláinte! (Cheers)

After our whiskey, we headed across the river and had dinner at Le Bon Crubeen, an Irish twist on French cuisine.  I had mussels and frites and Ailín had Chicken Supreme.  A glass of the local Five Lamps beer worked well with the meal, especially since our apartment is one minute from the historic  Five Lamps.