Ireland day 0492. Thursday 02 February 2023- Hugh Lane *

Ireland day 0492. Thursday 02 February 2023- Hugh Lane

Today’s summary	Val had a day off so we went into Dublin to visit the Hugh Lane gallery. A very enjoyable visit, especially interesting to see the Francis Bacon collection. Had chicken casserole again for dinner
Today’s weather	Dry with some brighter intervals but also plenty of drizzle. Strong westerly wind. Appx 10C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

Val had a day off today so we decided to go in to Dublin to seek out somewhere new to visit. So we chose the Hugh Lane art gallery on Parnell Square north. It was a beautiful gallery and we really enjoyed looking round (and getting refreshments in the café).

It houses the studio of Irish-born artist Francis Bacon, transported from London to Dublin after he died. It’s interesting but his art doesn’t really appeal to me. There were artworks by Monet, Constable and Rodin, which were more up my street. And the gallery is worth visiting just to see the interior design, which is outstanding.

Hugh Lane (a person not a place) was an art dealer born in Ireland who lived mostly in the UK. When he died there was confusion over his will – it was thought that he had left his collection to the National Gallery in London but it turned out that actually he had meant them to be shown in Dublin. The artworks were eventually moved to Ireland in 1959, 34 years after his death.

After having a good look round, we got the Dundalk train back to Malahide and enjoyed more chicken casserole for dinner.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


An explanation of the street art in the featured image at the top of this blog. It’s at the top of O’Connell Street and is supported by the Hugh Lane gallery which we visited today. The drawing on the wall of the building to the right is made up of 5000 burnt out matchsticks, each supposed to represent a person who lost their life in the Covid pandemic	There’s a nice café in the basement of the gallery with an outside space which would be really pleasant in the summer

In one of the main halls in the gallery. The small black sculpture at the right is a Rodin bronze	“Honolulu Garden” by Irish landscape artist Mary Swanzy. It reminds me of a very happy visit we made to these gardens in 2018

The gallery from the outside. It’s a fine building	The Memorial Gardens are right opposite the gallery

Here we are this afternoon