Drawing Dublin

5 May – 26 August 2018
Print Gallery | Admission free

'But yet she holds my mind / With her seedy elegance, / With her gentle veils of rain / And all her ghosts that walk / And all that hide behind / Her Georgian facades.’ Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)

Dublin has famously inspired writers including Louis MacNeice, whose poem ‘Dublin’ evokes the city of the 1940s. The city and surrounding countryside has inspired many visual artists as well. This exhibition of works on paper was drawn from the Gallery’s own collection, which includes a wealth of Dublin-related images in a wide variety of media. Landscapes, figure studies and portraits were arranged in the Print Gallery’s newly refurbished display cases, depicting how Dublin was interpreted by artists over the centuries.

Centre-stage was group of magnificent large-scale watercolours by James Malton who painted the fine public buildings of the eighteenth century. Images of the people of Dublin by Walter Osborne, Sarah Purser and Michael Healy hung alongside topographical works by artists like Michael Angelo Hayes, Flora Mitchell and William Orpen, giving a real sense of Dublin as a lively and changing place, home to a diversity of citizens throughout its history.

Listen to our Drawing Dublin playlist on Spotify, featuring songs about Dublin and by Dubliners.

Curators | Anne Hodge and Niamh MacNally, National Gallery of Ireland

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