| Commisioned in
1763. Charlemont House opened as the permanent location
of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in
1933 |
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| Hugh Lane Gallery foyer interior |
Bacon's studio |
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Hugh Lane Gallery, Charlemont House,
Parnell Square North
Located
on Dublin's Northside in the city center, the Hugh Lane
Gallery houses one of Ireland's foremost collections of
modern and contemporary art.
The original
collection, donated by the Gallery's founder Sir Hugh Lane,
has now grown to include almost 2,000 artworks, ranging
from the Impressionist masterpieces of Monet, Renoir and
Degas to works by leading national and international contemporary
artists.
- Hugh Lane (1875-1915)
Hugh Lane is best-known for
establishing Dublin's Municipal Gallery of Modern Art
in 1908 (the first known public gallery of modern art
in the world). Born in County Cork on 9 November 1875,
Lane was brought up in Cornwall in England. He began his
career as an apprentice painting restorer and later became
a very successful London art dealer.
On a visit to Dublin in 1901, Lane viewed an exhibition
of paintings by Nathaniel Hone and John Butler Yeats and
soon after began a campaign to establish a gallery of
modern art in Dublin. He became passionate that the best
of national and international art should be on public
view in Dublin. To further his campaign, in 1904, Lane
organised the first ever exhibition of contemporary Irish
art abroad, at the Guildhall in London. The exhibition
was a great success. In the preface to the catalogue,
Lane stated "There is something of common race instinct
in the work of all original Irish writers of to-day and,
it can hardly be absent in their sister art." On
his return to Dublin, Lane persuaded leading artists of
the day to donate a representative work to form the nucleus
of the collection, as well as personally financing many
acquisitions including a number of major Impressionist
masterpieces. He was to become one of the foremost collectors
of Impressionist paintings in these islands, and amongst
those outstanding works purchased by him for the new gallery
were La Musique aux Tuileries by Manet, Sur la Plage by
Degas, Les Parapluies by Renoir and La Cheminée
by Vuillard.
The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opened in January
1908 in temporary premises in Harcourt Street, Dublin.
However, Lane did not live to see his Gallery permanently
located as he died (aged 39) tragically in 1915 on board
the Lusitania, off the west coast of Cork, the county
of his birth.
The Hugh
Lane's pivotal role in Ireland's cultural life has recently
gained world wide recognition with the acquisition of the
entire contents of Francis Bacon's Reece Mews Studio, from
Bacon's sole heir John Edwards. 
- Bacon's studio / residence
was one of a short row of converted coach houses on a
quiet cobble-stoned lane. The house was small and utilitarian
in layout. The ground floor was almost entirely occupied
by a large garage where Bacon kept surplus items from
the studio. An extremely steep wooden staircase, with
a rope for a handrail, led to a landing. On the left was
Bacon's spartan bed-living room. Ahead was an eccentric
kitchen-cum-bathroom. To the right was the studio, the
most important room in the artist's life. Bacon said himself
of his cluttered studio, "I feel at home here in
this chaos because chaos suggests images to me."
Bacon rarely painted from life and the heaps of torn photographs,
fragments of illustrations, books, catalogues, magazines
and newspapers provided nearly all of his visual sources.
Some of the most significant studio items include seventy
works on paper and one hundred slashed canvases. The vast
array of artist's materials, household paint pots, used
and unused paint tubes, paint brushes, cut-off ends of
corduroy trousers and cashmere sweaters record the diversity
of Bacon's techniques. It is from here that Bacon's stature
grew into that of the pre-eminent figurative painter of
the late 20th century. While Bacon occasionally looked
for a new, grander place to work, he continually returned
to this awkward but familiar room.
This remarkable donation is the
most important received by the Gallery since it was established
by Sir Hugh Lane in 1908.
The reconstructed studio, which
opened to the public in May 2001, provides invaluable insight
into the artist's life, inspirations, unusual techniques
and working methods.
The Hugh
Lane Gallery received €54,271($62,000) from The Ireland
Funds in 2002 toward the restoration of the Francis Bacon
Mews Studio. Work included an audio-visual room and a micro-gallery
with terminals providing access to the database of studio
contents.
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| Francis Bacon was born at 63 Lower
Baggot Street, Dublin on 28 October 1909, of English parentage.
His father, a former captain in the British army, moved to Ireland
to breed and train racehorses. His mother, Winifred Bacon was from
the wealthy Firth family from Sheffield. The Bacon family subsequently
lived at Straffan Lodge, near Naas in Country Kildare. They moved
back to London for the duration of the First World War.
Francis Bacon left home at the age of
16. After a stay in London, he travelled to the louche Berlin
of the late 1920s where he savoured the excitement of the city
during the decline of the Weimar Republic. However, it was in
Paris that Bacon found a new sense of purpose. An exhibition of
drawings by Picasso at the Galerie Paul Rosenberg inspired Bacon
to become an artist. These were by no means the only influences
on Bacon at this time. He must have encountered Surrealism in
art, poetry and film and may have seen Soutine and de Chirico's
solo exhibitions held in the summer of 1927. Sergei Eisentein's
famous film, Battleship Potemkin, (1925) also had a major impact
on Bacon. The blood-splattered face of the screaming nurse in
this film was an enduring image for the artist and one that featured
in many of his paintings, most significantly Study for the Head
of a Screaming Pope, 1952.
He first gained recognition as a painter,
most notably with Crucifixion, 1933 but it wasn't until the mid-1940s
that his artistic career took off. The critical success of his
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944,
established Bacon as a new force in post-war art. Apart from periods
spent in Monte Carlo, Tangier and Paris, he spent the rest of
his life in London. His high spirits, ready wit and exceptional
generosity attracted people from a wide variety of backgrounds
including artists, writers and Soho eccentrics. Many of these
individuals feature repeatedly in his portraits. During his lifetime,
Bacon had major exhibitions in cities such as London, Paris, New
York, Washington, Dublin, Los Angeles and Moscow. The artist died
in Madrid on 28 April 1992.
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