HOMECOMING: Walter Osborne’s Portraits of Dublin, 1880-1900

19 August – 7 December 2025
Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to be one of the lenders to the first monographic exhibition in forty years of the work of Walter Osborne (1859-1903), one of Ireland’s most-heralded artists.

The exhibition, HOMECOMING, charts Osborne’s trajectory from his student days in Dublin and Antwerp through his sojourn in Brittany and his early practice in England before returning to his native city to care for his niece and aging parents following the death of his beloved sister Violet in 1893. Through his depictions of Dublin’s streets, parks, public spaces, domestic interiors and gardens, countryside, and most importantly its people, a vision of a vibrant––if divided––Ireland emerges. Osborne’s experiences abroad and his commercial acumen helped establish Dublin’s unique brand of Modern painting rife with the possibility of change.

Joining loans from private collections, as well as the National Gallery of Ireland, Hugh Lane Gallery, and Hunt Museum, Crawford Art Gallery’s own The Goldfish Bowl (c.1900) features in the exhibition. This charming work, which has been in the collection since 1925, depicts the artist’s young niece, Violet Stockley (1893-1971), seated with an older companion in front of the eponymous pets.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank and congratulate Cheryl Snay, Aoife-Marie Buckley, the Directors and team at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.

Featured artwork:

• Walter Osborne, The Goldfish Bowl, c.1900.

CASIMIR MARKIEVICZ: A Polish Artist in Bohemian Dublin (1903-1913)
22 April – 14 September 2025
State Apartments, Dublin Castle

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to loan Russian Cottage (1909) by Casimir Dunin-Markievicz to a major new exhibition celebrating his legacy.

In Ireland, the name ‘Markievicz’ immediately conjures the figure of Constance Markievicz, Irish revolutionary heroine. For the first time, this exhibition explores the artistic life and work of her Polish husband, Casimir Dunin-Markievicz (1874-1932) – painter, playwright, and larger-than-life personality – and his place in Dublin’s bohemian circles on the eve of the Revolution.

Casimir’s contemporaries included W. B. Yeats, George Russell (Æ), William Orpen, Hugh Lane, and Beatrice Elvery: this exhibition offers rarely-seen depictions of and by these luminaries of the Irish Revival.

Presented in the State Apartments at Dublin Castle, over 80 artworks and artefacts have been loaned from major state collections including the National Gallery of Ireland, National Library of Ireland, National Museum of Ireland, Hugh Lane Gallery, Crawford Art Gallery, The Model, and the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland; as well as from private lenders including Lissadell House, United Arts Club, Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth, and the family of Irish radical Thomas MacDonagh.

Curated by Emily Mark-FitzGerald and Kathryn Milligan, the exhibition also explores links between Ireland, Poland, and Ukraine (where Casimir’s family lived). Displayed in the galleries are unique photographs of Ukraine’s lands and people taken by Constance, and paintings of its countryside made by both, on special loan from Casimir Markievicz’s relatives in Poland. Many of these have not been seen in Ireland for more than a century.

This project, organised to celebrate Poland’s Presidency of the EU Council, is a joint initiative of the Office of Public Works and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Dublin. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank and congratulate Emily Mark-FitzGerald, Kathryn Milligan, William Derham, the OPW team at Dublin Castle, and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Dublin.

Featured artwork:

• Casimir Dunin-Markievicz, Russian Cottage, 1909.

Check venue for opening hours and ticketing information.

GRÁ

12 July – 20 September 2025
Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, County Cork

Love is in the air this summer in West Cork!

We are delighted to partner with Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and Salt & Pepper (West Cork's elder LGBTQI+ arts collective) on a major summer exhibition selected from the National Collection at Crawford Art Gallery.

GRÁ celebrates love in all its forms and features more than 50 artworks from Crawford Art Gallery and responses from 30 people from Salt & Pepper. 

Facilitated by artist and activist Toma McCullim, with guidance from Ann Davoren (Director, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre) and Michael Waldron (Curator of Collections & Special Projects, Crawford Art Gallery), Salt & Pepper has explored the collection to shape a diverse, inclusive showcase for Uillinn, accompanied by a rich programme of talks, tours, workshops, and events. 

GRÁ features key works from 1888 through to 2022, including the iconic Portrait of Fiona Shaw by Victoria Russell, John Lavery’s The Red Rose, Patrick Hennessy's Self Portrait and Cat, and the photographic series Hi, Vis by Dragana Jurišić.

This project introduces new audiences to Crawford Art Gallery’s collection, providing various access points to a range of works and artists for visitors and local communities.

Featured artworks:

• Aphrodite from Melos (Venus de Milo)
• Sara Baume, So Sick and Tired (2020)
• Brian Bourke, Mother and Child (undated)
• Regina Carbayo, Portrait of Kate O’Brien (2015)
• Margaret Clarke, Portrait of Lennox Robinson (1926)
• Tom Climent, Eden (2019)
• William Crozier, The River Boundary (Lough Hyne) (1988)
• Gerard Dillon, Cut Out, Drop Out (1968)
• Mollie Douthit, Lisa and I (2021)
• Stephen Doyle, Meditating Tongqui (2020)
• Rita Duffy, Guantanamo amas amat (2009)
• John ffrench, Ceramics (c.1950s)
• Mags Geaney, Irresistible Force (2019)
• Patrick Hennessy, Self Portrait and Cat (1978)
• Mainie Jellett, Abstract Composition (c.1929)
• Dragana Jurišić, Hi, Vis (2020-21)
• Dragana Jurišić, Paula Meehan (2018)
• Harry Kernoff, The Forty Foot, Sandycove (1940)
• Paul La Rocque, In Her Own Garden (1998)
• John Lavery, The Red Rose (1923)
• John Minihan, Grave Stones of Somerville and Ross, Novelists, Castletownshend, Co. Cork (1998)
• Cormac Moore, The Emigrant (son and father) (c.1995)
• Janet Mullarney, Drawing from Memory (2010)
• Janet Mullarney, Rishabadeva Again (2010)
• Norah Brigid Ní Chuill, Game of Cards (1959)
• Íde Ní Shúilleabháin, Tools Series (Sewing Machine) (undated)
• Isabel Nolan, The Light Poured Out of You (2016)
• John Rainey, Dazzle Disco (legs) (2022)
• Victoria Russell, Portrait of Fiona Shaw (2002)
• Patrick Scott, Meditation Painting 33 (c.2006)
• Edith Somerville, A Holy Place of the Druids or Grave of a Chieftain (undated)
• Edith Somerville, Sketch of Head for ‘The Goose Girl’ (c.1888)
• Niamh Swanton, I’ve Always Been Rather Shy (2022)
• Mary Swanzy, Samoan Scene (1924)
• Jennifer Trouton, Mater Natura: The Abortionist’s Garden [Embroideries] (2020-21)

Screenings

Aideen Barry, Not to be Known (2015) 
Friday 1 August, 10.00 – 16.30, Free Entry

Clare Langan, The Heart of a Tree (2020) 
Saturday 23 August, 10.00 – 15.30, Free Entry

Events

Grá Gallery Talk and Tour with Dr Michael Waldron (Curator of Collections & Special Projects at Crawford Art Gallery)
Thursday 24 July and Thursday 18 September
13:00 – 14:00
Free to attend, no booking required

Seen - Unseen
Friday 18 July
15:30
Free, but booking essential, please contact Clare McLaughlin:
claremclaughlinemail@gmail.com

MAINIE JELLETT AND EVIE HONE.
The Art of Friendship
10 April – 10 August 2025
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Dedicated to the pioneering Irish modernists Mainie Jellett (1897-1944) and Evie Hone (1894-1955), this major new exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland brings together 90 of their works of art, including five on loan from the Collection.

As its title suggests, the exhibition explores Jellett and Hone’s friendship and shared experiences while studying in Paris during the early 1920s, and traces their careers back to Ireland. It highlights the early convergences and later divergences in their styles as they developed distinct artistic voices. Featuring paintings, stained glass, and preparatory drawings, it reveals how both women were trailblazers in Irish art although remaining connected to conventional themes such as religion and landscape. 

MAINIE JELLETT AND EVIE HONE. The Art of Friendship is accompanied by a catalogue and events programme. Check venue for ticketing and opening hours.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank and congratulate Caroline Campbell, Brendan Rooney, and the National Gallery of Ireland team.

Featured artworks:

• Evie Hone, In the Woods at Marley, undated.
• Evie Hone, St. Hubert, undated.
• Evie Hone, St. Remy de Provence, 1944.
• Mainie Jellett, Abstract Composition, c.1931.
• Mainie Jellett, Carpet Design, c.1930.

BRIAN MAGUIRE: La Grande Illusion
3 October 2024 – 18 May 2025
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

We are pleased to lend two recent acquisitions to Hugh Lane Gallery for BRIAN MAGUIRE: La Grande Illusion.

Curated by Michael Dempsey and Barbara Dawson, the exhibition is structured and distilled in ways that reveal how Brian Maguire has represented the fragility of human rights and how he has persistently responded to societal injustices and their legacies. Focusing on a period of intense productivity for the artist, 2007–2024, it appraises his activism in human rights and his efforts to document the shape-shifting nature of war with its far-reaching impact on the poor and our environment.

Maguire presents an expanded view of war. Seen as a constant cycle of corrupted power and death, it encompasses capital, class, gender, and post-colonial legacies. Intimate and uncompromising, his paintings form a demand for social justice and are an act of solidarity with families and communities.

The exhibition draws on seven pioneering and interconnected bodies of work, with works from Hugh Lane Gallery and Crawford Art Gallery collections alongside works from private collections. These include paintings from projects in Juárez, Mexico (2012–15), the Mediterranean (2016), Aleppo (2017), South Sudan (2018), the Amazon (2022), Arizona (2022), and Brazil (2022-23).

Testimony is integral to understanding violence, human rights violations and state abuse.

In turning towards the plight of those erased by media or state institutions, the artist reminds us why painting matters. ‘In painting, “the invisible becomes visible”, he explains. It is a transformative frame, placing the experiences you encounter on the doorstep of power and in a continuum with history, mythology and the tragedies of existence.’ Like education for Paulo Freire, art for Maguire is a radical process of passion and indignation, which carries the potential of alternative futures. ‘[T]he image carries the present, the medium carries the hope,’ says Maguire, and expands by referring to the domains of loss as ‘the perpetrators of the injustice are worldwide and singular and that’s what makes the stories the same’.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Barbara Dawson, Michael Dempsey, and Hugh Lane Gallery team.

Check venue for opening hours.

Featured artworks:

• Brian Maguire, Arizona 1, 2020.
• Brian Maguire, Arizona 3, 2020.

JENNIFER TROUTON: In Plain Sight
6 September – 20 October 2024
Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to loan Mater Natura: The Abortionist’s Garden (2020-21) to the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) for artist Jennifer Trouton's first solo exhibition in Dublin.

In Plain Sight is an exhibition that started in the historical archives with a series of stories hidden in medical records, coroners’ reports, witness statements, jury verdicts, newspaper clippings, and incriminating letters from lovers and abortion providers. Spanning two spaces – the RHA’s first-floor Pádraig O’hUiginn Gallery and Petronella Brown Gallery – the exhibition features large-scale and intimately sized paintings alongside embroideries, textiles, and artifacts.

Trouton plays with the still-life genre in compositions that are simultaneously traditional and darkly subversive. Her colour palette evokes a calm sense of nostalgia that draws in her viewers, before asking them to consider Ireland’s uncomfortable relationship with women’s reproductive rights. A relationship that is still evolving and is forever subject to the political and ideological mores of others.

Mater Natura: The Abortionist’s Garden is a series of 32 watercolour studies of herbs and flowers that have traditionally been used to induce abortion during pregnancy. Each watercolour forms part of a garden of such plants, perhaps overseen by the named figure of the title: Mater Natura (Mother Nature). Paired with these are maps of Ireland and the human female pelvis and uterus.

Jennifer Trouton, “Calendula (Marigold)” from the series Mater Natura: The Abortionist's Garden, 2020-21, watercolour on paper, 38 x 26 cm. © the artist.

This exhibition considers the women impacted by societal and religious attempts to suppress reproductive rights in Ireland. The artist highlights how, regardless of continued attempts to reduce the influence and autonomy of women, women still accessed the tools necessary to control their own destinies. In many cases, they found the objects of their own emancipation in the domestic spaces that were assigned to them. They found them in plain sight.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank and congratulate Jennifer Trouton, Patrick T. Murphy, Kate McBride, and the RHA team.

Check venue for opening hours and events.

Featured artwork:

• Jennifer Trouton, Mater Natura: The Abortionist’s Garden, 2020-21.

JACK BUTLER YEATS: The Wandering Gaze / An Misló Swuner
6 July – 28 September 2024
The Model, Sligo

Three paintings by Jack B. Yeats from the Collection are on loan to The Model, Sligo for summer 2024.

The Wandering Gaze / An Misló Swuner presents a collection of images relative to Travelling people in the work of Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957).

Highlighting Yeats’ keen observations of diversity amongst nomadic groups within Irish society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the exhibition includes sketchbook drawings, illustrated prints, watercolours, and oil paintings spanning the breath of his career.

The exhibition was developed with participants from the Sligo Traveller Support Group working with Oein DeBhairduin, writer and Traveller Culture Collections Development Officer at the National Museum of Ireland.

Check venue for opening hours and admission details.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Emer McGarry, Dr Julie Brazil, Niamh Moriarty, and The Model team.

Featured artworks:

• Jack B. Yeats, In Capel Street, Dublin, 1923.
• Jack B. Yeats, The Small Ring, 1930.
• Jack B. Yeats, Shelling Peas in Moore Street, 1936.

MORE POWER TO YOU: Sarah Purser:
A Force for Irish Art

10 July 2024 – 5 January 2025
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

MORE POWER TO YOU celebrates Sarah Purser, an indomitable figure in Irish art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition at Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin examines her multifaceted role as artist, activist, and collector.

Sarah Purser (1848-1943) was a hugely influential figure in Irish artistic circles both as an artist and as an organiser. She played an important role in the founding of Hugh Lane Gallery and helped secure Charlemont House as the gallery’s permanent home.

This exhibition also marks the centenary of the founding of the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland (FNCI), which Purser established in 1924.

We are pleased to loan Concarneau (1925) by Paul Signac to the exhibition. This watercolour was presented through the FNCI to Crawford Art Gallery in 1988 by Michael Purser in memory of his father, Sean Purser, grandnephew of Sarah Purser.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Barbara Dawson, Logan Sisley, and Hugh Lane Gallery team.

Featured artwork:

• Paul Signac, Concarneau, 1925.

SELF-DETERMINATION: A Global Perspective

30 November 2023 – 21 April 2024

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to loan ten works from the Collection to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) for this major exhibition.

SELF-DETERMINATION: A Global Perspectiveis one of the largest exhibitions in IMMA’s history. The culmination of a three-year research project, this exhibition focuses on the nation-states that emerged in the wake of the First World War, exploring the role of art and artists in relation to the expression of national identities, nation-building, and statecraft. 

The exhibition brings together a range of Irish and international works, both modern and contemporary, that illuminate the shared experiences of the new states. 

In 1919, Arthur Griffith, writing from Gloucester Prison, urged his colleagues to ‘mobilise the poets’ to help make Ireland’s case for independence on the international stage. Griffith’s letter acknowledges the role of art and culture in developing international solidarities and justifying Ireland’s right, among other small nations, to ‘self-determine’. It also highlights the new possibilities for artists in the early twentieth century, an era of collapsing empires and seismic geopolitical shifts, to articulate and enact radical modern and democratic principles.

Each of the new states produced its own cultural complexities, with its own traditions, histories, and industries to be reimagined in line with the new imperatives of modernity. The exhibition explores common strategies and methodologies developed by artists, cultural practitioners, and others invested in the formation of a new state in the first half of the twentieth century.  

SELF-DETERMINATION: A Global Perspective is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012–2023.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank and congratulate Annie Fletcher, Seán Kissane, Nathan O’Donnell, Georgie Thompson, and the IMMA team.

Featured artworks:

• James Archer, Casket, c.1930.
• Hugh C. Charde, Portrait of Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, 1920.
• Margaret Clarke, The Dressmaker, 1924.
• Grace Henry, Claddagh Market, Galway, 1916-18.
• Paul Henry, Landscape, c.1925.
• Seán Keating, Men of the South, 1921-22.
• Edith Somerville, A Holy Place of the Druids or Grave of a Chieftain, undated.
• Mary Swanzy, Samoan Scene, 1924.
• Jack B. Yeats, Off the Donegal Coast, 1922.

Jack B. Yeats, A Race in Hy Brazil, 1937.

THE BEND BACK: RHA 200 from the Crawford Art Gallery Collection

17 November 2023 – 28 January 2024

Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin

The thirty-one works from Crawford Art Gallery’s collection selected for this exhibition offer a route or portal into the Royal Hibernian Academy’s past and its membership across two centuries.

Writing in “The Bend Back” (1951), Elizabeth Bowen remarked that ‘one route to the past (or the idea of the past) is factitious memory. That is to say, by art we are made to seem to remember that which we have not actually known.’

The origins of Crawford Art Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) stem from a shared moment in Irish history when, in the few years before and after 1820, there was a sustained interest in the training and championing of Irish artists. The arrival of the Canova Casts – now the nucleus of Crawford Art Gallery’s collection – to Cork in November 1818 provided the impetus for the formation of the Cork School of Art (now MTU Crawford College of Art & Design) and the academic study of sculpture, painting, and drawing in the south of Ireland. Similarly, the foundation of the RHA in August 1823 fostered public appetite for visual art and connected artists with new audiences.

This exhibition was prompted by two key moments: the loss, during Easter 1916, of the RHA’s building and collection, and its bicentenary in 2023.

Some of the works displayed in the exhibition reach back into the first century of the RHA’s history and to its earliest members, while others were purchased through the RHA or represent Crawford Art Gallery’s various sub-collections, gifts, and bequests. From Thomas Kirk, Daniel Maclise, and Estella Solomons to Margaret Clarke, Evie Hone, and Barrie Cooke, each of the thirty-one works in this exhibition are by members of the RHA from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Patrick T. Murphy, Kate McBride, and the RHA team.

Featured artworks:

• Thomas Sautelle Roberts, City of Cork, c.1790.
• Thomas Kirk, Sleeping Child, 1818.
• George Petrie, Gougane Barra, Co. Cork, 1835.
• Daniel Maclise, Finished study for 'The Farewell of the Departure of Bayard for the Wars', c.1843.
• Stephen Catterson Smith, Miss Catherine O'Conor of Mount Druid with Harp, undated.
• Nathaniel Hill, Goose Girl in a Breton Farmyard, 1884.
• Walter Osborne, A November Morning, 1888.
• Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, Killeshine Ponds, c.1890.
• John Lavery, Habiba, 1892.
• John Butler Yeats, John Redmond (unfinished), c.1905.
• Gerald Festus Kelly, Sir Hugh Lane, c.1911.
• Margaret Clarke, Dolly Robinson, 1918.
• William Orpen, The Marchioness of Crewe, c.1918.
• Estella Solomons, Self-Portrait, undated.
• Jack B. Yeats, In Capel Street, Dublin, 1923.
• Dermod O'Brien, Place de l'Eglise, Montreuil, 1925.
• Leo Whelan, The Kitchen Window, c.1926.
• Albert Power, Death Mask of Austin Stack, c.1929.
• Mary Swanzy, Swans, c.1930.
• William John Leech, Reflections, c.1930.
• Séamus Murphy, Ruth Ripley, 1934.
• Oliver Sheppard, Aida, 1935.
• James Sinton Sleator, Portrait of Jack B. Yeats, 1943.
• Grace Henry, Mountain Sheep, 1946.
• Evie Hone, Landscape, County Wicklow, 1947.
• Maurice MacGonigal, George Moore’s Garden, undated.
• Brigid Ganly, Faiche Laighean (Leinster Lawn), undated.
• Kitty Wilmer O’Brien, Cliffs of Moher, undated.
• Patrick Hennessy, Self Portrait and Cat, 1978.
• Barrie Cooke, Portrait of the Lough Derg Pike: Life size, with relics, 1980.
• Louis le Brocquy, Fantail Pigeons, 1985.

100 YEARS OF GIVING – The Friends of the National Collections of Ireland (FNCI)

15 February – 7 April 2024

Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick

We are delighted to collaborate with Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) on 100 YEARS OF GIVING, an exhibition celebrating the centenary of the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland (FNCI).

Formed in 1924 by the artist Sarah Purser and a group of friends, FNCI is a charitable body whose continued purpose is to acquire works of art and objects of historical interest, and to donate them to national and regional art galleries and museums throughout Ireland for the education and enjoyment of the public. As part of its remit, FNCI also advises on and administers gifts and bequests.

Alongside works from LCGA’s own collection, 100 YEARS OF GIVING features 28 works on loan from Crawford Art Gallery. All of these were either presented by, or co-purchased with the FNCI between 1955 and 2012, and include masterpieces by James Barry, Daniel Maclise, and Mainie Jellett.

Crawford Art Gallery wishes to thank Úna McCarthy, Siobhan O’Reilly, and the LCGA team.

100 YEARS OF GIVING runs 15 February – 7 April 2024 at Limerick City Gallery of Art.

Featured Artworks:

• James Barry, Portraits of Barry and Burke in the Characters of Ulysses and his Companion Fleeing from the Cave of Polyphemus, c.1776.
• James Brenan, Patchwork, 1891.
• James Brenan, Words of Counsel, 1876.
• Jan Brueghel the Younger, Country Scene with Wagon, undated.
• Sylvia Cooke-Collis, Cahirmee Fair, undated.
• Sylvia Cooke-Collis, Festival Scene, undated.
• Sylvia Cooke-Collis, Glencar Trees, undated.
• Sylvia Cooke-Collis, Still-Life with Chinese Mandarin, undated.
• Harry Phelan Gibb, Horses in Twilight, 1933.
• Evie Hone, Seated Figure, c.1940.
• Evie Hone, At Glen Cormac, Co. Wicklow, undated.
• Nathaniel Hone, Study: Ship at Anchor, undated.
• Mainie Jellett, Abstract Composition, c.1935.
• Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, Woodland Pastures, c.1890.
• Daniel Maclise, Crucifixion (sketch), undated.
• Daniel Maclise, The Falconer, 1853.
• Daniel Maclise, Lear and Cordelia, c.1843.
• Daniel Maclise, Study for Seated Gentleman, undated.
• Daniel Maclise, Study for Seated Gentleman (possibly Sir Walter Scott), undated.
• Daniel Maclise, Portrait of Lady Blessington, undated.
• William Otway McCannell, The Throne of the Gods and this Strange World, c.1927.
• Norah McGuinness, New York Harbour, c.1945.
• William Mulready, Landscape with Farm Buildings, undated.
• Mervyn Peake, Head of a Girl, 1950.
• Nano Reid, Ansty, c.1950.
• George Russell, Portrait of Ruth Lane (Mrs. Shine), c.1903.
• George Sharp, Old Man Praying, undated.
• Anne S. King-Harman, Snow in Wicklow, undated.