The National Gallery of Ireland is the home for the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin, where it was founded in 1854 and opened ten years later. The gallery has a large collection of representative Irish paintings and is famous for its works by Italian Baroque and Dutch masters. The gallery was not founded around an existing collection, and when the gallery opened it had just over a hundred paintings. In successive years, philanthropic donations of paintings and sculptures from across Ireland more than tripled the amount of works of art held and exhibited by the Gallery.
Part of the collection is this portrait by Hugh Douglas Hamilton of a young man during the stop in Rome of his Grand Tour, Hamilton was an Irish portraitist who specialised in pastel drawing. Later in his life he moved to Italy and started developing oil painting skills. This portrait dated around 1790 is a very fine expression of his newly acquired mastery. The subject stands against a backdrop of classical monuments and amidst sculptural fragments typical of the artistic exposure of a Grand Tour, wearing very fine and sophisticated clothes.
Having received initial art training in Dublin, Rothwell moved to London, where he set up a successful portrait practice. Edwin Landseer and Thomas Lawrence were among those to praise the richness of his palette and compared his skill in painting flesh to that of the Old Masters. Rothwell exhibited regularly in London and Dublin, and spent three years in Italy. He considered this painting, Callisto, the subject of which he derived from classical mythology, his finest picture, declaring that he had worked on it until it arrived ‘at that state of perfection on which my judgement cannot add another touchโ.
The Grand Gallery is dedicated to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and includes works of art by British, Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Swiss artists. The Enlightenment in Europe and America was partly a reaction to the wars and autocracy of the previous century, represented by Jan Wyckโs monumental depiction of the Battle of the Boyne of 1690. The core of original buildings when the Gallery was founded has been progressively been expanded to cater for an increased volume of artworks to be exhibited and greater success with the public. A brand new space has been added with the construction of the Millenium Wing that has its own modern facade on the opposite side of the original entrance.
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