The Art of a Nation

Works by open air painters Aloysius O’Kelly, Sir John Lavery and Roderic O’Conor (whom Kenneth McConkey said “outstripped Monet in the pure intensity of his colour”) are represented, together with works by the ‘Dublin Painters’, Sean Keating, Jack B. Yeats, Paul and Grace Henry. Artists who celebrated the Irish way of life, like Harry Kernoff, as well as other experimenters who embraced new styles and themes, including Mary Swanzy, Mainie Jellett and Norah McGuinness, also feature in the exhibition.

The modernist movement is represented with major works by Louis le Brocquy, Colin Middleton, twice Turner Prize nominee Sean Scully, one of the major painters currently working in the abstract idiom, photographer Willie Doherty and Royal Academician Hughie O’Donoghue.

Younger emerging artists such as Shane Blount and Caroline McCarthy demonstrate the strength and depth of Irish art today.

Presented with the collaboration of Ireland’s Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, as well as the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, the exhibition promises to offer a striking and thought-provoking survey of the national essence of Irish art.