Papers of the Hugh Lane estate

Context

Creator(s): National Gallery of Ireland

• Administrative History ↴

  Hugh Lane was born in county Cork in 1875 and grew up in England. As a young man he developed an interest in art, and through his aunt, lady Augusta Gregory, was apprenticed to Martin Colnaghi, a London art dealer. After a year or so with Colnaghi, Lane began to work as an independent art dealer. He opened his own premises in Pall Mall Place in 1898. Through frequent visits to Ireland, where most of his family resided, Lane remained in close contact with lady Augusta Gregory and became interested in contemporary Irish art. He also began to collect Impressionist art. Lane devoted a great deal of his time and energy to the promotion of Irish art; he also conceived the idea of creating a gallery of modern art in Dublin. In 1906 Lane offered to present a group of modern paintings to the proposed new gallery, provided a suitable premises was found. Eventually the gallery was opened in 1908 at 17 Harcourt street, Dublin, under the care of Dublin corporation, with Lane as honorary director. From 1912 Lane began to campaign for a purpose-built gallery to replace 17 Harcourt street and threatened to remove his conditional gift of thirty-nine paintings (which also came to be known as the French pictures) unless the new building was forthcoming. Various schemes for a new building were advanced but none was adopted, and Lane became deeply frustrated by what he perceived as the lack of public support for the new gallery. In 1913 Lane offered to loan his conditional paintings to the National Gallery in London, an offer which was accepted; in October 1913 he made a new will in which he bequeathed the conditional paintings to the National Gallery in London. The bulk of Lane’s estate was bequeathed to the National Gallery of Ireland ‘to be invested and the income to be spent on buying pictures of deceased painters of established merit.’ The fund thus established (the Lane Fund) became an important source of funding for the National Gallery of Ireland. To the Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin (known as the Municipal Gallery) Lane bequeathed paintings which were on loan to Belfast Art Gallery and ‘any modern paintings of merit that I possess’. A member of the board of the National Gallery of Ireland since 1903, Lane was knighted in 1909 for services to art, and appointed director of the National Gallery of Ireland in 1914. In 1915 Lane sailed to New York; before leaving he wrote a codicil to his will in which he reversed the clause in his 1913 will leaving the conditional paintings to the National Gallery in London. Instead, these works were to be given to the city of Dublin ‘providing a suitable building is provided for them within five years of my death.’ This codicil was not witnessed but was signed or initialed by Lane in three places. On 7 May 1915, returning from New York on the RMS Lusitania, Lane, along with almost 1,200 others was drowned when the ship was sunk by a German torpedo off the coast of Cork. The ensuing controversy over Lane’s un-witnessed codicil to his will continued for decades. Lane was succeeded as director of the National Gallery of Ireland by Walter Strickland, who held the post until the appointment of captain Robert Langton Douglas in 1916.

• Archival History ↴

  Institutional Archives

• Immediate Source Acquisition ↴

  Official Transfer