Hugh Lane Gallery

One of Dublin’s most beloved architectural collections is its assortment of brightly colored doors. Going head to head with any number of gray-sky days, this spectrum of entryways enliven alleys, public buildings, and private residences. Turquoise. Bright red. Emerald green. Electric yellow. Royal blue.

How did these doors end up splashed with brilliance, bringing cheer to many of Dublin’s streetscapes? During the Georgian time period, Dublin became both prosperous and the second largest city in the British Empire. With affluence came fancy new architecture. At that time, each building was held to the same look. To break away from that rigidity, Dublin residents began adding personal flair to their doors: colorful paint, ornate knockers, elegant fanlights.

Dublin City Gallery, now The Hugh Lane, is a fitting inheritor of this tradition, as their baby blues welcome visitors into the world’s first public gallery of modern art. It was established in 1908 by art dealer, collector, exhibitor, and gallery director Sir Hugh Lane.

Born in County Cork and raised primarily in Cornwall with little money and limited education, Lane always appreciated art. At age eighteen, he arrived in London to assist an art dealer. He soon dropped the assistant title and found his passion and stride in dealing. By his mid-twenties he returned to Ireland with a sizable fortune—which he used to amass a collection that continues to generate awe and drama today.

Lane began urging the City of Dublin to invest in a gallery of modern art, but his campaign was rejected. Heated, Lane offered thirty-nine of his finest pieces to London’s National Gallery instead. Eight years later, when Lane became director of the National Gallery of Ireland, he added a codicil to his will, stating the paintings belonged in Ireland under one condition: they would be placed in a suitable gallery.

Once director, Lane was determined to endow Dublin’s gallery with pieces that would secure its future, so he went to meet with American multimillionaire art dealer Henry Clay Frick—a trip from which he never returned. Tragically, Lane was one of the 1,198 people killed aboard the RMS Lusitania, sunk by a German U-boat in 1915. Adding insult, his will’s codicil was refuted by London, igniting a fractious tug-of-war over his masterpieces that has only recently been resolved.

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