A Surprising Survivor


It is likely that most visitors to the Francis Bacon Studio in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery are so busy looking at what can be seen on the walls and behind glass screens that they rarely, if ever, glance upwards. Yet in one of the spaces there survives a rococo ceiling installed when this was part of the Earl of Charlemont’s library wing in his townhouse, designed by William Chambers and constructed in the 1760s. The greater part of that section of the original building was lost in 1931-33 when then-City Architect Horace O’Rourke converted the house into an art gallery but somehow this one ceiling, featuring interwoven garlands of leaves tied with trailing ribbon and a testament to the skill of an unknown stuccodore, has survived.

3 comments on “A Surprising Survivor

  1. jenjunebug says:

    Fantastic! Thank you for pointing that out.

  2. Andrew McCarthy says:

    I remember spotting this ceiling when I visited the Hugh Lane gallery during my trip to Dublin earlier this year. A lovely survival.

  3. Aidan O Boyle says:

    The contrast between the two could not be more stark, it is a testament to how the arts have degenerated since Lord Charlemont’s time.

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