Life
1875-1915 [Hugh Percy Lane]; art collector and critic, b. Ballybrack,
Co. Cork, nephew of Lady Gregory, his mother being a Persse and his father
a clergyman; joined Colnaghi’s London picture dealers, 1893; worked
for Marlborough Gallery, and set up independently, 2 Pall Mall Place,
1898; met Yeats, 1901, attended joint exhibition of Yeats père
and Nathaniel Hone; donated Impressionist paintings to found Gallery of
Modern Art in Dublin, 1908, presenting it with 154 works, at first hung
in Clonmell House, 17 Harcourt St.; knighted, 1909; withdrew 39 paintings
when Dublin City Council [Corporation] rejected Sir Edward Lutyens design
for a Liffey bridge gallery, 1913; Director of Irish National Gallery,
1914; and drowned on board Lusitania, torpedoed 7 May 1915; the
controversy of rights to the paintings, in which Lady Gregory and Thomas
Bodkin joined for the Irish, concerned his 1913 will and unwitnessed codicil
of 1915 in which he returned them to Dublin; see Yeats’s “September
1913” and “Municipal Gallery Revisited”; his pictures have
been divided in two groups, alternately housed in Dublin and London, under
terms of an agreement reached in 1959; there is a drawing by John Butler
Yeats (Aug 1905) in the National Gallery of Ireland and another by John
Singer Sargeant (1906) in the Municipal Gallery, which was renamed in
his honour in 1975; also a seated portrait by Sir Gerald Festus Kelly
in Crawford Gallery, Cork. DNB DIB OCIL
[ top ]
Criticism
Lady Gregory, Hugh Lane’s Pictures (priv. 1918).
Lady Gregory, Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement (John Murray/EP Dutton 1921).
Lady Gregory, Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement [rep. edn.] as Sir Hugh Lane: His Life and Legacy (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1973) [var. 1974].
Thomas Bodkin, Hugh Lane and His Pictures (Dublin 1934).
Barbara Dawson, ‘Hugh Lane and the Origins of the Collection’, in Dawson, ed., Images and Insights: Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art (1993).
Robert O’Byrne, Hugh Lane: 1875-1915 (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2000), 279pp.; Anne Kelly, ‘The Lane Bequest’, in Journal of the History of Collections, 16, 1 (May 2004), pp.89-110.
Frank Pakenham (Lord Longford), Five Lives (1964).
Brenda Maddox, Yeats’s Ghosts (HarperCollins 1999), pp.15-16.
Homan Potterton, review of Robert
O’Byrne, Hugh Lane (Lilliput), in The Irish Times (21 Oct.
2000).[ top ]
Notes
Lane proposed a Gallery in Dublin, one of the sites
drawn up by Lutygens being planned for the Halfpenny Bridge and conceived
as Venetian ‘Bridge of Tears’; the second to be erected on St.
Stephen’s Green facing College of Surgeons; Lutygens sketches now
held in Municipal Gallery; reproductions to be found in Bodkin’s
Pictures, &c., and Lady Gregory’s Hugh Lane’s
Life and Achievement (1921); Dublin City Council not prepared to put
up any money at all; much money raised in America; Hugh Lane Fund presented
Lady Gregory with silver cup in recognition of her fund raising; Lane
moved the pictures to London (NG), where they were dumped in the cellars;
his will left the pictures to the National Gallery London; unwitnessed
codicil found by Lady Gregory, found as result of clairvoyant search (see
Yeats’s article on same, reprinted in Lady Gregory, Sir Hugh Lane:
His Life and Legacy (1973) [err. 1974]; Lane pictures not displayed
in Ireland until 1960s, having all been in England to that time; Lord
Duveen, picture dealer, had given massive donation to Tate on condition
the pictures stayed in Britain; case highlighted by in 1960s when a student
filched a picture from the wall; settlement between British and Irish
govts., resulting in sharing on five year rotation, continuing to this
day. Bibl., Lady Gregory’s Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement
(John Murray/EP Dutton 1921), and enlarged version, Sir Hugh Lane,
His Life and Legacy [Coole Ed.] (Colin Smythe 1974); also Lady Gregory,
Hugh Lane’s Pictures (1918), priv. printed. [synopsis supplied
by Colin Smythe.]
George Moore (in Hail and Fairwell), remarks that Lane was ‘going to revive Irish painting’; further, quotes an exchange with him, viz, "I am Lady Gregory’s nephew, and must be doing something for Ireland", to which Moore: "Striking a blow," I said. [...] he did not understand the remark.’ Moore shows Lane as a young man dressing in Lady Gregory’s clothes to her surprise, and exhibiting some seriousness about their tailoring (‘Doesn’t it seem to you, Aunt Augusta, that this skirt is a little too full?’ [...] but tailoring was only a passing thought, and the next thing they heard of Hugh was that he had gone into Colagnhi’s shop to learn the business of picture-dealing.’ [Vale, p.129]; further, ‘It is to Mr. Hugh Lane’s extraordinary enthusiasm, energy,and love of Art that we owe the pleasure of this beautiful collection ...’ [Vale, p.134].
Lady Gregory gave an account of Yeats’s reaction to the news that Count Plunkett had been appointed Curator of the Nat. Museum in place of Lane: ‘It was in his mind, one of the worst of crimes, that neglect to use the best man, the man of genius, in place of the timid obedent official. That use of the best man had been practised in the great days of the Renaiisance. He had grown calmer before my arrival.’ (Cited in A. N. Jeffares, New Commentary, 1984, p.125.)
Portraits: There is a drawing by John Butler Yeats, dated Aug 1905 (NGI; rep. in Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia, 1982, p.129. See also ‘Sir Hugh Lane’ by John Singer Sargeant (1906; Municipal Gallery), and an oil port., seated, by Sir Gerald Festus Kelly (1879-1972), in Crawford Gallery, Cork; also LSO pencil portrait by John Butler Yeats and an oil-on-panel portrait by Saray Celia Harrison (d.1941) [both NGI]. Hugh Lane is included in ‘Homage to Manet’ by Sir William Orpen (1909), with P. W. Steer, Henry Tonks, George Moore, W. R. Sicket, et al. [copied in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.109 facing.]
Gift-wrapped: A gift-copy of the life of Lane held at the Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco), encloses a printed letter signed by Eamon de Valera, reading as follows: ‘This book, which deals with the career of an Irishman who strove nobly to serve the cause of culture in his country, has been prepared as a gift from the Government of Saorstat Eireann to those who love justice and to those who love the arts. / As President of the Executive Council, I have the honour of offering you this copy.’ [Eamon de Valera]
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)