Ireland Guide
Dublin
The National Gallery
Address: Merrion Square West and Clare Street
Website: www.nationalgallery.ie
Opening time: Mon– Sat 9.30am–5.30pm, Thurs until 8.30pm, Sun noon–5.30pm
Price: Free, €3 donation suggested
The National Gallery hosts a fine collection of Western European art dating from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, which will happily engage you for several hours. In a prime location under the Millennium Wing's glass roof, there's a good self-service, lunchtime restaurant and an all-day café upstairs. The gallery also offers classical and contemporary concerts, lectures and workshops, which are detailed in the monthly Gallery News (available in the foyer).
Level 1 is chiefly given over to Irish art from the seventeenth century onwards, including a large gallery in the Millennium Wing devoted to the twentieth century. The real stand-out in the Irish collection, however, is the Yeats Museum (in the Dargan Wing below the National Portrait Gallery), which traces the development of Jack B. Yeats (1871–1957), younger brother of the writer W.B. Yeats, from an unsentimental illustrator of everyday scenes to an expressive painter in abstract, unmixed colours. In the mezzanine Print Gallery, as well as temporary exhibitions throughout the year, watercolours by Turner are exhibited every January, when the light is low enough for these delicate works.
Highlights of Level 2 include Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, the earliest known picture by Velázquez (c. 1617–18), in Room 33 of the Beit Wing, while in Room 29 beyond there's a haunting Mantegna, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, painted in monochrome to simulate a marble relief. Room 25 covers "Art in Rome in the eighteenth century", with plenty of local interest. Nearby in Room 42 is Caravaggio's dynamic The Taking of Christ, in which the artist portrayed himself as a passive spectator on the right of the picture, holding a lamp. You'll find the highlight of the Dutch collection next door in Room 40: Vermeer's Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid, one of only 35 accepted works by the artist, with his characteristic use of white light from the window accentuating the woman's heated emotions. At the top of the Dargan Wing, there's an excellent survey of French art from Poussin to the Cubists, featuring works by Millet, Monet and Picasso.