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Portrait of Hugh Lane
Portrait of Hugh Lane

Portrait of Hugh Lane

Artist (1852 - 1930)
Date1907
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions226.1 × 116.8 cm
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Lane Bequest, 1913.
Object number148
DescriptionHugh Lane first met the artist Antonio Mancini in Rome in 1904 after which he became a huge admirer of his work. Lane commissioned Mancini to paint his portrait and this canvas, showing Lane surrounded by objects d’art, was regarded by Lane’s friends to be his best likeness. When the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opened in Clonmell House, Harcourt Street, Dublin on 20 January 1908, its impressive founding collection numbered a substantial three hundred works of art, about one third of which was donated by Hugh Lane himself. Lane was a successful art dealer rather than being a wealthy magnate. However, he was driven by the wish to enable people to freely enjoy and appreciate modern Irish and international art. In attempting to fulfil his vision, Lane was adept at galvanising a distinguished and varied body of supporters. While Hugh Lane expressed relief that a building had temporarily been provided for the gallery of modern art, Clonmell House, a Georgian townhouse, did not have the scope to show all works to best advantage. The gift of what he considered to be his best thirty-nine Continental pictures was therefore conditional on a suitable building being provided to house them and the entire municipal gallery collection. (JO'D)
On View
On view
Lady Gregory
Antonio Mancini
1907
Alderman Thomas Kelly
Sarah Cecilia Harrison
1925
Nathaniel Hone, R.H.A.
Sir William Orpen
c. 1905
Mother and Child
Sarah Henrietta Purser
c. 1894
Portrait of Mrs Shine
Antonio Mancini
1907
October
Frank Joseph O'Meara
1887
Environs de St. Tropez
André Dunoyer de Segonzac
Empty Creels
Jack B Yeats
1913
William Butler Yeats
John Butler Yeats
c. 1886
The Village, Twilight
Henri Eugene Augustin Le Sidaner
1902