[Sir] Hugh Lane (1875-1915)

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Commentary
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].

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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.)

Frank Pakenham (Lord Longford), Five Lives (1964), remarks on Hugh Lane: ‘the dazzling, mercurial picture dealer and picture lover, went down with the Lusitania in 1915 [...] an Irishman who made much of his reputation in England, and quarrelled impartially with the stupider elements in both countries at various times, had originally bequeathed his thirty-nine picture to the National Gallery [who] behaved in an elephantine way as had certain Irish authorities ... When he was drowned a codicil to his will was discovered, under which he gave effect to his deeper, that is to say his Irish, loyalty ... though signed in three places, it was not witnessed’; cites role of Thomas Bodkin (‘an even greater authority on pictures’) and others including crucially Bryan Moyne (Guinness, Lord Moyne).

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Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce (Oklahoma UP 1962; Newton Abbot: David Charles 1972): ‘A sensationally successful art dealer, Lane was a center of controversy in death as in life. He was suspected of selfish motives when he urged Dublin to buy masterpieces, and even when he offered his own collection to the city provided a suitable gallery be built. Obviously the bestqualified candidate for the curatorship of the National Museum, he was passed over in favor of the Papal Count George Plunkett, thereby provoking the first of Yeats’s topical poems, “An Appointment". [...] Even without the disputed pictures, Lane’s benefactions [66] were impressive, including more than sixty paintings of the traditional schools. Among them were canvasses by Bordone, Strozzi, and Poussin which provided images for Yeats’s poetry. In addition, Lane, inspired by Lady Gregory’s enthusiasm, commissioned John Butler Yeats, William Orpen, and others to paint portraits of Irish celebrities. These pictures reveal strong features, in which vigor and sensibility are blended. Seeing them, one understands the impact of these writers, actors, and political leaders on Irish culture, and senses the distinctively Irish and AngloIrish flavor of their personalities. In the eager gaze of iE as he peers through his spectacles Count Markievicz: creates an impression of this famed host who was as keen to hear the views of others as he was to express his own. J. B. Yeats caught in the relaxed figure of Synge, arms crossed, a faintly perceptible smile on his lips, the earthy humor and tragedy of his plays. Epstein’s bold head of Lady Gregory conveys her matronly strength. In the pencil sketch by J. B. Yeats the young poet Padraic Colum is wistfully meditative. Mancini’s bold use of chiaroscuro was admired by Synge, who, Yeats tells us in his poem on the Municipal Gallery, thought the Lady Gregory portrait the finest since Rembrandt. Even better is his monumental canvas depicting the sensitive and aristocratic figure of Lane himself.’ (pp.66-67.)

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Brenda Maddox, Yeats’s Ghosts (HarperCollins 1999), narrates Yeats’s attempt to contact Lane through a psychic medium in order to find the answer to the question of the codicil in 1915, finding the spirit of the departed anxious only to scotch the rumour of his manner of death: ‘An American survivor of the Lusitania had been telling people that [Sir Hugh] Lane had virtually committed suicide by wedging himself into the companion ladder as the ship was sinking. [...; 15] What the Lane “Control” asked of Yeats was to tell his aunt, Lady Gregory - immediately, in order to save her further distress - that he had tried as hard as all the rest of the passengers to save his life.’ (pp.15-16.)

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Homan Potterton, review of Robert O’Byrne, Hugh Lane (Lilliput), in The Irish Times (21 Oct. 2000), recounts details: Municipal Gallery renamed after him as a tribute to his role, 1975; nine Impressionist paintings of the first rank; presented 24 pictures to the Gallery; O’Byrne discovered much Lane material in NLI, much acquired in the mid-1980s as a gift from a cousin of Lane, and later by purchased from the cousin’s son; son of Protestant clergyman; port. by Mancini; compulsive gambler; threw away thousands at Monte Carlo casino; fastidious, occasionally querulous and tactless; imperfect education; unable to write about art; his love of Ireland shaped by Lady Gregory resulted in his believing he ‘must do something for it’; later came to ‘hate the place and the people’.

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Quotations
Wake-up call: ‘I am trying to wake up these sleepy Irish painters to do great things.’ (Quoted in Lady Gregory, Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement, London 1921, p.44; cited S. B. Kennedy, Irish Art & Modernism, Inst. Irish Studies 1991, p.4.)

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Notes
Lane Bequest: 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.]

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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.]

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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]

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