Hugh Lane Gallery

Brief Information

The gallery of modern art occupies Charlemont House, an 18th-century townhouse on Parnell Square. As a result, the place is perceived on two scales at once: as one of the oldest public museums of modern art and as a former aristocratic residence adapted for showing paintings and exhibitions.

Hugh Lane’s collection began as a private gallery, but in the very year it was founded it passed to the city authorities. Because of this, the history of the place is visible not only in the works of the artists, but also in the building itself: the museum was not built from scratch, but gradually occupied, expanded, and remodeled an existing house. The most unexpected transfer here is literal: Francis Bacon’s studio was dismantled in London and reassembled in the gallery.

What to Notice First

It is worth comparing the old Charlemont House wing with the later museum additions. The main house has changed very little since it was built, and its strict classical straight lines recall that this was an urban mansion, not a purpose-built museum hall. Against this backdrop, the 1929 extension with gardens for works of art shows the first step in adapting the house into a gallery.

Inside, the surviving fireplaces in the upper rooms are important, including works by Pietro Bossi: such details preserve the memory of a residential interior. The later reconstruction of 2004–2006 added new spaces to the gallery, but does not erase the old foundation. A separate focus is the reconstructed studio of Francis Bacon: it is not an ordinary exhibit on a wall, but the artist’s relocated working space, which makes the museum look like a place that preserves process as well as finished paintings.