Marking the 150th anniversary of the National Gallery of Ireland, celebrated Irish writers find inspiration in its magnificent collection In 1864 the National Gallery of Ireland opened to the public in Dublin. It then housed just 112 paintings. Today the gallery holds over 15,000 works of European art and is notable both for its extensive collection of Irish art and its Italian baroque and Dutch masters paintings. For this anthology, published to mark the 150th anniversary of the National Gallery of Ireland, fifty-six Irish writers have contributed short stories, essays, and poems inspired by pictures in the collection. These literary responses to art are by turns profound, playful, and insightful. Authors include acclaimed figures in contemporary Irish literature, such as Colm Tóibín, John Banville, John Boyne, Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, Paula Meehan, Paul Muldoon, John Montague, and Seamus Heaney. The pictures that the writers have selected are intriguingly diverse. They range from old master paintings by Caravaggio, Rembrandt, El Greco, and Velázquez to works by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre Bonnard, as well as works by Irish artists such as Jack B. Yeats, John Lavery, Gerard Dillon, and Paul Henry. The book is organized alphabetically by writer and each text is illustrated with the chosen work in color. Edited with preface by Janet McLean, Curator of European Art 1850–1950 at the NGI.

This book is to coincide with the National Gallery's exhibiton of the same name. With chapters from leading Irish historians, including Roy Foster, Tom Dunne and Raoisain Kennedy, 'Creating History' delivers fascinating assessments that situate the Easter Rising and Ireland's claim to independence through the historical significance and aesthetic value of Ireland's major artistic works.

During this period, his first wife Elizabeth Kerlin was the model in a number of exciting and experimental works such as Convent Garden, Brittany (National Gallery of Ireland). After the First World War, Leech divided his time between London and the South of France, travelling with his companion and later wife May Botterell. In the tradition of the 'Irish Impressionists' he was fascinated by the treatment of light in French painting, though he continued to explore different styles through his career. Leech painted portraits, landscapes and still lifes, including remarkable self-portraits, interiors and luxuriant aloes.

Art and the Nation State is a wide-ranging study of the reception and critical debate on modernist art from the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the end of the modernist era in the 1970s. Drawing on art works, media coverage, reviews, writings and the private papers of key Irish and international artists, critics and commentators including Samuel Beckett, Thomas MacGreevy, Clement Greenberg, James Johnson Sweeney, Herbert Read and Brian O'Doherty, the study explores the significant contribution of Irish modernist art to post-independence cultural debate and diverging notions of national Irish identity. Through an analysis of major controversies, the book examines how the reputations of major Irish artists was moulded by the prevailing demands of national identity, modernization and the dynamics of the international art world. Debate about the relevance of the work of leading international modernists such as the Irish-American sculptor, Andrew O'Connor, the French expressionist painter, Georges Rouault, the British sculptor Henry Moore and the Irish born, but ostensibly British, artist Francis Bacon to Irish cultural life is also analysed, as is the equally problematic positioning of Northern Irish artists.

Ireland's incredible artistic heritage is celebrated in this entertaining, enlightening book. From the Newgrange kerbstone to Francis Bacon's studio, Bhreathnach-Lynch takes us through a history of Irish art in 50 works, celebrating each along the way.

A beautiful, gift-sized volume celebrating Constable’s enduring fascination and engagement with the sky John Constable was one of the supreme painters of the weather, and his depictions of the sky are essential components of all his landscape paintings, from famous works such as The Hay Wain and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows to his numerous cloud studies painted on Hampstead Heath, culminating in paintings that are all sky; the landscape beneath is completely absent. In a letter to friend John Fisher, written in 1821, Constable commented, “That landscape painter who does not make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail himself of one of his greatest aids . . . It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment.” Written by Mark Evans, a leading authority on the work of John Constable, and brimming with beautiful images, Constable’s Skies captures the artist’s fascination with the sky and brings together his depictions of the English weather from throughout his career. The unprecedented fidelity of Constable’s painted skies is proven by reference to contemporary weather diaries. The book also includes a guide to where to find Constable’s work around the world.

Published to accompany the exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Liverpool 23 June - 1 October 2000.

In this remarkable collection of 100 manifestos from the last 100 years, Alex Danchev presents the cacophony of voices of such diverse movements as Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Feminism, Communism, Destructivism, Vorticism, Stridentism, Cannibalism and Stuckism, taking in along the way film, architecture, fashion, and cookery. Artists' manifestos are nothing if not revolutionary. They are outlandish, outrageous, and frequently offensive. They combine wit, wisdom, and world-shaking demands. This collection gathers together an international array of artists of every stripe, including Kandinsky, Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, Le Corbusier, Picabia, Dalí, Oldenburg, Vertov, Baselitz, Kitaj, Murakami, Gilbert and George, together with their allies and collaborators - such figures as Marinetti, Apollinaire, Breton, Trotsky, Guy Debord and Rem Koolhaas. Edited with an Introduction by Alex Danchev