The National Gallery in London and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin Are Hatching a Secretive Agreement Ahead of Brexit to Share Paintings

On October 30, the day before Brexit, the Hugh Lane gallery
in Dublin will be hosting a public talk on Édouard Manet’s
Music in the Tuileries Gardens, a painting that is
traveling to Ireland from the National Gallery in London, where it
lives.

The talk, at first glance, seems unremarkable and
unconnected to the brewing turmoil in British politics. But
the very fact that the work is traveling is an indication of
secretive negotiations between the Dublin gallery and the National
Gallery.

The pending deal, which is being hammered out with Brexit in the
background, would renew an agreement from 1993 that finally settled
the question of which institution owned the painting, along with a
group of others left behind by collector Sir Hugh Lane.

At stake are 39 pictures that Lane bequeathed to the National
Gallery before his ill-fated voyage to New York aboard
the Lusitania, which was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915.

Lane’s signed but unwitnessed codicil to his will, which was
discovered in his desk, left the same paintings to Dublin, on the
condition the city build a gallery to house them. (Ironically, Lane
was the director of the National Gallery of Ireland when he died,
an institution he had richly endowed with Old Masters.)

Despite years of lobbying by Irish parties, the trove of
paintings by Renoir, Manet, and Pissarro, among others,
ultimately remained in London, and the works became a rallying
point for nationalist Irish politics. The compromise that was
eventually struck belatedly recognized Ireland’s moral
claim to the works, but the National Gallery remained the legal
owner.

But as part of the compromise, 31 of Lane’s paintings have
been on long-term loan to the Hugh Lane gallery, while the
cream of the collection—including Manet’s Music in the
Tuileries Gardens—travels back and forth between Dublin
and London every six years.

The formal agreement expires this year. Yet artnet News has
learned that Manet’s painting, along with three masterpiece
works by Degas, Monet, and Vuillard, are due to return to Dublin
next month, signaling that an extension of the agreement is being
finalized.

Meanwhile, four great Impressionist paintings are due to head
back to the National Gallery after their extended stay in Dublin.
They include some of the artists’ most famous works: Renoir’s
The Umbrellas and Manet’s Portrait of Eva
Gonzales, as well as paintings by Berthe Morisot, and Camille
Pissarro.

Such is the sensitivity surrounding the negotiations that any
mention of the paintings in the Hugh Lane Bequest appears to have
been redacted from recent minutes of the National Gallery’s
trustees’ meetings.

Neither institution is willing to talk about how Brexit might
have colored their desire to renew the deal and ensure the
painting swap before October 31, the Brexit deadline. But they are
certainly aware that, should Britain abruptly leave the European
Union on Halloween, disruption at ports and airports is
expected.

A spokesperson for the National Gallery will only confirm that
the rotation will take place “in October.” The director of the Hugh
Lane, Barbara Dawson, is only slightly more forthcoming, saying:
“We hope to have news for you soon. In the meantime, the October
rotation will go ahead as planned.”

(In 2013, Dawson described the arrival of Renoir’s The
Umbrellas, along with the brief reunion of all of Hugh Lane’s
paintings in Dublin, as “an exciting homecoming for these much
loved masterpieces, which are part of the cultural history of
modern Ireland.”)

A former director of the National Gallery, Charles Saumarez
Smith, describes the previous resolution of the problems over
Lane’s will as “a very sensible compromise.”

He says the Hugh Lane Bequest was “extraordinarily important in
enriching the collection of the National Gallery at a time when the
trustees were cautious in their acquisitions.”

The post The National Gallery in London and the Hugh Lane
Gallery in Dublin Are Hatching a Secretive Agreement Ahead of
Brexit to Share Paintings appeared first on artnet
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