Introduction to the Fine Art Collections
The Fine Art collection contains a multitude of works of national and international significance, executed in a variety of styles and media. Amongst the earlier British paintings are portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds, whilst landscape artists include Richard Wilson and J.M.W. Turner. The Old Masters collection - small but significant - comprizes works by Dutch, Flemish and Italian masters, with the best-known names being Jacob Jordaens and Pompeo Batoni. The Irish collection - the backbone of the entire holdings - contains works dating from the late seventeenth century to the present day, with paintings by well-known figures such as James Arthur O'Connor, Roderic O'Conor and Walter Osborne; also, by illustrious Ulster artists like Sir John Lavery, John Luke and William Conor.
The Museum also owns a highly important collection of twentieth-century and modern art, by British and foreign artists. The modern section was built up during the 1960s, at a time when such works were considered challenging and experimental. During this decade, few museums collected contemporary art and the Museum was famous for the daring of its acquisitions policy. Notable artists represented include Karel Appel, Jean Dubuffet, Francis Bacon and the sculptor Henry Moore. Of particular interest is a small but important collection of American 'Colour Field' paintings by Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and others. The 1960s collection, one of the most important of the period outside London, includes work by Patrick Caulfield and Bridget Riley.
Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) The Dawn of Christianity (The Flight into Egypt) (U224) Painted 1841 Donated by Lady Margaret Currie, 1913
Turner is one of the greatest and most original of all landscape painters. Precociously gifted, he entered the Royal Academy schools at the age of fourteen and first showed at the Academy the following year. In 1802 he became the youngest ever full Academician. Exclusively a watercolourist until 1796, his early works were influenced by 17th century Dutch art and later, by Claude and Richard Wilson. By the early 1800s, however, his work had taken a new direction, becoming increasingly Romantic in its dramatic subject matter and sense of movement. This was a new and revolutionary approach to landscape painting. From the 1830s his landscapes and seascapes became increasingly free, with detail subordinated to atmospheric effects; indeed, the early 1840s saw some of his paintings almost abstract in composition, the forms dissolved into a haze of colour and light - traits plain to see in The Dawn of Christianity. In his handling of these elements - colour and light - he anticipated Impressionism.