Hugh Lane Gallery

The Hugh Lane Gallery, officially Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and originally the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, is an art museum operated by Dublin City Council and its subsidiary, the Hugh Lane Gallery Trust. It is in Charlemont House (built 1763) on Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland. Admission is free. History The gallery was founded by noted art collector Sir Hugh Lane on Harcourt Street on 20 January 1908, and is the first known public gallery of modern art in the world. Lane met the running costs, while seeking a more permanent home. New buildings were proposed in St. Stephens Green, and as a dramatic bridge-gallery over the River Liffey, both proposed designs by Sir Edwin Lutyens, both unrealised. Lane did not live to see his gallery permanently located as he died in 1915 during the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Since 1933 it has been housed in Charlemont House. Lane's will bequeathed his collection to London, but an unwitnessed codicil, written in the months prior to his death, bequeathed the 39 paintings to Dublin on the condition that a permanent gallery was secured within 5 years. London's National Gallery did not recognise the codicil, and all the paintings form the Lane Bequest in their collection. In 1938, the British put forward a suggestion from Sir Robert Witt: "...that these pictures should alternate between London and Dublin. We have had them in London for a considerable number of years, and it might now be the turn of the Dublin Galleries to have them for a number of years... Legally, the holders have a very strong case, but we are so wealthy in our treasures, while Ireland is so comparatively poor..."