Catching a Likeness: Portraits on Paper
There’s a smashing exhibition running in the National Gallery of Ireland at the moment. Admission is free and it’s well worth a visit!
Catching a Likeness: Portraits on Paper includes a wide variety of drawings, watercolours, etchings etc. from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Idealised heads feature alongside robust interpretations, preparatory sketches, self-portraits and caricatures with modern portraits displaying a more experimental approach. It’s in the Print Gallery – which most regular visitors will know as the ‘low light’ rooms where the annual exhibit of Turner watercolours take place.
Portraits from the NGI collection are complemented by a fine selection of works from the National Galleries of Scotland, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts (Birmingham), the National Self-Portrait Collection (University of Limerick) as well as private collections. Featured artists include Paul Klee, Ingres, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and images by Irish artists such as Patrick Hennessy, Michael Kane, Seán Keating and Brian Bourke.
My current favourite (which will probably change next visit) is a beautifully drafted etching by Anders Zorn, the Swedish painter who ranks right up there along with Sargent and Sorolla in my own humble triumvirate of outstandingly expressive realists. Actually, there’s a pretty flattering Sargent portrait of Hazel Lavery in there too – but then, did that guy produce anything less than mighty ….ever?
Catching a Likeness: Portraits on Paper
Until 9 December 2007
National Gallery of Ireland (Print Gallery).
Admission free. Tel. 01-661 5133 www.nationalgallery.ie
