Artist and art teacher Áine Andrews returns with another series of lectures on Famous Paintings and their Hidden Histories. In each lecture, Áine will focus on a particular painting to recount its history, as well as that of the artist and their story. The lectures can be attended as a series, but are also designed as standalone talks, which can be attended individually. Tuesday 28 October: Portrait of Hugh Lane
John Singer Sargent, 1906 Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane Dublin A portrait of Hugh Lane by John Singer hangs today in the in the Dublin City art gallery that bears his name but for many years it had pride of place in Lane’s London home.
Hugh Lane was born in Cork in 1875, but he was never to spend time there again until, with tragic irony, he died when the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U boat in 1915 within sight of the Cork coastline.
Lane is perhaps best known as Lady Gregory’s nephew and particularly for an unsigned codicil to his will which led to the controversy regarding Ireland’s right to the important Impressionist paintings previously owned by him. Little, however, is generally known of the collector’s life in London and his extraordinary successful career as a dealer of old master paintings as well as modern works of art.
Tuesday 4 November: The Weeping Woman
Pablo Picasso, 1937
Tate Gallery London
The Weeping Woman is one of a series of portraits by Pablo Picasso that are among the most wrenching in the history of art. Their appearance in 1937 can be seen as emblems of the upheavals that convulsed Europe during the tumultuous years preceding World War II.
His wife Olga and seventeen-year-old Marie Thérese Walter feature in some of the drawings and etchings but his new mistress, the photographer Dora Maar, is the face most closely associated with the weeping woman. Picasso said of the work: "For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me. It was the deep reality, not the superficial one... Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman....And it's important, because women are suffering machines.” Tuesday 18 November: Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels
Clara Peeters 1615 The Mauritshuis the Hague In 2012, the Mauritshuis in The Hague managed to acquire a particularly appealing painting by Clara Peeters. In Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels, Peeters captures the different ages of the cheeses and reflections in glass and metal. The handle of a finely crafted silver knife is directed towards the viewer as if inviting them to carve into the cheese but Peeters uses it also to sign her name in capitals on the side of the elaborately decorated handle. There is also another astonishing detail. A minute self-portrait in a white cap is reflected in the pewter lid of a ceramic jug behind the cheeses. The portrait proclaims the worthiness not only of being a painter, but of being a woman painter. We know little about the life of Clara Peeters, but there are some forty known paintings by this extraordinary skilled artist who had such great influence on the painters of the Northern Netherlands. Tuesday 25 November: The Birth of Venus
Botticelli, 1485 Uffizi Gallery Florence Botticelli’s Birth of Venus was a sensation in its day for its depiction of the nude female body. It depicts the goddess of love and beauty arriving on the island of Cyprus, born of the sea spray and blown there by the winds on a giant scallop shell, as pure and as perfect as a pearl. But what of the hidden story of Simonetta Vespucci, the face of Venus with her fluttering gold red hair, who was the ‘most beautiful woman in Florence’ and a legend in her lifetime. Linked to the Medici, Lorenzo (the Magnificent) and his handsome brother, Guiliano, the details of Simonetta’s life have passed into history with her death at 22 years of age. Her beauty, however, remains with us because it so haunted the artist who so delicately portrayed her face in several other paintings. Tuesday 2 December: The Taking of Christ
Caravaggio 1602 National Gallery of Ireland Dublin The extraordinary Caravaggio 2025 exhibition at Palazzo Barberini Rome brought together 24 absolute masterpieces, loaned from collections around the world. Among them was The Taking of Christ from the National Gallery in Dublin. Pope Francis held a deep admiration for Caravaggio, in spite of his controversial paintings and his reputation as a violent, provocative man who eventually killed someone in a brawl. Caravaggio's art is also linked to Pope Leo's order through the Basilica of St. Augustine, in the centre of Rome, which houses "The Madonna of the Pilgrims". Art historians knew of The Taking of Christ but the painting itself was lost for several centuries. Over the years it became the most sought after Caravaggio masterpiece, until the unthinkable happened and it was found hiding in plain sight in a Jesuit house ‘in Dublin of all places’ in 1990.The painting has now returned to Dublin, but its fascinating story of course made it one of the Barberini exhibition’s most exciting highlights. Hopefully the new Pope got to see it in Rome but who knows, he may well have seen it on one of his many trips to Ireland. Tuesday 9 December: Nativity Window
Evie Hone, 1944 Manresa - Jesuit Centre of Spirituality Dublin Evie Hone’s Nativity has been widely reproduced, often as a Christmas card, but the history of the commission has only recently been fully documented.
The Nativity was the first part of a suite of five windows commissioned in 1944, for the small chapel used by the community of St Stanislaus College at the Jesuit novitiate at Tullybeg Co Offaly.Evie Hone was born into an established Anglo-Irish family but the age of eleven she contracted polio which resulted in several operations and a lifelong disability. Undeterred, however, she embarked on a career in art, initially in painting with her great friend Mainie Jellett before joining An Túr Gloine to devote herself entirely to working in stained glass.In the 1990s, the Nativity and the other four windows were permanently moved to Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality in Dollymount, Dublin, where they can be seen today.