Art collection a ‘huge loss to city’

Date Published: 10-Jan-2013

BY DARA BRADLEY

The decision by Galway City Council to hand back a significant art collection lent by a philanthropist has been described as “incredibly stupid” and “completely unnecessary”.

The Daly Collection of 27 pieces included works by Paul Henry, Jack B Yeats and Sir John Lavery and had been kept in storage by the Council for the past 23 years.

It had been loaned to the city by Irish art collector, Peter Daly, who was reared in Renville Hall, Oranmore but lived all of his adult life abroad, in Africa and the Isle of Man, where he died six years ago at the age of 84.

Last April, an executive decision of the Council was taken to return the whole collection to the Daly Settlement Trust because the city had no place to display them.

Since it emerged that City Hall had returned the important collection, which is estimated to be valued at well over €1 million, the Council has been severely criticised.

Tom Kenny of Kenny’s Bookshop and Art Gallery yesterday said the Council should not have handed back the collection.

“All they had to do was hang the paintings and display them to the public – they could have done that at City Hall,” said Mr Kenny.

“It was a needless decision to hand them back; it was incredibly stupid, totally unnecessary. It’s an awful shame because it’s a huge loss to the city.”

The collection has since been broken up and some pieces have already been sold at auction – one painting by Paul Henry titled Roadside Cottages below Mweelrea Mountain sold for over £100,000 at Christies last month; The Green Hammock by Sir John Lavery, sold for £79,250. Other works in the collection are by George Russell, Walter Frederick Osborne, Roderic O’Conor, Leo Whelan, Sir Alfred Munnings.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.