Enfilade

From the press release for the exhibition:

Exhibiting Art In Georgian Ireland: The Society of Artists’ Exhibitions Recreated
City Assembly House, Dublin, 16 June — 29 July 2018

Curated by Ruth Kenny

This summer the Irish Georgian Society will host a world-class exhibition of eighteenth-century Irish paintings to mark the restoration of the City Assembly House and to commemorate the Society of Artists in Ireland who erected the building over 250 years ago. Celebrating the building’s original incarnation as the first purpose-built public gallery in Britain and Ireland, the exhibition will re-assemble works by Society of Artists members such as Thomas Roberts, Jonathan Fisher, James Forrester, Robert Carver, Robert Healy, and Hugh Douglas Hamilton, including many pieces which were first displayed in the room in the series of exhibitions the Society held there between 1766 and 1780.

By honouring the pioneering spirit of these exhibitions, we aim to provide an insight into the fascinating range of artistic production taking place in eighteenth-century Ireland. As the original exhibition catalogues reveal, Georgian Dublin was a hive of creativity, with landscape artists working alongside portraitists, history painters, sculptors, printers, and draughtsmen in an astonishing range of media, including oil paint, pastel, marble, wood, glass, wax and hair. With loans secured from national institutions and private collectors, this exhibition will reunite over eighty works by exhibiting Society of Artists’ members. An accompanying catalogue will evaluate these stimulating years, assessing Ireland’s first introduction to exhibition culture and the significant contribution it made to an increasingly self-confident national school of Irish art.

Exhibiting Art In Georgian Ireland has been curated by Dr Ruth Kenny, formerly Assistant Curator of British Art, 1750–1830 at Tate Britain, who has identified over seventy works of art that will showcase the breadth of talent displayed by the Society of Artists’ initial series of exhibitions between 1765 and 1780. The public will have free access to the exhibition, with guided tours and exclusive events to mark the completion of the restoration of the City Assembly House.

David Fleming, Ruth Kenny, and William Laffan, eds., with contributions by Victoria Browne, Paul Caffrey, Donough Cahill, Logan Morse, and Brendan Rooney, Exhibiting Art In Georgian Ireland: The Society of Artists’ Exhibitions Recreated (Dublin: Irish Georgian Society, 2018), .