Beech Trees at Norbury Park Surrey
by JMW Turner.
Drawings, Watercolours in The National Gallery
The National Gallery of Ireland houses a large collection of watercolours, pastels, drawings, prints (including, engravings, etchings, mezzotints and lithographs) and miniatures. These artworks exemplify numerous national styles in the history of art, up to the mid-twentieth century. Among the 8,000 or so works, are finished landscape watercolour paintings, pencil sketches, preparatory studies for paintings, portraits in all media as well as topographical and architectural drawings. Highlights include: a collection of over 30 watercolours by JMW Turner, Old Master drawings by Italian, French and Dutch masters, works by Degas and Picasso, and the Jack B. Yeats collection.
In addition, the NGI houses eighteenth century mezzotint portrait prints, as well as a representative collection of miniature artworks by Irish, British and continental artists covering the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century.
In the Print Gallery of the National Gallery of Ireland, varying exhibitions of artworks on paper are held throughout the year. The Print Gallery is equipped with special display cases with low level lighting to protect the works from over-exposure to light. Only a small fraction of the NGI's 8,000 paper-based works are viewable: most are kept in protective storage. However, researchers may study other works from the collection in the NGI study room, known as the Diageo Print Room.
