A special exhibition of paintings by Irish artists - including Mainie Jellet, Roderic O'Conor and William Orpen - from private collections is currently on view at the National Gallery of Ireland. It is organised to coincide with the publication of a book, Ireland's Painters 1600-1940, by "dynamic duo" Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald.
According to Sergio Benedetti, the gallery's head curator, nine of the 10 pictures in the exhibition come from private collections. The paintings, which are on view in Room 20, off the Yeats Museum, are open to the public until February next year. Admission is free.
The authors of the new book, which was first published in the 1970s, "have the most incredible contacts in Ireland . . . They know exactly where every picture is in a private collection", explained Sally Salvesen, its Yale University Press commissioning editor, at a party to celebrate the book's launch in the National Gallery this week.
"They have the most unusual working relationship I have ever seen. They both prowl around the room, they shout at each other, they say 'you are ridiculous'. They both go bright red in the face. One threatens to leave the room," said Salvesen. "Their relationship is very stormy, very tempestuous, but they each have deep admiration for each other's scholarship."
"It used to be tempestuous. As old age creeps on we only row once a week," said Crookshank, TCD's former professor of history of art.
"Yes, it used to be once a day," added FitzGerald. Their academic relationship began more than 30 years ago.
Lochlann Quinn, chairman of AIB and newly appointed chair of the National Gallery of Ireland, was at the book launch, along with U2's Paul McGuinness; Michael O'Reilly, former chair of the gallery and owner of the Lemonstreet Gallery, where the Nevill Johnson photographic exhibition is running; David Norris; painter Patricia Jorgensen, whose work is currently on show at 24 Kingram Place, and Deirdre Conroy, the architectural historian.
The two writers, dubbed the dynamic duo by art historian Brian Allen, who is chairman-elect of the National Art Collections Fund in the UK, said they have "led the way" with their scholarship.
The book is published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.