TWO exhibitions, which both opened this week, marked the launch of Hugh Lane 1875-1915, a biography by Robert O'Byrne. Tea and cakes were served in the National Gallery at the opening of its exhibition, which honours Lane, the director of the gallery from 1914 until his tragic death on the SS Lusitania the following year.
After the tea party, at which paintings collected by Lane during his life - including works by Poussin, Titian, Gainsborough and Van Dyck - were unveiled, guests made their way soberly up to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Parnell Square to attend the opening of its exhibition Hugh Lane and Friends. Here something a little stronger was served, and Prof Roy Foster officially launched the book. O'Byrne recalled Lane who "always refused to speak in public because he was very shy". But that, he said, "was never a problem for me".