Buskers, beggars and cobblers from a forgotten Dublin went on view in the National Gallery of Ireland this week at the opening of a new exhibition, Alive alive O! - Dublin Street Life 1750-1900, in the Print Gallery.
Its unveiling coincided with the official opening of a new centre for the study of Irish art in the National Gallery's millennium wing.
Dr Brendan Rooney, administrator of the new ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art, says: "It's going to make material available to the public in a way that it was not before."
The centre will provide access to archive material, including manuscripts, documents, photographs and newspaper articles.
The centre was opened by Dr Brian Allen, director of studies at the London-based Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, who said it reflected the great scholarship of art that exists in Dublin.
He mentioned Dr Anne Crookshank and Desmond FitzGerald, the Knight of Glin, who co-authored the book, Ireland's Painters 1600-1940, which was published last year by Yale University Press, as an example.
The exhibition of prints, which chronicles street life, "is about the aspects of Dublin that we've forgotten about - the beggars, street traders and hawkers," Mellon said.
Others at the opening included writer Anne Le Marquand Hartigan; artist Seán Mulcahy; art historian Dr Hilary Pyle; curator of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork, Peter Murray who was just back from the Venice Biennale, and Niamh MacNally, prints and drawings assistant at the National Gallery, with her sisters Ellen and Sheila, brother Kevin and their father, optician Donal MacNally.
Admission to the Alive alive O! exhibition is free and it will be on view until Sunday, August 24th. Access to the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art is by appointment only. Contact brooney@ngi.ie