You've got a Friend

If you visit any of the country's public galleries and museums you will probably have noticed, from time to time, small inscriptions pointing out that particular works were donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland. You may have wondered who the "Friends" might be, but, apart from those labels, they are pretty much anonymous and invisible. However, a major exhibition opening next Friday at the RHA Gallagher gallery and the Hugh Lane aims to provide an introduction to the organisation and illustrate its history and achievements.

Those achievements are considerable. The exhibition title, 75 Years of Giving, is no more than accurate. In their 75-year history to date, the Friends have donated or arranged the donation of more than 700 works of art, antiques and other artifacts to national and public galleries, museums and libraries throughout the 32 counties. Not bad for a voluntary, charitable organisation relying on the personal interest and commitment of members. And, as the show makes clear, many of the donated works rank as significant additions to the collections of the country's foremost galleries, especially, it must be said, the Hugh Lane.

The impact of the Friends on the collection of the Hugh Lane is particularly noticeable. It's appropriate that there should be a special relationship between the two, for the founder of FNCI was the formidable Sarah Purser, who was closely involved in the acquisition of Charlemont House as the home of Dublin's Gallery of Modern Art. When she presided at the meeting that established the Society of FNCI at the Royal Irish Academy in 1924, she was acutely aware that the public collections needed more than official State support.

Modernity was particularly important to Purser. The Friends' pioneering, progressive edge is directly related to her vital role as a champion of modern ideas in Irish cultural life. As Nicola Gordon Bowe recounts in her history of the Friends, Purser quickly mobilised the fledgling organisation in the fight to win the Lane bequest pictures for Ireland. When Lane was killed on the Lusitania he left ambiguous and conflicting documentation as to where his considerable collection of 39 continental paintings should reside. Both Dublin and London could lay plausible claim to them, and did, in a dispute that was not settled for many decades. Lane's bequest was conditional on the recipients having a suitable gallery to contain it. It was Purser who suggested the garden of Charlemont House as a good site for a modern art gallery.

As one of the Friends, W.B. Yeats, astutely pointed out, it made economic sense to target the work of artists before they had become established and expensive, a consideration that accorded conveniently with Purser's Modernist sympathies. But in practice, while targeting work by notable contemporary figures, from Orpen to Duncan Grant, the organisation ranged far and wide in its acquisitions. By 1936 the Friends were lamenting their failure to expand their membership, which stood at 153. They decided on a shift of gear, from Purser's rather stern, dutiful tone, "the private discharge of a patriotic duty," to a more social approach, "substituting common pleasure for secret virtue."

You can see what Purser and her successors were up against when you read of the outraged reactions to an innocuously devout work by Georges Rouault Christ and the Soldier when it was initially offered to the Hugh Lane in 1942. "Pictures like this," fumed a dissident Friend, "induce only a feeling of depression, disgust and anger so far as I personally am concerned." Ironically, the painting was diverted to Maynooth College, where it was accepted with gratitude, to ride out the storm. It is now in the Municipal. Despite being the favoured beneficiaries of the Friends' activities, this wasn't the only occasion that the Municipal's Art Advisory Committee looked a gift horse in the mouth. They declined Henry Moore's Reclining Figure in the mid-1950s, though again it eventually found its way into the collection.

It's hardly surprising that many significant figures in the Irish art and literary world have numbered, and continue to number, among the Friends, including Purser and George "AE" Russell, Yeats and Gogarty, Mainie Jellett, Norah McGuinness, Chester Beatty, Thomas MacGreevy, Ann Crookshank, Derek Hill and the dynamic James White. The 150 pieces that make up the anniversary exhibition encompass not only paintings, prints and sculpture, but also stained glass, furniture and costumes spanning four centuries. They've been drawn from such places as the National Gallery, the Chester Beatty Library, Cork's Crawford Art Gallery, the Limerick Museum, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, the Ulster Museum and the Galway Municipal Art Collection.

Apart from acquiring objects, the FNCI, particularly in its earlier days, organised exhibitions and lectures and lobbied on cultural issues. It currently numbers over 500 members, with Brian O'Connor as president - and the President, Mrs McAleese as patron. Stalwarts such as James White and Derek Hill are still active on the council, which also includes Tony O'Reilly, Tom Ryan RHA, Jeremy Williams, Arthur Duff and Mairead Dunlevy. If, over the last few decades, it seems much less a pioneering organisation, this is partly because of the changes it helped to effect in the cultural landscape, but it still has a role to play, and is keen to recruit new members.

75 Years of Giving opens at the RHA Gallagher Gallery and the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art on Friday, and continues in both venues until August 29th