antiquesandartireland.com

For the Love of Art, the exhibition by Frederick William Burton at the National Gallery of Ireland from October 25 to  January 14, offers an opportunity to look again at the work of this eminent Irish Victorian watercolour artist whose work remains popular today.  Burton’s Hellelil and Hildebrand, The Meeting on the Turret Stairs was voted Ireland’s favourite painting in 2012.

This show brings together over 70 works by Burton. Born in Wicklow and educated in Dublin he eventually settled in London where he was influenced by the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

The Pre-Raphaelites are represented in this show by artists like John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Maddox Brown. Art by Daniel Maclise and William Mulready is also included..

The exhibition will look at Burton’s period in Germany, where he spent seven years as a painter in the service of Maximilian II of Bavaria, and his 20 year tenure as third director of the National Gallery in London from 1874. During this time he was responsible for more than 500 acquisitions including favourites such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna, Anthony van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, Hans Holbein the Younger’s Ambassadors, Piero della Francesca’s Nativity and Botticelli’s Venus and Mars.

(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for May 24, 2012)