Dublin in two essential museums, between the brushstrokes of Francis Bacon and the geometries of Eileen Gray

Although Dublin in Ireland is that capital where it is literally impossible to be within twenty steps of a pint of beer and a busker, there is much more to it than

and songs or the Trinity College library.

And it also has very good museums.

Two of them offer intimate spaces dedicated to two Irishmen who were decisive for the advancement of the arts of the 20th century: on the one hand, the presence of Francis Bacon at the Hugh Lane Gallery and on the other, that of Eileen Gray at the Museum of Arts Decorative and History.

1. The Hugh Lane Gallery

Hugh Lane was the first collector of impressionism in Ireland and the public museum that bears his name opened its doors on January 20, 1908. It exhibits works from the mid-19th century (Manet, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Jack Butler Yeats…) up to the present (Sean Scully, Isabel Nolan…).

It is a collection created from the philanthropic spirit of its promoter located in Charlemont House, former home of James Caulfield, the first Duke of Charlemont.

Designed by William Chambers, inside it stands out the extension carried out by the British architect David Chipperfield in the year 2000 with the purpose of hosting the secret jewel of the museum: the original workshop of Francis Bacon.

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Francis Bacon was born in Dublin in 1909 and lived in Kildare (Ireland) until he was 16 years old.

He passed away in Madrid in April 1992, exactly 31 years ago today.

He was one of the determining painters of the 20th century, owner of a technique and a style with which he reinvented figuration.

“I feel at home in this chaos because the chaos suggests images to me,” he said of the state of his studio, originally located at 7 Reece Mews in London, 24 square meters in which he worked for the last 30 years of his career. life.

How shocking it is to face this workshop whose move from London to Dublin was the closest thing to archaeological work: it was moved piece by piece, millimeter by millimeter.

The contents were donated by the artist's heir, John Edwards, and his executor, Brian Clarke, in 1998, and were opened to the public in 2001. To fully understand it, it is worth visiting the room with color photographs by Dubliner Perry beforehand. Ogden, as they give clues about the painter's inspiration and daily life: brushes sprouting from old cans, a pair of ice skates, a photo of Mick Jagger, books among the rubble, monographs on Munch, Rodin and, of course, Velazquez.

Bacon and his ill-fated lover, George Dyer, are present in crumpled images within photos.

Of course,

the spartan kitchen with its famous bathtub appears.

"People think I'm living big, but I'm really living in a dump."

The studio was accessed by going up some stairs, a detail that Chipperfield's intervention took into account and recreates at the entrance.

One of the images taken by Irish photographer Perry Ogden on display at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin next to the reconstruction of Francis Bacon's workshop.Hugh Lane Gallery © The Estate of Francis Bacon

The workshop offers a surprising and intimate insight into Bacon's life and artistic dedication.

Photographs of friends, images torn from magazines and newspapers, letters and notes, books and clothes, everything is piled up in this mythical room in which his fierce and passionate realism was nurtured.

The radical expressiveness of this unusual artist stems from a visceral response to his environment and the tumultuous events of the 20th century.

One of his favorite themes were anti-heroes, as fearsome as they are tender, who preserve their features in their distortion, creating a fine tension between image and representation.

"Compelling images," as he put it, "open the valves of feeling and therefore bring the viewer back to life in a more violent way."

facade of the hugh lane art gallery in parnell square.noel bennett (Alamy)

Some of the greatest figurative paintings of the late 20th century were created in this space.

And among them one of the exhibits in the next room:

, from 1966, which was found by surprise during the transfer of the studio, and shows her lover and model George Dyer.

Her relationship of 10 years, as well as this study, were aptly revealed in the 1998 film

, in which Derek Jacobi played the artist.

The rug in the painting takes us back to the beginnings of Bacon, who, coincidentally, moved to Paris in 1929 to work as a furniture and interior designer (he designed several rugs that he would later paint) with the next protagonist in this article.

2. Museum of Decorative Arts and History

The permanent room that the Museum of Decorative Arts and History, belonging to the National Museum of Ireland (located in the former Collins Barracks barracks), dedicates to Eileen Gray (Enniscorthy, 1878 - Paris, 1976) is an absolute immersion in one's own world of a dazzling and advanced designer, an Irish woman who helped to consolidate a new style in the 20th century, who prefigured modernity and who also played an essential role in the modern movement (architectural rationalism) due to the use of materials and for his treatment of light, space and form.

Through a perfectly illustrated chronological tour, iconic pieces are exhibited that represented a new way of understanding the design, function and flexibility of furniture, such as the multifunctional E1027 table, designed for the E1027 villa itself,

in Provence (France), because her sister liked to drink coffee in bed;

the symbolic and so tailored to her way of thinking Non Conformist Chair;

the

Transat Chair, or the Bibendum Chair, so Bauhaus.

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Stocked with original furnishings, photographs and documents, the exhibition covers his arrival in Paris in 1902, his Viennese and Art and Crafts influences, and his pioneering sensibility.

Also the attitude of a woman eager to experiment, bisexual, fascinated with airplanes and cars, which allowed her to be one of the first to fly from New Mexico to Acapulco and work as an ambulance driver during World War I.

Two chairs and a table designed by Eileen Gray on display at the Museum of Decorative Arts and History, Dublin.

Stanley Baxter (Alamy)

Of course, one remembers the opening in 1922 of Jean Desert (he had to put an imaginary man's name), his shop in the Faubourg Saint Honoré in Paris, where he sold his lacquer screens, his hand-sewn rugs, his wall and its lamps.

Its interior designs and buildings deserve the same attention, some of which are well known, such as E1027 itself (of which so much has been written) or the Villa Tempe à Pailla, both of extraordinary purification, aesthetically so impeccable that it is not surprising that its importance and reputation are greater today than then.

Jennifer Goff, exhibition curator and author of the book on Gray

(2014)

notes that “when you seriously study her work, in all its measure, you discover that she was a chameleon in both design and architecture.”

Jacques Prévert said that he recognized happiness by the noise it made when leaving.

When one leaves these two museums, he feels accompanied by Bacon's brushstrokes and Grey's geometries, the intimate joy that some discoveries give away.

The beauty of what has been seen endures like the good times that, precisely because they are good, leave memories.

Villa E1027, designed by the Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on the Provence coast.

Boizet E (Alpaca/Andia/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

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