Overview
"This is the first full life of the art dealer and patron Hugh Lane since the rather adoring 1920 biography by his aunt Lady Gregory. Robert O'Byrne makes use of the vast quantities of archival material that have come to light in recent decades to construct a detailed, nuanced portrait of a fascinating and enigmatic figure whose name still resonates in Irish cultural history." Hugh Lane was in many ways a very solitary figure - he never married and, though rumoured to have been homosexual, never had a documented relationship with a man - but he was also a man of great social energy who befriended and sometimes crossed swords with the leading cultural figures of the day: Yeats, Gregory, Orpen, Augustus John, Rodin, Beerbohm, and many others. Robert O'Byrne writes with clarity and insight about a man who has always been something of a mystery, and the breadth of whose achievements has hitherto never been fully reckoned.Synopsis
"This is the first full life of the art dealer and patron Hugh Lane since the rather adoring 1920 biography by his aunt Lady Gregory. Robert O'Byrne makes use of the vast quantities of archival material that have come to light in recent decades to construct a detailed, nuanced portrait of a fascinating and enigmatic figure whose name still resonates in Irish cultural history." Hugh Lane was in many ways a very solitary figure - he never married and, though rumoured to have been homosexual, never had a documented relationship with a man - but he was also a man of great social energy who befriended and sometimes crossed swords with the leading cultural figures of the day: Yeats, Gregory, Orpen, Augustus John, Rodin, Beerbohm, and many others. Robert O'Byrne writes with clarity and insight about a man who has always been something of a mystery, and the breadth of whose achievements has hitherto never been fully reckoned.