Lane Bequest

Sir Hugh Lane, 1914, by Sarah Cecilia Harrison

Lane was born in Ireland, grew up in England and elsewhere in Europe, and worked for most of his career as an art dealer in London. He died in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, on the return from a visit to New York to finalise the sale of Holbein's portrait of Thomas Cromwell and Titian's Portrait of a Man in a Red Cap to Henry Clay Frick; both are now in the Frick Collection.

For several years, Lane had been working on a project to establish a gallery of modern art in Dublin. The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opened at temporary premises at Clonmell House on Harcourt Street in 1908, and Lane commissioned two designs for a new permanent gallery from Edwin Lutyens. The plans were rejected by Dublin city council, and the project which was to become the Hugh Lane Gallery was not fully realised at the time of his death. Frustrated at the lack of progress in Dublin, Lane sent his collection on loan to the National Gallery in London in 1913.

Lane's will of October 1913 also bequeathed his collection to the National Gallery, but Lane had been appointed director of the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) in early 1914, and after his death a codicil dated February 1915 was discovered in his office which changed the destination of the bequest to the NGI in Dublin. The codicil was signed and dated but not formally witnessed and so it was legally ineffective, and the National Gallery took ownership of the paintings that were already in its hands, on loan.

In the following decades, Lane's aunt, Augusta, Lady Gregory, and a later director of the NGI, Thomas Bodkin, took up the campaign for the paintings to be returned to Ireland as Lane had intended. The Hugh Lane Gallery opened at Charlemont House in Parnell Square, Dublin in 1933.

Édouard Manet, Music in the Tuileries, NG3260

In 1959, it was agreed between the National Gallery in London and the NGI in Dublin that half of the collection would be retained in London, and the other half would be displayed on loan to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, with the two halves being exchanged every five years over the next two decades. The National Gallery retained ownership, as the National Gallery Act 1856 did not permit its trustees to deaccession works bequeathed to the nation.

The agreement to share the works was renewed for 14 years from 1979, and amended so that 30 paintings would be loaned to Dublin for the whole period, and eight paintings would remain in London. The 39th painting – Renoir's The Umbrellas – would be displayed in Dublin for the first seven years, then in London for the next seven years.

The agreement was renewed and amended again in 1993, this time for 12 years, with 27 paintings remaining on long-term loan in Dublin, and four remaining in London. The final eight works were allocated into two groups of four, with one group first displayed in Dublin and the second group first in London, and the groups exchanged after six years. This allocation, and the six-yearly rotation of eight paintings, continued until 2021, interrupted by an exhibition in Dublin in 2008 which collected 38 of the paintings at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Parnell Square for its 100th anniversary: the 39th work was too large to fit in the building.

A new agreement was reached in 2021, for 10 years, exchanging two groups of five paintings after five years. Two works will be kept permanently in London, with the other 27 kept in Dublin.

The 39 works are catalogued by the National Gallery as NG3233 to NG3271 (inclusive). The collection includes paintings by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir; two by Édouard Manet; three by or after Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot; four by or after Gustave Courbet; and four by Antonio Mancini. A painting of Skating in Holland, purportedly signed by Johan Jongkind, is a forgery.

• The Hugh Lane bequest, National Gallery
• How Ireland was robbed of Hugh Lane's great art collection, The Guardian, 30 May 2015