Irish art collector and critic, born in co. Cork on the 9th of November 1875, the son of the Rev. J. W. Lane. His mother was a daughter of Dudley Persse, of Roxburgh, co. Galway, and a sister of Lady Gregory, the Irish playwright. Hugh Lane entered the firm of Colnaghi & Co. in 1893, and he rapidly made a name as a gifted connoisseur and collector of extraordinary perception. In 1898 he began dealing on his own account at 2, Pall Mall Place. He took a prominent part in the revival of an interest in art in Ireland, and was especially enthusiastic in the matter of establishing a gallery of modern art in Dublin. With the object of interesting the general public in this idea, an exhibition was held at the Guildhall in 1904 of works by artists of Irish birth, and exhibitions of modern art were subsequently held in Dublin and Belfast, with the object of raising money for the purchase of pictures for Dublin. A fine collection was ultimately made, and housed in Harcourt Street, Dublin, where it was opened in 1906. Sir Hugh Lane, who was knighted in 1909, also offered a number of his own splendid purchases of old masters to the city of Dublin on condition that a suitable building be provided for housing them, but, owing to the attitude adopted on the subject by the Dublin Corporation, his gift did not take effect. He acted as adviser on the formation of the Johannesburg Municipal Gallery of modern art founded by Lady Phillips (1909), and brought together the Cape Town National Gallery collection of 17th-century Dutch pictures (1912). He was in 1914 appointed director of the National Gallery of Ireland. In the early months of 1915 he paid a visit to America, and sold two of his most important pictures (Titian’s “Man in the Red Cap” and Holbein’s “Portrait of Thomas Cromwell”) to American collectors. He returned to England on the “Lusitania,” and was drowned in the sinking of that ship on the 7th of May 1915, one of his last acts having been to secure by telegram for £10,000 the blank canvas contributed by J. S. Sargent to a Red Cross sale at Christie’s.
Sir Hugh Lane left a considerable fortune and also a splendid collection of pictures, including fine examples of Gainsborough, Goya and Rembrandt. Most of these were left to the National Gallery of Ireland, but a certain number came to the English National Gallery. Owing to an informality in the drawing-up of a codicil to the will, which had been signed but not witnessed, it was the occasion of controversy. It was contended that Sir Hugh Lane had altered his intention of bequeathing some of his pictures to the English National Gallery, and that the entire bequest was thus the property of the Irish National Gallery. The court, however, decided otherwise.
See The Life and Achievements of Hugh Lane: with some account of the Dublin Galleries, by Lady Gregory (1920).
