Tom Walker is Associate Professor in Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin.

Stage presence – the theatrical paintings of John Lavery

The artist could be a touch wooden at times, but a survey in Dublin shows that his best work is full of theatrical flair

28 Nov 2023

The haunted paintings of Patricia Hurl

Bold brushstrokes and strong colours add up to a powerful sense of unease in the artist’s cryptically titled portraits of modern Ireland

3 Mar 2023
Dublin, Number One Ferry – Dinner Hour

All aboard – the transporting art of Jack B. Yeats

Although grounded in actual places and actual people, the artist’s subjects were always utterly transformed by his imagination, writes Tom Walker

5 Oct 2021
Statue of James Joyce by Marjorie Fitzgibbon on North Earl Street, Dublin.

Literary heroes are big business in Dublin – so why won’t the city protect its Joyce heritage?

The streets may be paved with commemorative plaques, but plans to convert 15 Usher’s Island into a hostel betray the city’s misplaced priorities

19 Nov 2020
The Two Travellers (1942; detail), Jack B. Yeats.

An unlikely couple? Lucian Freud and Jack B. Yeats, reviewed

It may sound like an implausible pairing – but this exhibition on the two painters succeeds by not making forced connections

6 Aug 2019

Harry Clarke’s uncanny visions of Ireland

The illustrator and designer of stained glass fused Irish and European traditions to create an intriguing new idiom

29 May 2019
Portrait of Gertrude Jekyll (detail; 1910–11), Mary Swanzy. Private collection

Mary Swanzy – a modern Irish master?

The work of this accomplished painter has long been hiding in plain sight

21 Nov 2018
The Bridge at Grez, Roderic O'Conor

What Roderic O’Conor learned from Van Gogh

The Irish painter takes his place among the Post-Impressionists in the first major survey of his work in many years

21 Aug 2018
Brian O’Doherty with ’Rope Drawing #128: Flipped Corner (Green/Blue)’ (2017) at IMMA, Dublin, 2018.

Brian O’Doherty gets his due in Dublin

The 90-year-old polymath’s artistic output is being celebrated in his native Ireland

17 May 2018
Venus' Mirror, (1873–77), Edward Burne-Jones.

How the Pre-Raphaelites reflected on the past

What did the Pre-Raphaelite painters see when they looked at the Old Masters – and how did they use what they saw?

19 Sep 2017
Self-portrait (detail; 1914), Margaret Clarke. © Artist’s Estate. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland. Photographer: Roy Hewson

A hidden highlight at the National Gallery of Ireland

A small exhibition of Margaret Clarke’s work proves that the best shows aren’t always the blockbusters

2 Aug 2017

‘Many of those involved in the Easter Rising were art school kids’

The 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin was in part a rebellion of artists – and Dublin museums and galleries are making that clear this year

1 Mar 2016
Scenes from the Life of St Colman MacDuagh of Galway

Leading light – the stained-glass windows of Wilhelmina Geddes

A key figure in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement, the designer should also be seen in the context of European modernism

10 Jan 2016

Celts exhibition holds a mirror up to our uncertain Europe

Today’s fragile United Kingdom and Europe are thrown into relief at the British Museum

7 Jan 2016

Show and Tell

Leonora Carrington may be a ‘literary painter’ and a surrealist storyteller, but we should not forget the formal qualities that underpin her best work

1 Oct 2013