THE SOCIAL NETWORK:Madam Olda FitzGerald, widow of the late Knight of Glin, will open The Knight's Dream, an exhibition of more than 160 drawings and watercolours by Jeremy Williams on Thursday evening at Matthews Auction Rooms on Capel Street.
Damien Matthews said that it will also be “a sort of memorial to the knight”. Matthews is expecting the Pakenhams from Tullynally Castle, lots of Guinnesses and members of the diplomatic corps. “It will be old money and the gentry, and won’t be a ‘pop art’ crowd,” he said.
The knight’s last great cause was the reinstatement of Russborough as the ultimate Irish Palladian synthesis of architecture, sculpture, painting and landscaping. Included in the exhibition is a suite of watercolours depicting the appearance of the seven principal rooms of Russborough in the 1760s, complete with their original paintings, as envisaged by the knight. Most of the paintings were donated by the last Lady Milltown to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1902.
