At a recent auction of hotel furnishings and effects in London it was noted that while the contents of the wine cellar fetched large sums, the pictures which had adorned its walls could hardly be given away for nothing. Everyone who is familiar with hotel pictures will not be surprised.
In the hotel for which plans are now being made, to be erected on the site of Lansdowne House, there will be 350 bedrooms, and every one of them is to contain a picture by a modern British artist. If the public rooms are decorated in the same way, it should not only be a great improvement to the eye of the visitor, but something of a boon to the artists. The scheme should advertise the work of modern artists, and will provide a market for that work with the hotel itself and amongst its guests.
Something similar might be done by our leading Irish hotels for the work of Irish artists. Now that the tourist traffic is growing large, it might even be a paying affair for our artists to seek permission to use hotel public rooms as picture galleries, from which pictures could be sold.
The Irish Times, December 6th, 1930