Businessman Mr Lochlann Quinn has given the National Gallery of Ireland a painting which made a record price for a work by a living Irish artist.
Mr Quinn bought A Family by Louis le Brocquy, from Mr Mark Adams of Agnew's in London late last year for £1.7 million sterling (€2.75 million).
Mr Quinn has donated the painting to the National Gallery under the terms of Section 1003 of the Taxes Consolidation Act of 1997. This provides for a credit against tax liabilities where the taxpayer donates certain heritage items to the national collections.
Last May, the gallery acquired two 18th century Irish pictures under the same scheme; both of these are now on display in Farmleigh House.
"I think this is the most important Irish painting of the past 50 years," Mr Quinn said. "In terms of its scale, size and content, it would have been a crime for the picture not to have been in this country."
The price he paid for A Family further underlines Le Brocquy's importance in the pantheon of national art; at an auction in May 2000, Sotheby's sold his picture Travelling Woman with Newspaper for £1.15 million sterling, which was then the highest sum achieved by a living Irish artist. Last year Sotheby's sold a portrait by Sir William Orpen to an American collector for just under £2 million sterling, making it the most expensive Irish picture.
"I've sold a couple of Le Brocquy paintings from the late 1940s/early 1950s in the past year and they've gone for around the £1 million mark," said Mr Adams. "This just reflects private market prices for his early pictures."
A Family dates from 1951 and won the Prealpina Prize at the Venice Biennale five years later. Ironically, given the painting's current value, in the early 1950s it was offered free to the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin but was turned down. The work was sold to the Nestlé corporation and hung in its Milan offices until last year.
Speaking from his Dublin home yesterday, Mr Le Brocquy said that "on a personal level, I naturally feel deeply honoured by the inclusion of A Family in the collection of our National Gallery, which has meant so much to me since my early years. It's also something of a joy to me to be still here to witness the return to Ireland of this particular painting that was rejected 50 years ago."
A Family is on display in the gallery's millennium wing.