THIS exhibition is not primarily about Irish marine artists, but there is still a solid Irish presence. The inevitable Edwin Hayes, of course, is there in some strength - in heaven's name, just how many pictures did the man paint? He is represented both in watercolour and in oils; Hayes was a good painter inside his limits, but he lacked just that imaginative dimension to make him a major one.
The biggest work on view is a weighty canvas by John Callow (member of a famous painting dynasty), a set pieced in the style of the old Dutch masters, called Shipping off the Medway. There are numerous works by Frederick Aldridge, a long lived Victorian who died as late as 1933, and jumping to the present a pencil drawing by Carey Clarke of Mont St Michel.
A real surprise is a small watercolour (early, presumably) by Jack Yeats called Hay Barges on the Thames. The Thames, too, figures in a watercolour by Rose Barton, showing the busy Tideway, and there is a small Charles Lamb oil called Bringing Home the Seaweed. Two other surprises are a small oil of Arklow strand by Paul Vincent Duffy and a small Patrick Tuohy painting of Dublin Bay viewed from Howth. Bea Orpen's gouache of small boats drawn up on a beach is sensitive and well observed.