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June 2015 59
CULTURE Robert O’Byrne
Robert O’Byrne and the
compromised
Beit Foundation.
By Michael Smith
R
OBERT O’Byrne is an aesthete
– possibly Ireland’s only one,
a writer specialising in the
fine and decorative arts. He is
the author of more than a
dozen books, among them ‘Luggala
Days: The Story of a Guinness House’; a
biography of Sir Hugh Lane; ‘A History
of the Irish Georgian Society’; a ‘Dic-
tionary of Living Irish Artists’ and ‘The
Last Knight: A Tribute to Desmond
FizGerald, th Knight of Glin’.
In addition to really loving things
that relate to the Guinness and FitzGer-
ald Families and the Irish Georgian
Society (IGS) which they have led, he
writes a monthly column for Apollo
magazine and also contributes to the
quarterly Irish Arts Review. He pub-
lishes a blog called “The Irish Aesthete.
This is not an oxymoron”. Tragically for
O’Byrne, of course, it is.
But this is the least of the issues cur-
rently challenging his sensibility.
The ascent to pure aestheticism inevi-
tably took some time.
After an international childhood and
schooling in Gonzaga, during its own
aesthetic epoch, he served in a Jesuit
novitiate in the early s. In
O’Byrne became the first director of a
pilot project in music promotion, Music
Network, which some years ago scooped
a U funding jackpot. In the s he
worked as a staff journalist for the Irish
Times, often writing about fashion:
“Robert O’Byrne’s three-part series on
major trends for the season ahead:
Think long, think luxuriant, think
languorous”.
He scraped an extended niche for
himself arbitrating style more gener-
ally: “The most shocking feature of the
cluster of Carrickmines houses sold in
Dublin last month for some £ million
each was not the price paid nor the
speed with which the properties were
reserved, but the unrelieved banality of
their design”.
At the height of the debate on one-off
housing debate in the early s he
Aestheticism
The limits of
continued on page 60
loang heroes
Rubens’ ‘Venus and Jupiter’
60June 2015
around €m in current values.
It is not known what has become of
this original endowment, but the ABF is
known to have been struggling for some
time, despite receiving regular hand-
outs from the Apollo Foundation, a
London-based Trust associated with the
Beits, and substantial grants from the
Heritage Council and Failte Ireland. The
ABF has been operating at an annual
loss of €, (). Certainly this
is a problem but there is no sense the
costs are being reviewed or that
dynamic fund-raising is in place. A sub-
stantial salary is paid to a chief
executive who oversees an uninspiring,
if rising, , visitors to the house.
In a collection of early Ital-
ian bronzes was sold for €.m and
fourteen oriental ceramics was sold for
€.m as recently as November
and.
A pair of rare eighteenth-century
paintings by French artist Jacques de la
Joue has recently been removed from
where they hung in the saloon, and sold
privately for an undisclosed sum, their
wrote – reflecting his peculiar if con-
sistent focus – ignoring considerations
of good planning or sustainability that:
“the debate needs to be not about
whether development should take place,
but about the design and character of
that development”. And sometimes he
took his taste out of the stuffy walls of
journalism onto the streets. In Septem-
ber he could be found launching
‘Dublin Style: An Insider’s Guide to
Shopping’. In the mid to late s he
impurely served as the Times’ gossip
columnist, hosting a horrible page at
the back of the Weekend supplement
that mirthlessly celebrated the coun-
try’s nouveau glitterati. He also covered
antique and art sales for the Irish Times,
with some style.
The Irish Times still indeed allows
him the occasional essay such as a
recent erudite sashaying review of a
book on the history of Irish wallpaper,
for which all proceeds go to the IGS,
though neither O’Byrne nor the Irish
Times felt the need to declare his con-
nection to the IGS.
O’Byrne’s prose is often original and
the judgement sharp, in his columns
and on his blog. The blog has a cohort of
fans, often genuinely double-barrelled,
who outdo one another in obsequious-
ness. Not unrepresentatively, during
the Irish Aesthete will be visiting
one Irish town every month – to berate
its architectural neglect.
O’Byrne has lots of considered opin-
ions. In a recent collection of essays
concerning the FitzGeralds of Carton
House, he was hammered by Dr Terry
Dooley of Maynooth for criticising its
late housing-estate-strewn incarnation
as one of those “ill considered conver-
sions into spa hotels and golf resorts”.
However, his usual percipience can let
him down as when he equivocated in the
controversy over the recent removal of
sculptural busts from the entrance hall
at Bellamont Forest House in Cavan,
despite the evidence proving them to be
integral to the design of this interna-
tionally important house by Sir Edward
Lovett Pearce.
Crucially, O’Byrne himself moved to
the rarefied setting of Palladian Ard-
braccan House near Navan where he
lodges in one of the wings. As befits an
aesthete whose oeuvre so often touched
on its members, and its causes, O’Byrne
is Vice President of the Irish Georgian
Society (IGS), a membership organisa-
tion whose purpose is to promote
awareness and the protection of Ire-
land’s architectural heritage and
decorative arts.
A fully illustrated book by Robert
O’Byrne on the IGS’s first years was
published in and he has compre-
hensively ingratiated himself. If
anything all had been looking well for
his further elevation.
O’Byrne was until recently the IGS’s
representative on the board of the
Alfred Beit Foundation which owns the
Palladian Russborough House in Co
Wicklow.
Sir Alfred Lane Beit, honorary Irish
citizen, was a British Conservative
Party politician, art collector and phi-
lanthropist – nephew of Alfred Beit,
South African mining millionaire from
whom he inherited a vast fortune
including a large number of Old Master
paintings.
In , he and his wife, Clementine
Mitford, moved the art collection to
Ireland. It comprises many of the paint-
ings assembled by the Beit family from
the late nineteenth century.
While he eventually presented the
major works to the National Gallery of
Ireland, the remaining collection, along
with Rusborough itself, was bequeathed
to The Alfred Beit Foundation (ABF)
which was established in with a
board of trustees. The sale of acres
of land at Russborough in afforded
an endowment of almost £, or
CULTURE Robert O’Byrne
In the mid to
late 1990s
he impurely
served as
the Irish
Times’ gossip
columnist,
hosting a
horrible page
at the back of
the Weekend
supplement
that
mirthlessly
celebrated
the country’s
nouveau
glitterati
“
loang heroes
June 2015 61
strangely secretive sale presumably
approved by O’Byrne and his fellow
trustees.
In late April, Christie’s and the ABF
made a joint announcement on a pro-
posed auction on July th in London.
The group of paintings that will be auc-
tioned is led by two magnificent works
on panel by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Head
of a bearded man (estimate: £-m) and
Venus and Jupiter (estimate: £.-
.m). The group also includes one of
the most celebrated Kermesse scenes by
David Teniers the Younger (estimate:
£.-.m), a rare religious work by
Adriaen van Ostade, Adoration of the
Shepherds (estimate: £,-
,), and a pair of Venetian views
by Francesco Guardi (estimate:
£,-,). A selection of
pre-sale highlights will go on view in
exhibitions at Christie’s in New York,
followed by London and Hong Kong
over the early summer.
The paintings have not been on public
view for many years due to security
concerns. Some were stolen (but later
recovered) from the house, first in
by an IRA gang led by British heiress
Rose Dugdale, and again in by
Dublin criminal (the “General”), Martin
Cahill.
The board of the ABF “unanimously
approved” the “painful but necessary
decision” to sell the paintings at a meet-
ing in late April, using as its justification
precisely the same excuse used to
explain previous sales. It had been said
then that the monies raised would be
used to “help secure the long-term
future of Russborough, its demesne and
its diverse collections so that the visit-
ing public from both Ireland and abroad
may appreciate and enjoy it for many
decades to come”. The board includes
nominees from the Royal Dublin Soci-
ety; University College Dublin; Trinity
College Dublin; The National Gallery of
Ireland; An Taisce and the IGS.
The estimate for the paintings is
€m but they may realise up to €m
given their provenance and quality.
Attempts have been made to justify
the sale on grounds it is necessary to
fund works to the eighteenth-century
house at Russborough and create an
endowment for the maintenance of the
buildings, gardens and grounds. No
costing has been made available for
such capital works and extensive work
has already been carried out in recent
years, much of it with public funds.
Indeed, paintings and furniture from
the Milltown bequest to the National
Gallery of Ireland, originally from
Russborough, have been lent and are on
display in the house, which was clearly
considered in a fit condition to receive
them.
The central issue is that selling off
one part of a cultural endowment to pay
for the maintenance or management of
another is not a credible policy. It is the
more scandalous as the sale is not justi-
fied by any emergency but intended
itself to create an endowment for the
future.
Arguably sales were envisaged by the
Beits: the Memorandum of Association
establishing the ABF allows it to ‘sell,
lease or otherwise deal with or dispose
of the whole or part of the
property or assets of the
Foundation”. Sir Alfred him-
self, at the time of the
Foundation’s establishment,
sold a Reynolds portrait that
had hung in the staircase
hall, as well as a lot of land.
The ABF has maintained the
unsustainable pattern of
asset reduction, without pro-
viding any future security for
the collection or the
property.
An Taisce is seeking the
intervention of Government
and organisations concerned
with culture, heritage and
tourism in Ireland to achieve
a partnership solution to
secure the future of the
entire Beit collection and of
Russborough House and
demesne, using Castletown,
Co Kildare, as the model. A
legal action centring on the
propriety of the process
whereby the Director of the National
Gallery, Sean Rainbird – who also of
course serves the ABF, granted the
export licence for the works, is in the
air.
Most of the key decisions of the ABF
are now taken by an axis led by its
chair, Judith Woodward of the National
Concert Hall, remembered by conser-
vationists for her unsuccessful
attempts to demolish the Real Tennis
Court that adjoins the Concert Hall
which was built by Sir Edward Guinness
in , in the s; and Eamonn
Ceannt, UCD’s Director of Capital
Development, a key figure in the rapid
expansion of the Belfield campus over
recent years. A notable dissident from
the sales is Trinity’s Carmel O’Sullivan
who claims her failure to attend the
crucial meeting when the decision to
sell was taken was because she was out-
manoeuvred on the date. An Taisce is
looking for the resignation of its nomi-
nee, Consuelo O’Connor, a sister of
one-time popular Lord Mayor Carmen-
cita Hederman, who has served since
and is a former chairwoman of
the organisation. She has feistily
defended her role and is jealous of her
position as the only board member who
actually knew Beit.
The IGS has distanced itself from the
decision and claimed the sale would
“represent an irredeemable loss to our
national cultural patri-
mony” and the paintings
would be “lost forever to
Ireland”.
Robert O’Byrne resigned
after it became clear he
would otherwise be pushed.
The IGS only found out about
the sale belatedly through
the press; its board infuri-
ated that it had not been
informed of the decision by
its representative whose
terms of reference obliged
him to serve the interests of
the IGS.
Its anger has been com-
pounded by a presentation
made by O’Byrne at the IGS’
‘Art in the Country House’
Conference held in Dublin
Castle on April, just days
before the sale of the pic-
tures was announced, in
which he criticised the
unregulated issuing of
export licences and decried
the sales from country houses as the
“beginning of the end”. He posted a
considered blog on th May, followed
up by an online piece for Apollo, both of
which drew angry comments from
readers unimpressed by the author’s
extraordinary failure to explicate his
own role in the affair.
The IGS was not available for com-
ment when the Irish Times asked it on
th May but it seems his position as
Vice-President (whatever about any
advancement) is not in play – his fawn-
ing literary history having apparently
trumped his aesthetico-ethical dishon-
our. •
The group
of paintings
that will be
auctioned is
led by two
magnificent
works on
panel by Sir
Peter Paul
Rubens. The
estimate for
the paintings is
€10m but they
may realise up
to €20m
“
Bitten?
