Hugh Percy Lane was born in Ballybrack House, Douglas, Cork, County Cork, on the 9th November 1875, the son of James William and Frances Adelaide Jane Lane (née Persse). His father was a Church of Ireland rector and a nephew of Lady Gregory, who was a leading light in the movement for Gaelic revival. His family was a wealthy one, and Hugh Lane spent most of his childhood travelling Europe with his mother, where, through her, he acquired skills and knowledge in the world of art. His London address was at the home of his sister, Mrs. Ruth Shine, at Lindsey House, 100, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, although he spent his youth in Redruth, Cornwall, where his parents moved to while he was a child.
By the time he was 19 years of age, he was employed as an art dealer and critic by the London firm of Colnaghi's, and after a time spent in the Marlborough Gallery, he later went into business on his own. From this business, he became very wealthy at a very early age and acquired a most valuable collection of French impressionist paintings. In 1900, he visited his great-aunt, Lady Gregory, who lived in Coole, County Galway, and whilst there, met the poet W.B. Yeats, and other leading figures in the movement for an independent Ireland.
Up to this time, Hugh Lane had had no real interest in the cause, but stimulated by this
visit, he decided to create a gallery of modern art in Ireland and later wrote of his idea: -
Such a gallery would be necessary to the student if we are to have a distinct school of painting in Ireland, for it is one’s contemporaries that teach one the most. They are busy with the same problems of expression as oneself, for almost every artist expresses the soul of his own age.
He was later appointed a Director of the Irish National Gallery, and knighted in 1909.
Over a period of years, he built up a collection of 39 modern paintings, including works by Corot, Degas, Monet, and Renoir, and some time before the Great War, he loaned them to the Dublin Municipal Gallery, then in temporary premises at 17. Harcourt Street. He then offered them as an outright gift to the Irish nation, on condition that a permanent gallery was constructed to house them. Following Dublin Council's rejection of a design by the renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens for a gallery which would span one of the River Liffey's bridges, (the Metal or Ha’penny Bridge), Sir Hugh withdrew his offer and instead, in a will written in 1913, bequeathed all his paintings to the National Gallery in London.
However, in February 1915, he changed his mind again and in a codicil to his 1913 will, he restored the collection to Dublin, on the condition that a suitable building was found to house it, within five years of his death. The document, (later to be known as The Codicil of Forgiveness) - was never witnessed, however, and therefore never had any legal validity.
In April 1915, he had been in America to on behalf of a firm named Scott and Fowles, to advise an American insurance company about the value of certain paintings damaged by fire and also to try to raise money for the Red Cross. In an attempt to help this organisation, he had guaranteed it the sum of £10,000 in return for sitting for a portrait by renowned artist J.S. Sargent, of the Royal Academy. He had hoped that a wealthy American patron might offer more than £10,000 for the same privilege!
For his return to England, he booked saloon passage on what proved to be the Lusitania's final voyage. Before he joined the vessel, with ticket number 46101, he stayed at the St. Regis Hotel, in New York, and once on board, he was allocated room D26, which was the responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward William S. Fletcher, who came from Wallasey, Cheshire, on the opposite side of the River Mersey from Liverpool.
Hugh Lane was killed six days later, when the liner was sunk, by the German submarine U-20, so close to her home port and within sight of the coast of southern Ireland and no identifiable trace of his body was ever found afterwards. He was aged 39 years.
The Times newspaper published a report about his life and death in its edition for 10th May 1915 and said the following about him: -
Sir Hugh was undoubtedly on of the most interesting personalities in Anglo-Irish circles. A highly cultivated man of many and varied activities, he is understood to have spent and made large fortunes in the purchase and sale of pictures by ancient and modern artists. With an unerring flair for a fine picture, he was generally regarded as one of the soundest judges in London.
He paid a comparatively price for a portrait of a lady, and found underneath an early Victorian layer of paint, a very fine Romney ; and his other “adventures among pictures” would make an interesting series of articles.
He formed the famous collection of 17th century Dutch pictures which Mr. Max Michaelis purchased and presented to the Cape Town National Gallery ; the collection of modern art in the Johannesburg Municipal Gallery was also formed by him, as largely, also was Mr. Arthur Grenfell’s important collection, dispersed last year.
In addition to organising various exhibitions, he acted as hon. director of the Municipal Art Gallery Dublin, and as Director of the National Gallery of Ireland. He has presented to Dublin, pictures by artists of the Barbizon and other schools of the value of £30,000 or £40,000.
After his death, the codicil was discovered in a drawer of his locked desk, but the matter of which art gallery actually owned his paintings was not resolved for another 44 years, because although Dublin claimed a moral right to the collection, the legal ownership still remained with London. In 1959, however, agreement was finally reached that the collection should be divided into two parts, each one to be shown alternately in Dublin and London for a period of five years. The gallery in Dublin, situated in Charlemont House, Parnell Square, is now named The Hugh Lane Gallery.
On the 19th February 1995, the newspaper The Sunday Express published an article which concerned Sir Hugh and another connection with the Lusitania. Its main gist was that divers searching the ship's wreck had come across lead cylinders on the sea bed which purported to contain 27 masterpiece paintings, the property of New York art dealer Lord Duveen.
According to the newspaper, the ship's manifest showed a reference to these paintings, countersigned by Sir Hugh Lane who had been given the job of accompanying them to Europe. They were said to include a di Bartolo, a di Giovanni, a Rubens, and a Titian, and Sir Hugh had personally insured them for an estimated £1 million. Their estimated worth in 1995 was £50 million.
As a result of this supposed discovery, the Irish Ministry for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht directed the Commissioner of the Gárda Siochana, (Irish Police), to prevent any further removal of artefacts from the wreck of the Lusitania and an Underwater Heritage Order was placed on the wreck to ensure that all future dives, officially at least, would have to be licensed. As the wreck lies just at the limit of Irish Territorial Waters, it is a moot point whether or not the Irish government actually has this jurisdiction.
However, it would appear that the whole story was a hoax, perpetrated by a team of London divers who had planned a dive on the vessel and had been hampered by the owner of the wreck, American Greg Bemis from doing so. In an attempt to make mischief for him and other dives, they apparently concocted the story of seeing lead cylinders on the sea bed, although without X-ray equipment or even X-ray vision, it is difficult to work out how they could have known the contents of the cylinders, even had they actually seen them!
Scrutiny of the original manifest for the May 1915 voyage of the Lusitania has also failed to turn up neither any quantity of valuable paintings nor any insurance valuation amounting to £50 million!
Sir Hugh Lane is commemorated in St. Luke's Church, Douglas, Cork City, where he worshipped, on a white marble tablet mounted on the wall, with incised lettering, picked out in black, which states: -
TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF
HUGH LANE KNT.
DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND,
BORN AT BALLYBRACK HOUSE NOV 9TH 1875,
LOST WITH THE LUSITANIA MAY 7TH 1915.
"EVERY MAN'S WORK SHALL BE MADE MANIFEST, FOR THE DAY
SHALL DECLARE IT."
THIS TABLET IS PLACED HERE BY HIS SORROWFUL SISTER RUTH SHINE.
The family home, Ballybrack House, is still standing today.
A grant of administration of Sir Hugh Lane’s estate was made on 29th September 1915 to John Joseph MacGhee, banker, and Grant Richards, publisher, and his effects amounted to £50,000.
First Class Bedroom Steward William Fletcher, who had looked after Sir Hugh Lane in room D26, did survive the sinking, however and eventually made it home to Wallasey.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, A Church of Ireland Parish, Sunday Express, The Times, Ireland’s Own, White Star Journal, Probate Records, PRO 22/71, PRO BT 180/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Paddy O’Sullivan, Barbara McCutcheon, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.