23 March – 12 June 2011

This exhibition of Old Master prints includes many of the most famous artists ever to work with print-making.  Works by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco de Goya, William Hogarth and Rembrandt van Rijn are all featured in the exhibition, which is drawn from the Madden Arnholz Collection.donated to the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (RHK) in 1989 by Claire Madden, prior to the opening of the Museum in 1991.  The exhibition is curated by Janet and John Banville.

The works included in the exhibition are by German, Flemish, Dutch and British artists, spanning the period between the beginning of the 16th-century and the early 20th -century.  German printmakers of the Dürer period are well represented, but the most comprehensive part of the show is the remarkable group of prints by, and after, William Hogarth.  While not complete, this is a valuable group, with several proofs of Hogarth’s single prints and sequences of ‘modern moral subjects’ in various states.

The Madden Arnholz Collection was generously donated by Claire Madden to the Royal Hospital in 1989 in memory of her daughter and son-in-law.  It includes some 1,200 Old Master prints – the collection of engravings by Hogarth alone numbers over 500 works and is among the most comprehensive print collections in existence by the artist.  The Collection also includes works donated in October 1998 following Claire Madden’s death.  These include a large collection of books containing prints by the English printmaker Thomas Bewick and his family, as well as unusual versions of the prints on silk and one of Bewick’s printing blocks, of which will also be included in the exhibition.

The original Madden Arnholz Collection was first shown at the RHK in 1987 before it was donated and shown again at IMMA featuring the Hogarth prints in 2007.  This exhibition consists of approximately 35 books from the Thomas Bewick collection and 80 Old Master prints.

This exhibition is supprted by the Goethe Institute.