20th century British, European and American painting
The Ulster Museum collection of 20th century British, European and American art is important, and, taken with the Irish collection of the same period, constitutes undoubtedly the major public collection of modern art in Ireland. The Times described it as "one of the most ambitious collections of modern art outside London" (19 November 1994).
The British collection is particularly representative of developments in British painting from 1900 until the 1980s. In the 1930s the Museum built up a distinguished collection of paintings by Sickert, Steer, Matthew Smith, Paul and John Nash, and major works by Stanley Spencer, who frequently paid visits to Belfast.
In the 1960s a major collection of post war art was begun, including examples by William Scott (from Enniskillen), Francis Bacon, Alan Davie, Terry Frost, Ivon Hitchens, Roger Hilton and Victor Pasmore. This was followed by the work of artists of the op and pop generation, including Bridget Riley, Patrick Caulfield, Allen Jones, Bernard Cohen, John Hoyland and Kenneth Martin.
Image: Allen Jones (b.1937), Automatic Shift (1969). Copyright Allen Jones
Please find our factsheet on 20th century British, European and American painting here.
Twentieth century artists
The collection includes the French cubist André Lhote, the Dutch, German and Spanish painters Karel Appel, Lucebert, Otto Piene and Luis Feito who represent the 'Art Brut' development of the 1950s and 1960s and Max Bill and Heinz Mack of the German 'Group Zero' of the same period. Others of note ...
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Post-Impressionists
Post-Impressionists are represented by Roderic O'Conor and W. J. Leech. The 'modernists' include Mainie Jellett - the first artist to bring cubism to Ireland - Mary Swanzy and a host of others, not least Jack B Yeats, the single most important Irish painter of the first half of the 20th century.I...
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Irish painters
The strength of the Irish collections lies not just in their scope but their depth. Many artists such as Sir John Lavery, Roderic O'Conor, Paul Henry, William Scott, Colin Middleton, Basil Blackshaw, Louis le Brocquy, and Mainie Jellett, to give a few examples, are represented by work of every st...
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The inter-war landscape tradition
The inter-war landscape tradition, shaped in the main by the Northern painters such as Paul Henry, J.H. Craig and Frank McKelvey, is also well represented, as is the post-Second World War generation , of whom Louis le Brocquy, Colin Middleton, Gerard Dillon, Dan O'Neill, John Luke and William Con...
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Portraits
Other substantial holdings include scenes of Belfast and a major portrait collection including a significant group of commissioned portraits, generally of local people who have achieved fame in the arts. These include Seamus Heaney, James Galway, Brian Friel, Barry Douglas, Michael Longley and Jo...
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