Image: National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
The National Gallery of Ireland is presenting ‘Créatúir na Cartlainne | Tails from the Archive’, an exhibition devoted to the ways animals appear in the archives of the Centre for the Study of Irish Art. On view in Room 11 with free admission, the exhibition brings together images of beloved pets, small creatures and wild beasts found in sketchbooks, illustrated letters, watercolours and maquettes. It runs from June 2025 through spring 2027.
Rather than treating the archive as a record of finished works alone, the exhibition focuses on the informal and often easily overlooked appearances of animals within artists’ papers. These include creatures preserved in studies and correspondence as well as works made in more developed forms. The Gallery describes the exhibition as a celebration of animals as sources of joy, humour, awe, inspiration and companionship.
‘Tails from the Archive’ is drawn from the holdings of the Centre for the Study of Irish Art, which houses the National Gallery of Ireland’s comprehensive Irish art library and archives. The centre’s collections support the study and scholarly interpretation of visual art in Ireland, while the exhibition gives visitors access to material that might otherwise remain within research collections. A featured work is Stephen McKenna’s ‘Stamp from 1955, Republic of Silesia’, made around 2005 and held by the Centre for the Study of Irish Art.
The exhibition also places language alongside visual culture. The Gallery points to Irish words including bearrthóir, translated as “tail-chewing animal”, and cluasachán, meaning “long-eared animal”, as examples of the descriptive and playful vocabulary used to understand the animal world. Irish proverbs and other forms of folk memory are presented as part of a wider relationship with living creatures, connecting the archive’s images to older ways of observing and describing animals.
To protect the works on paper, the exhibition is organised in four curated rotations. The rotations also provide an opportunity to highlight recent acquisitions to the Centre for the Study of Irish Art. The participating artists listed by the Gallery include Stephen McKenna, Dairine Vanston, Conor Fallon, Bea Orpen, Barrie Cooke, Elizabeth C. Yeats, Oisín Kelly, Anne Yeats, Daniel O’Neill, Justin Larkin, Nancy Wynne-Jones, Basil Rákóczi, Jack B. Yeats, Deborah Brown, Walter Osborne and William Orpen. Marie Lynch is the curator.
The exhibition forms part of the National Gallery of Ireland’s broader presentation of collection and archive material in 2026. Other exhibitions listed as on view during September include ‘Rembrandt to Matisse – A Celebration of European Works on Paper’, in the Print Gallery from 18 July to 6 December, and ‘Visual Poetry: The Photography of John Minihan’, in the Sir Hugh Lane Room from 14 March to 11 October. ‘Créatúir na Cartlainne | Tails from the Archive’ remains in Room 11 until spring 2027, with admission free.
