Donal Fallon: From ‘freak pictures’ to pride of place – two pioneers of Irish modern art get their due

George Bernard Shaw remembered the National Gallery of Ireland as one of the great universities of his youth. On the mitch from school and wandering through it curiously, it was “much of the only real education I ever got as a boy in Éire”. A statue of the Nobel winner is one of the first things that greets visitors entering from Clare Street, and without reaching into their pocket they can encounter Harry Kernoff, Jack B Yeats, Louis le Brocquy and Sarah Purser, among others.

It is always a fine mix of the lunch-hour crowd, the happily retired, the earnest student and the curious tourist..