The National Gallery of Ireland was founded in 1854 and has since acquired an extraordinary collection of masterpieces by artists such as Caravaggio, Lanfranco, Poussin, Rubens, Uccello, Velázquez, and Vermeer, as well as British artists such as Gainsborough and Reynolds and the leading lights of Irish art, from James Barry to Jack Yeats. The Gallery has expanded steadily, benefiting from the royalties to the works of George Bernard Shaw and from numerous generous donations by figures such as Lane, Milltown, Beit, Mahon, and Chester Beatty.

The story of the Gallery, with all its tribulations and struggles, good and bad luck, good and bad judgement, all its personalities, is told for the first time. It displays the breadth and depth of the collection, but it also reveals much about the rebirth of a nation and changing attitudes to art over time.