How George Bernard Shaw bought art masterpieces for Ireland from beyond the grave

Playwright, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, left a third of posthumous royalties to National Gallery

Sat, 18 Jul, 2020 - 14:30

Des O’Sullivan

When playwright George Bernard Shaw left one-third of his posthumous royalties to the National Gallery no one could have guessed that it would amount to one of the largest-ever gifts to the arts in Ireland. With the production of My Fair Lady based on his play Pygmalion, a Broadway success in 1956 and a popular film in 1964, these royalties hugely increased.

The Gallery received its first Shaw bequest royalties in 1957 of £10,000 and by the end of 1959 over €240,000 had been received. The first purchases were made in 1959. The Shaw bequest, which ends this year, has enabled the acquisition of masterpieces such as The Terrace, Saint-Tropez by Paul Signac; Landscape with Flight of Stairs by Chaïm Soutine; Venice, Queen of the Adriatic by Domenico Tintoretto; Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain by Baron François Gérard; El Sueño by Francisco de Goya; and An Interior with Members of a Family, attributed to Strickland Lowry.