On 20 January 1908, Sir Hugh Lane founded the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art on Harcourt Street in Dublin, the institution now known as Hugh Lane Gallery. The gallery was conceived as a public home for modern art in Ireland at a moment when the Celtic Revival was reshaping cultural identity. Lane personally supported its running costs while seeking a permanent building, and his collection helped introduce Dublin audiences to modern French and Irish art. Later disputes over the Lane Bequest, involving paintings by Manet, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, Morisot and Vuillard, made the gallery central to debates over national patrimony and the location of modern art collections.
It established Dublin as the site of one of the earliest public institutions devoted to modern art.