The Gallery used have a great deal more statuary. Shaw's will, with its generosity towards the Gallery, put an end to that. In ill-fated recognition of Shaw's bequest, the Gallery installed a wonderfully realistic marble statue of Pygmalion and Galatea. So realistic was it, in fact, that when an attendant left a door open one day, the couple did a runner. Soon after, it was Daniel O'Connell and two water nymphs, then a pint-sized Hercules with John the Baptist, Bacchus and a medieval St Paul, a trio of Aphrodites and a headless Adonis.
Busts are almost all that's left.
One exception is the statue of the Gallery's spiritual founder, Dargan. Marooned outside atop a high, sheer-sided pedestal he has the compensation of a grand view of Merrion Square. Another exception is a bronze of the man at the source of all this mischief, finally brought in out of the rain and standing in his very own Shaw room. We're standing one day in front of Jan Mytens' Lady Playing a Lute . The work is nothing but a product of the social conventions of the time it was executed.