His dalliance with mistress Kitty O'Shea ruined his career and cost Ireland a window of opportunity in the British Parliament. A portion of the square is called the Garden of Remembrance, dedicated to all who perished in the name of Irish freedom. It's on to the Dublin Writers Museum, guardian of letters by Irish authors and their memorabilia. The autumn sun strikes the fuchsia in Merrion Square across from the National Gallery of Ireland, the last stop on a loop that originated at St. Stephen's Green. The gallery is a classic structure, with high ceilings, marble, grand stairways and hallways full of statues and massive European paintings of bygone eras.
Admission is free.
Just to the right of the entrance is a series of six octagon-shaped rooms for the museum's Irish collection. Here again, the consequences of British rule emerge in some of the collection's 1,200 works. An Ejected Family , painted in 1853 by Scottish artist Erskine Nicol, depicts in somewhat melodramatic fashion the emotional departure of an Irish laborer, his wife and children from the farm they could no longer rent during the Famine. Doubtful, because of the implicit criticism of the British government. On another wall is an obviously sympathetic 19th-century painting titled The Wounded Poacher by an artist born in Cork named Henry Jones Thaddeus, who taught in Paris.