Homan Potterton, art historian who revitalised Ireland’s National Gallery – obituary
He resigned from his post after eight years in protest at slow progress over repairs, but went on to become an acclaimed writer
Homan Potterton
Homan Potterton, who has died aged 74, was Director of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1980 until 1988, and then devoted himself to writing about art before turning, with remarkable versatility, to produce two books of memoirs and a novel.
The first of these memoirs, Rathcormick, told the story of an Irish upbringing as the youngest of eight children; he was born Homan Franklyn Potterton on May 9 1946 into a Protestant farming family of remote English descent, who lived in a bubble somewhat isolated from their Catholic compatriots but were neither posh nor anglicised.
In 2001, Homan Potterton enjoyed unexpected literary success with a childhood memoir,
Rathcormick – unexpected because hitherto he had been known as an art historian and former director of the National Gallery of Ireland. But for those aware of him only in these guises, the book provided an insight into the author’s origins as the youngest child of prosperous Irish farming stock. Potterton might have followed the example of his forebears and stayed in rural Ireland, but at the age of 16 he visited France, was taken to a series of chateaux and then guided by a distant cousin around the Louvre. Returning home, he realised that he was not, as had previously appeared to be the case, a fish out of water, but ‘had merely been swimming in the wrong pond’.
Obituary: Homan Potterton Liam Collins
If nothing else, Homan Potterton did the State considerable service when he persuaded Alfred and Clementine Beit of Russborough House in Co Wicklow to donate paintings by Vermeer, Goya and Metsu to the National Gallery in Dublin, shortly before he retired as its director. I went down to Russborough and I pointed out that to leave the paintings there would leave them vulnerable not only from exterior factors like the General [crime boss Martin Cahill who had stolen 18 masterpieces from the house] but interior ones, he told Hilary White in an interview with the Sunday Independent.