Guercinos in the corridor: in the October 1987 issue Edward McParland wrote a profile of Anne Crookshank, who had just retired as Professor of Art History at Trinity College, Dublin

Apollo, May, 2005 by Anne Crooshank

To lunch with Anne Crookshank in the Upper Lunch Room in Trinity is to observe her in one of her characteristic milieux. The walls of the room are hung with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century college portraits of members of her family. She lunches, appreciating the moderate prices and the excellent food, knowing that she will not dine in college that evening; elected a scholar of the college in 1947, she was denied access then to the scholars' dinner, being a woman. Times have changed, and Trinity's eating habits have, in this respect, become more civilised (or at least more normal). Since that day, however, Anne Crookshank--though now a fellow--has never dined on Commons. She never will. Her colleagues, if they are prudent, acknowledge her inflexibility of principle.

She will not be lunching alone. If she has guests they will, just occasionally, be such as to attract the attention of her more satirical colleagues. And underlying the bandinage of the party there will be its serious purpose: the saving of Castletown House, the translation into Irish of her most recent publication, the welcoming back to Dublin of a visiting ex-student, the arranging of an exhibition, or the writing of her next book, on Irish watercolourists. This last will involve the presence of her co-author. the Knight of Glin. If their morning co-authorship has reached the pitch of tempestuous violence not unfrequently attained, those who have seen the missiles reached for, and those who have heard the doors slammed in grand affectations of outraged leavetakings, will marvel at the merry lunchtime scene.

Her partnership with the Knight has lasted for over twenty years ... In 1978 came their Painters of Ireland. Not since Walter Strickland's Dictionary of Irish Artists of 1913 had there been a comparably pioneering or comprehensive work in the study of Irish paintings and their documentation. The family collections of some reclusive Sicilian nobleman, or the private papers of a remote Montenegrin emigre, may all make special demands on the scholar seeking access to them. But these demands are as nothing in contrast with the whimsical difficulties put in the path of the historian of Irish art and of Irish patronage and collecting. Every country house was searched until its kitchen corridor yielded up its Guercino, and its saloon its Latham. And apart from the indefatigable persistence and sense of the ridiculous which helped the two authors on their way as they triangulated Anglo-Ireland, they proceeded in a spirit which Anne Crookshank has laboured successfully to pass on to her students and fellow art historians, that of openness and generosity with one's discoveries and information. Scrupulous in acknowledging the contributions of others, she is the least possessive of scholars.

In the June APOLLO

EIGHTY YEARS OF COLLECTING A special issue to celebrate our eightieth anniversary

Recovering art looted by the Nazis: Martin Bailey studies the current spoliation claims against museums in England and the legal issues they raise

Nurturing the collector: Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, discusses his museum's relationship with private collectors

Count Andrew Ciechanowiecki and his foundation for the return of works of art to Poland

The V&A as it used to be: the recollections of Graham Reynolds

Articles on James Giles and Theodore Deck to mark the International Ceramics fair in London

Collectors' Focus on Georgian furniture

TO SUBSCRIBE TO APOLLO CONTACT 0870 4448 661,

OR SUBSCRIBE ONLINE AT WWW.APOLLO-MAGAZINE.COM