Northern Nocturnes, Swedish prints, Irish neo-classical paintings and furniture, and vibrant contemporary art can be found in Ireland this autumn

Apollo, Sept, 2005 by Nigel McKinley

This beautiful drawing of Cupid and Psyche (above) is just one of many new acquisitions that the National Gallery of Ireland has made this year. Others include a pair of tenderly observed gouache drawings by Erskine Nichol of an old man and a young man in a blue coat and tam o'shanter, purchased from Whyte's auctioneers in Dublin. Also from the same auction house the Gallery bought Matthew James Lawless's dashing monochrome The Cavalier's Escape of 1861. From Dublin's oldest auction house, Adam's, in their joint sale with Bonhams, the Gallery purchased a portrait of a lady, possibly of the Travers family by Thomas Pope. Other auction house purchases stem from Christie's: a James Arthur O'Connor oil painting of Bernkastel on the Moselle and from Sotheby's Hugh Douglas Hamilton's pastel Portrait of a Woman in an Interior and Albert Gleizes's 1927 gouache Couronnement de la Vierge. The gallery has also received a series of eight oil paintings by Charles Brady (1926-97) in a bequest from his widow, Eileen. Born in New York, Brady made Ireland his home in the early 1950s and was elected HRHA in 1994. Friends of the National Collections of Ireland have presented the Gallery with a stained glass panel of St Christopher by Evie Hone in memory of the late Dr Michael Wynne, former Keeper of the Gallery between 1965 and 1997.

The National Gallery of Ireland's main international show this autumn is in the Millennium Wing from 1 October to 11 December. 'Northern Nocturnes: Nightscapes in the Age of Rembrandt' is curated by Adriaan Waiboer, Curator of Northern European Art, who has also written the accompanying catalogue. The exhibition is devoted to seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish nocturnal landscapes and will include more than fifty paintings, drawings and prints, drawn from public and private collections in Europe and the USA. Among them are biblical masterpieces by Rembrandt, Rubens and Elsheimer and works by painters better known for their daylight scenes, such as Aelbert Cuyp, Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers II, Jan van Goyen, and Nicolaes Berchem. One of the few specialists and most accomplished painters in nocturnal landscapes was Aert van der Neer, who will be represented in the show with works loaned from London, Madrid and Paris. A special section in the exhibition will be devoted to depictions of night fires and fireworks.

Another exhibition at the Gallery coincides with a week of Swedish events taking place in a number of venues around Dublin from 5 to 10 September organised in conjunction with the Graphic Studio Gallery. 'From Darkness into Light: Printmaking in Sweden 1890-1960' runs from 7 September until 4 December in the Print Gallery. This exhibition focuses on the developments in printmaking in Sweden in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is comprised of sixty-three black-and-white prints mostly drawn from the collection of the Swedish Fine Print Society and the personal collection of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The urban landscape became an important subject, especially for such artists as Axel Fridell (1894-1935). Among the other artists represented are Stig Borglind, Albert Engstrom, Prins Eugen Maja Fjaestad,Carl Flodman, Ragnhild Nordensten, Hans Norsbo and Anders Zorn. At The Graphic Studio Gallery in Cope Street, in the centrally-located Temple Bar district, there will be an exhibition of contemporary Swedish printmaking with an emphasis on black and white prints by a selection of artists hand picked by James McCreary as well as Artist's Books. The Graphic Studio Dublin is Ireland's oldest printmaking workshop.

No visitor to Dublin should miss the large number of picture galleries in the city. Using the National Gallery as a starting point one can stroll up to the Royal Hibernian Academy's Ashford Gallery in Ely Place to view contemporary paintings by Desmond Shortt in September and Fine Art Graduates' work in October. Molesworth Street is home to a number of galleries. Jorgensen Fine Art have a fine Georgian building to themselves and will be staging Anthony Murphy's first solo show of French and Irish landscape and genre paintings in September, followed in October by three young British artists, who each trained for a period at the Charles Cecil Studios in Florence. In November they will show one of the most accomplished contemporary Scottish painters, Barbara Rae. Paintings by Annie Robinson can always be seen at the Apollo Gallery in Dawson Street; daughter of the late Markey Robinson. The Apollo Gallery also has another thriving artist in Marie Carroll, who exaggerates form and movement with rich and intense colours. Her paintings depict crowded streets, cafes full of life, interiors (the Sheibourne Bar), landscapes and seascapes (Killiney Beach and Sandymount Strand). Now open for over a year, John Daly's Hillsboro Fine Art is tucked down Anne's Lane and has a busy exhibition schedule, with new work by Colin O'Daly in early September, followed by Eddie Kennedy. In October one of the most critically acclaimed artists working in Ireland, Sibylle Ungers, will exhibit her work. Phil Kelly, a leading Irish artist who is based in Mexico, launches a monograph on his work in the gallery with an exhibition in November.