National Gallery of Ireland Bookshop

The National Gallery of Ireland Shop is located in the Gallery’s Millennium Wing, just inside the Clare Street entrance. The Gallery shop offers an extraordinary range of artistic memorabilia and fine-​art hardbacks. Excellent quality gallery guides and publications such as ‘1854−2004 The Story of the National Gallery of Ireland’, ‘Samuel Beckett, A Passion for Painting’, and one I recently bought entitled ‘Harry Clarke’s Illustrations for Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales’ are stocked in abundance.
The shop also does well to supply really superb art prints and posters ranging from custom prints, canvas prints and small replica prints of the popular paintings displayed within the gallery.
The shelves are crammed with awesome art books including those on the topic of Art History together with art inspired fiction such as Sue Roe’s ‘The Private Lives of the Impressionists’, or A. S Byatt’s ‘Still Life’, which I recently purchased. It doesn’t stop there either with hardbacks about architecture such as Phaidon publications (well, this wouldn’t be a gallery nor museum shop without this name making an appearance in the realm of books concerning the ‘visual arts’) like ‘The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture Travel Edition’ amongst others included in the extensive range of stock.
However, it’s the ‘Irish Art and Architecture’ hardbacks that really enliven the senses, the cheapest costing a whopping € 55. S. B Kennedy’s 400 page, 15′‘x15” hardback entitled ‘Paul Henry — Paintings, Drawings and Illustrations’ would illuminate any coffee table. As Ireland’s greatest 20^th century landscape painter he is featured heavily in the gallery and this carries through to the gifts on offer within the shop. Not only are there books dedicated to his masterpieces as explained but pencils, pens, postcards and more besides all featuring his works of art are available to buy. These gargantuan books really are as striking as their price would suggest. ‘Ireland’s Painters 1600 – 1940′, for example priced at € 60.00 offers one of the finest richly illustrated surveys of the history of ‘the’ Irish painting (that expertly encompasses the entire span from the middle ages to the mid-​20^th century) that I have ever seen.
Stationery and gifts, calenders and diaries all featuring replicated images of the paintings displayed within the gallery align the shelves in abundance. A chock load of postcards and stationery featuring the gallery’s most famous paintings such as Caravaggio’s ‘The Taking of Christ’, Frederick William Burton, ‘Meeting on the Turret Stairs’ and Rembrandt’s ‘Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ cram the shelves. Moving away from this seeming refined stockpile and things directly affiliated with art, the shop also stocks more light-​hearted products that are irrelevant in light of fine art but maintain a creative edge concurrent with everything the shop stocks. This includes a pair of Freudian slippers, magnets of Munch’s ‘Scream’ amongst other humorous items.
A wonderful shop chocked full with goods that are as cultured as they are entertaining. Anytime I have ever gone in there with friends no one has ever come out empty handed despite no initial intentions to buy anything, which only pays homage to the appealing goods on offer.

Anything that is devoted to art history is a great thing… a magnificent thing.
This bookshop/​gift shop is great! They have a great selection of top quality art history books aswell as posters, postcards… books on how to paint, how to look at paintings, and of course guides tot he gallery itself.
But if you are looking for books on a specific movement or painting/​painter then this is the place to go, they have quite a good selection, and sure while you are at it you may as well just pop inot the gallery too!
It can get a bit pricey but that is the nature of the books themselves, which can often be quite big and hardback… still… fantastic shop!!!

I love the shop in the National Gallery. Not only does it have gorgeous prints and imitation pictures, but it has the best stationary and random book or make-​and-​do section that I’ve found. There’s brilliant kids stuff and lots of unusual reference books. Nice and alternative.