I had never been to the Hugh Lane Art Gallery before attending it with the class. I would go again and I would bring a friend who hasn’t been before to so that they can experience it too. I liked that you can roam around to different parts and there wasn’t a set way to go. I liked the layout of the art gallery and how they provided information on all the artwork and artists. I didn’t like how if one artist paintings were in the gallery that their paintings were not in the same room. I would have preferred to see the contrast in the side of the paintings by side then in separate rooms.

I learned a lot about Hugh Lane life and saw his artwork. Beforehand I didn’t know much about High Lane I just knew that he was a famous Irish painter. I learned that the art gallery had many other art pieces that could suit everyone’s art taste.

The artwork that attracted me was art pieces with colour, landscapes, people and a story. I find that if I can look at the artwork and interpret what they mean or create my own story of what they saw then I enjoy looking at the art piece even more.

The art piece I will discuss is “The Diligence in the Snow” by Gustavo Courbet (1860). My first reaction was it was a huge painting and it was bright on one side by dull on the other side. When I kept looking at the painting and looked at the smaller details I noticed that it’s a very sombre painting. It paints a snowstorm with a description of “a coach pulled by horses and oxen overturned in snowdrifts with a small figures dwarfed by the expansive landscape setting”. My reaction to it knowing the story was sad but I thought the painting was beautiful and it was one of my favourite paintings in the art gallery.

The colour contrast, the size of the painting and the story of the painting attracted me to this artwork.

Before seeing this art piece and running about the artwork, I had never seen the artwork or heard of the artist beforehand.