The return of part of an important collection of Irish 18th- and 19th-century landscape paintings to Fota House is part of a process to 'make the place sing', writes Mary Leland

In any cultural milieu, the return of even part of the Richard Wood collection of Irish landscape art to Fota House in Cork would be considered a coup. It was at Fota that these pictures, amassed by the Cork businessman since his time as a student at Trinity College Dublin, were given their first and splendid public showing in the 1980s. Now seven of the finest of them, valued at €1.9 million, make up the first major donation from a private individual to the new Irish Heritage Trust, which absorbed Fota into its portfolio last December as its first property acquisition.

Headed by Sir David Davies of Abbeyleix, the trust had the collection in its sights from the beginning when specific tax-relief measures in the 2007 Finance Bill provided for a once-off increase in the ceiling for donations to the Irish Heritage Trust from €6 million to €10 million. This was in order that what the Bill called "a collection of fine Irish paintings and furniture" could be purchased for display at Fota and was an amendment procured with the agreement of Cork property developer Thomas McCarthy, the intended purchaser.

Yet the question hanging over this important development for Irish heritage awareness must be: a coup for whom? The pictures were presented as a gift by Tom McCarthy who, with his father, also Tom, is building up a sizeable private art collection.

The inaugural use in Cork of the new tax concessions for art donations was for the €800,000 purchase two years ago of the iconic painting View of Cork by John Butts. McCarthy's speciality may be in retrieval: the fine Butts painting had been on loan to the gallery for more than 30 years when its owners decided to sell it. An iconic picture in terms of Cork's own cultural geography, it was bought - anonymously at the time - by McCarthy and put back in its familiar place. Now something of the same is planned for the Wood collection that once hung at Fota.

Both Richard Wood and Tom McCarthy jnr are engaged in legal proceedings about earlier agreements, which at one point included the entire collection, valued at €6.165 million, along with three plots of Wood's land. These assets were vulnerable to charges to meet Wood's financial obligations arising from a protracted series of suits resulting from Wood's earlier involvement with Bula Mines. In such circumstances, both financial and legal pressures seemed to be making the sale of all or part of the art and furniture collection inevitable. Christie's of London had already been appointed as selling agents for an event that would have meant the breaking up and scattering of what some authorities say is the most important grouping of Irish 18th- and 19th-century paintings outside of the National Gallery. McCarthy, who was appointed to the board of the Heritage Trust three months ago, and whose company is one of the most prominent in Cork, agreed to secure these seven paintings before that proposed sale.

A coup, then, for McCarthy? Probably. Although there is considerable acclaim attached to this gift and some national recognition in the January announcement of his donation by John Gormley, Minister for Heritage, he and Wood still have to settle their legal arguments. All the same, as the Heritage Trust's chief executive Kevin Baird says, "Tom McCarthy has gone way beyond the extra mile in getting this collection for us."

Could it be a coup for the negotiating skills of the Irish Heritage Trust? Almost certainly. Pointing out that these paintings are only part of the entire collection of more than 60 items, Baird says that, while the remainder might still be in dispute, both Wood and McCarthy have the interests of the collection at heart.

"Both are keen to find a solution which keeps the paintings together and at Fota. That's the wonderful thing about this whole story."

This whole story, however, is something else again. The cultural history of the Fota demesne near Cobh in Co Cork begins in a hunting lodge set on a small island belonging to the local branch of the Barrys of Munster. As the Smith-Barrys, the family employed Sir Richard Morrison and his son William Vitruvius in 1826 to redesign the house as a mansion residence, which - with its deliberately romanticised landscape, arboretum and walled gardens - it remained until the estate was purchased by University College Cork in 1975.

THANKS TO THE lobbying of Prof Tom Raftery of UCC, part of the land was taken over by the Royal Zoological Society as the hugely successful Fota Wildlife Park. But UCC never capitalised on the potential either of Fota House or of its coherence of pastures, orchards, gardens, farm and woodland. This was despite the fact that philanthropist Richard Wood, at that time untroubled by his connections with Bula Mines, had worked with Dublin conservation architect John O'Connell to restore the house, bringing many items of fine Irish furniture and upholstery to its rooms, which were further enhanced by the hanging of the paintings. One result was an international award for the best small museum in Europe. However, when the university withdrew from the estate in 1987, Wood took his collection away as well; most of it is now at Pallas House at the University of Limerick, where, to the great relief of the Irish Heritage Trust, it will remain for the foreseeable future.

"We don't want another Russborough [House, whose art collection was robbed four times]," says Kevin Baird. "We have to make Fota House more secure before the paintings can be brought back. While we don't expect the costs to be very high given that the house is already reasonably safe, it's the bureaucracy of insurance we have to deal with, rather than significant capital costs."

But Baird has to rustle up a little more than the cost of a security upgrade. The Office of Public Works, which had taken over the gardens and arboretum, spent €4 million on the restoration of Fota's ground floor a few years ago. Now the trust has to fund the restoration of the second floor (there are more than 50 rooms but most of these are in the service wing) at an estimated cost of €2.5 million and expects to have to spend another €2 million on the roof over the next five years.

The departure of UCC in 1987 means that much of the surrounding landscape is now taken up by a golf course, hotel and associated housing. As Prof Raftery, secretary of the Fota Trust - which somehow maintained the core identity of the house and gardens for the past 20 years - knows to his cost, the delicate gilded loveliness of stucco and paintwork at Fota, the flourishes of its pillars, its marble and stone and wealth of carving and the serene accuracy of its vistas through its own grounds (where, in the summer, the nodding giraffes stalk the boundaries of the parkland) are not enough to ensure an income.

"At the moment this is a beautiful house, half restored, without any contents," says Kevin Baird, explaining the Heritage Trust's anxiety to get the Wood pictures to Fota. As art historian Peter Pearson points out in his evaluation of the collection, Ireland's legacy of great country houses and castles that contain authentic historic furnishings and contents is small. Many of the houses that once reflected the lives and times of the past have been lost, their contents dispersed.

"Financial pressures, historical prejudice and simple lack of interest has forced much of the best of this legacy overseas. We have no equivalent to the Hôtel Carnavalet in Paris or Ca' Rezzonico in Venice, where both display such treasures in a contemporary setting."

It is no surprise, says Pearson in his report to the trust, that this collection looked especially "at home" and appropriate at Fota House during the late 1970s and 1980s: "The paintings, for instance, relate to specific places, were created at specific times and are the work of known Irish artists. They hung in particular Irish houses. They are unique examples with a substantial body of related research and reference material. Much of the furniture was acquired during the break-up and auctions of various great house collections."

The paintings constitute several categories, from romantic landscapes of the 18th century, (James Arthur O'Connor), idealised landscapes such as those of George Barrett, portraits including pastels by Hugh Douglas Hamilton, seascapes by artists such as Edwin Hayes, Victorian subject paintings and lastly, "but perhaps most importantly", topographical paintings best exemplified by William Ashford, Jonathan Fisher and George Petrie, with three Ashford works illustrating "the high point of Irish landscape painting in the late 18th century".

AS FOR THE furniture in the collection, Pearson identifies its special heritage as its uniqueness - its Irish origins and its appropriateness to such a location. "Authentic Irish-made pieces are now extremely rare and seldom come up in auction houses, who more and more must fill their sales with replica pieces. The collection is sufficiently important to be both interesting and engaging if displayed in a museum, but it would sparkle with life if it were again to be displayed in a country house like Fota."

Pearson's view that the Richard Wood collection presents an outstanding opportunity to fill a gap in this area of cultural heritage is obviously shared by the Heritage Trust. "Fota is a house that needs to be dressed, and this is an art collection that needs a setting," says Baird. "It shone there once, and it can shine there again. It's about doing justice both to the house and to the collection."

Baird has to think also of remaking the house where architects John O'Connell (who previously worked with Richard Wood), and John Cahill (who managed the OPW restoration) have been engaged to help with the next phase of work on the building, for which the position of property manager was advertised recently.

Also last month, Tom McCarthy spent more than £56,500 at Christie's to buy eight groups of paintings, prints and engravings from the collection gathered in Cork by the Smith-Barry family itself, including a 1636 portrait of David Barry, 1st Earl of Barrymore. These, and the uniform worn by Sir Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry as deputy lord lieutenant of Ireland, purchased by an anonymous donor, are all to be given to Fota.

"We'll just have to chip away at getting it right," says Baird, "but our aim is to make the place sing." So, although this is not yet the end of the story, a coup for Fota House itself.