10 a.m.
This is when the public is allowed in to the tranquil interior of the gallery, all cool marble, polished wood floors, high ceilings and high art. But activity behind the scenes has already been well under way for some time.
First in is head attendant, Mick O'Shea, at 7.40 a.m., who checks the building for any mishaps or, God forbid, burglaries. During the night, the gallery's collection of 2,500 oil paintings and about 10,000 other works is looked after by a team of security men. "Everything is alarmed and monitored 24 hours a day", says Mick, so "we've been very lucky, the worst I ever have to deal with is the odd leak." Maighread McParland, Senior Conservator, is in at 9.30 a.m. to get a reading on the computer of temperature and humidity levels which are monitored by 10 sensors in the refurbished north wing. This sophisticated system will soon be extended to the rest of the gallery.
Maighread has also acquainted a fire crew with the gallery in the catastrophic event of a fire: "We wouldn't want them training a powerful hose on the Caravaggio." She is also involved in environmental planning for the Clare Street extension, construction of which begins next March. "I'm wondering if we need activated carbon filters?" she says, her brow furrowing. Marie Fitzgerald, manager of the gallery shop, is already busy at 9.30 a.m., replenishing stock from her warehouse below stairs. Here among shelves packed with shiny new catalogues, cards and calendars, she runs a wholesale business, supplying cards to Ireland, Canada and the US: "We're busy with corporate Christmas card orders at the moment."
The most popular image in the shop is Sir Frederick Burton's watercolour of the doomed medieval lovers in "The Meeting on the Turret Stairs" (1864). It has pipped longtime favourite, "The Goose Girl" (thought to be the work of Irish painter, William Leech, "The Goose Girl" was attributed to a different painter in 1996, the English artist, Stanley Royle). Other popular artists for framed prints are Jack Yeats and Paul Henry, but some people aren't too pushed about the artist: "They just want to match the colours of the picture with their carpet," says Marie.
10.30 a.m.
The Print Room is presided over by the beady eye of Jane MacAvock, curator of prints and drawings. She ushers me into the print store-room, her "hidden treasure trove". This room is usually kept in darkness, "because light damages paper and waterbased paints". Jane wears white gloves because "oil and dirt on your hands can damage the paper". And yes, this is a biro-free zone.
She moves to the back of the store-room and lifts up a sheet of brown paper to reveal "The Meeting on the Turret Stairs" in a blaze of royal blue. "The colours would fade in a few months in a sunny room," says Jane, who confesses that the Burton is far from being her favourite image in the Gallery: "I'm not into gooey nineteenth century sentimentality," she sniffs.
In a corner there is a stout wooden cupboard. "That's where the Turners are stored," says Jane, patting it fondly. The Turner collection of watercolours is only on view in January, to protect it from too much light.
Between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. you can go to the Print Room and make a request, if there is anything you wish to see. Mary Reilly, an art student from UCD, is poring over the sketchbooks of Jack Hanlon, a priest and artist who died in 1968. "These sketchbooks were an important part of his oeuvre," she explains. "I'm very careful," she assures Jane, tweaking the white gloves she has been given to wear.
11.15 a.m.
Sarah Fagan has been at work for over three hours. The bulk of her work gets done between 8 and 10 a.m., cleaning the hall, the marble staircases, the toilets, each of the rooms. "I love working here," she says, darting forward with her dustpan and brush to sweep up a piece of paper on the pristine parquet floor. She has four framed prints from the Gallery in her house: Richard Moynan's "Military Manouevre", Trevor Thomas Power's "Dancing at the Crossroads", "The Goose Girl", and the Gallery's most famous recent addition, Caravaggio's "Taking of Christ": "I have the Caravaggio in the kitchen," she explains. "We spend most of our time in that room."
11.30 a.m.
Fitzer's Restaurant, one of the most popular destinations in the gallery, is already displaying its own inimitable work of art, the lunch menu. Under the proprietal eye of general manager Noel McCann, four chefs have been working since 8 a.m, concocting beef fajitas, broccoli and parmesan roulade, venison sausages and African chicken for the turnover of 220 they receive each day for lunch. A former art student, Noel is keen to incorporate the themes of the gallery into his food: "We had an Italian month for the Caravaggio," he recalls. Fitzer's has 22 staff members. The gallery employs a further 92 people (14 of these are with FAS).
12.30 p.m.
"This shows the power of nature at its most terrible." Art students from Palmerstown Community College are glued to the huge apocalyptic painting by Wexfordman Francis Danby, "The Opening of the Sixth Seal" (1828). They are listening to a school tour lecture by Fiona Loughnane, who points to the cowering people clutching their jewels as they are confronted with the end of the world. The students are initially nonplussed by Jack B. Yeats's abstract painting, "Grief", but heads begin to nod as Fiona describes the battle scene which is suggested by Yeats's palette knife swipes and blobs of paint. Tantalising smells of lunch leak through to our nostrils from the nearby restaurant.
1 p.m.
In the North Wing Colonnade gallery an exhibition of Danish art is being installed. Two art handlers, wearing white gloves, are carrying a enormous full-length portrait of a blonde woman bearing a bunch of wildflowers. "She is Anna Ancher, a well-known Danish painter," explains Fionnuala Croke, a National Gallery curator. "This is a portrait painted by her husband, Michael Ancher," adds Annette Johansen, a curator at the Skagen Museum in Denmark, who, with Fionnuala, has put the exhibition together. The exhibition is entitled "P.S. Kroyer and the Artists' Colony at Skagen", and features a group of artists known as "the Danish Impressionists". The 80 pictures in the show arrived safely from Denmark in specially designed crates. Hanging is now about to begin.
The design of each of the five rooms will revolve around one large central piece: "A big one in the middle creates a focal point for each wall," explains Fionnuala. Annette is somewhat flummoxed by the fact that the space available for the pictures seems much bigger in the flesh than it did on the plans she was sent earlier in the year.
Meanwhile three art handlers are missing their lunch to organise the hanging of possibly the most famous painting ever produced in Denmark, "Summer Evening at the Beach at Skagen", by P.S. Kroyer himself. Paul Irwin, Martin Irwin and Ken Nicoletti have been given special training on how to lift paintings so as not to damage their backs: "You're conscious of the need to bend your knees most of the time, but sometimes you forget," says Paul.
They fit the massive canvas with heavyduty Chubb wire: "Guaranteed to hold half a ton," says Paul, "so if the picture falls down, it's their fault, not ours." Fionnuala and Annette look on anxiously as a hoist whirrs and grinds inches away from the pride of the Danish art world. To diffuse the tension, Fionnuala and Annette comment on the picture, which depicts Kroyer, his wife and their dog walking on the beach: "It's very poignant really, because their marriage was just about to break up," says Fionnuala. "The year after he did that painting, he was sent to a mental institution," adds Annette. Ah, the turbulent and miserable lives played out behind so many works of art!
2.30 p.m.
Upstairs in the room dedicated to Caravaggio and his followers in the Milltown Wing, an art student is sketching her own version of "The Taking of Christ". A little boy in a bandana is fidgeting as his father explains the background of the painting in a low voice.
Downstairs, sounds of the grand piano being tuned in the Shaw Room can be heard. The vast Shaw Room with its huge tableaux is a perfect setting for the many concerts hosted by the gallery. At reception, the two volunteers who are on the desk for the afternoon are kept busy. A man is delighted to hear there is no admission fee. A young woman asks Stella Long what exhibitions are on. She mentions "The Deeper Picture", the exhibition in the Print Gallery, depicting art conservation work, which suggests that a painting entitled "Head of an Old Man" in the Gallery collection, previously believed to have been a faked Rembrandt, is in fact the real thing.
3 p.m.
Time to see a conservationist at work. Paper conservator Niamh McGuinne shows me an 18th-century reprint of a 17th-century Italian plate which she has just, with great patience, managed to unstick from a piece of backing paper. The heavy adhesive - "revolting animal-based glue" - she scraped off is piled up in lumps. She used several washes of buffered, deionised water to destabilise the glue. Hang on a minute; water? Yes. "I tested the inks to see if they were stable and they were," she explains. She found a watermark on the paper, which is useful for dating purposes. There is also some damage, which she will repair with light, fibrous Japanese tissue using glutenfree wheatstarch as a glue. "When it's ready we'll flatten it in a press, mount it and hand it over," she concludes.
3.45 p.m.
Art historian and National Gallery publicity manager Valerie Keogh (my indefatigable minder for the day) allows me to peep behind the scenes into one of the pictures stores, where oils and pastels not on display are kept on huge racks. "For space reasons the gallery can't put its whole collection on display," she notes, but adds that more pictures will be shown when the Clare Street extension is up and running. I feel sorry for these tableaux, their glory unappreciated by the public eye as they hang here in obscurity. Nano Reid's portrait of Patrick Hennessy stares out at me, alongside Hilda von Stockum's portrait of Evie Hone in her studio and, lurking in the shadows, Hugh Lane himself, painted by Sarah Cecilia Harrison.
4.15 p.m.
Marie Bourke, head of education and the keeper of the gallery, is having a busy day, as the director, Raymond Keaveney, is away at a conference in Vienna (on new technology in museums), and she is his deputy in his absence. She takes time out to tell me about her multi-faceted education programme. The most intriguing project involves a guide for partially-sighted visitors to the gallery, complete with moulded plastic versions of the paintings. I trace the contours of Vermeer's masterpiece, "Lady Writing a Letter, with Her Maid" with my finger-tips. There is also a guide in Braille (tours are available in sign language for those who are hearing impaired).
The gallery also runs extra-mural courses in art history for adults and a drawing course on Saturday evenings. Marie has compiled a handsome teacher's pack, entitled Exploring Art at the National Gallery, with worksheets and a glossy handbook. This was distributed to every school in the 32 counties last year as part of the Exploring Art Project (1997-9), a two-year cross-Border initiative sponsored by Bord Gais, which also involves a travelling children's art exhibition. Marie's office is filled with framed paintings by children: the colourful subjects include a swan, a fish and a dog.
5 p.m.
The gallery organised 190 events North and South last year, Marie says with some satisfaction. This is part of its active outreach programme. Jenny Siung is the outreach assistant. She sits in a shady office looking out over Merrion Square, responding to requests for lectures and workshops all over the country. "You have a passion for the paintings you want to communicate," says Jenny, who is preparing to give workshops at Baboro, the Galway children's festival [starting today]. "The idea is to bring the gallery to people who've never had the opportunity to visit the National Collection."
5.30 p.m.
Those who have been in the building to view the collection must take their leave as the gallery closes and the pictures are left to brood in their frozen poses for the night. In Vienna, Raymond Keaveney is still immersed in learning about the joys of new technology, and is turning over in his mind plans for the building of a new, more comprehensive multi-media centre, an audio-visual guide with random rather than linear access, and much more, to bring this venerable institution, first opened to the public in 1864, into the new millennium.
