Co Kilkenny: €2.3mA former rectory in Co Kilkenny, which has been home, studio and inspiration to artist Hughie O'Donoghue for over 12 years, is for sale through Boyds Real Estate Alliance for €2.3 million.

O'Donoghue and his wife Claire have extensively refurbished Kilfane Glebe, a Georgian house built in 1807 three km from Thomastown, while preserving its original features. After selling their Kilkenny home the couple plan to split their time between Mayo, where O'Donoghue's mother is from, Dublin and London.

The two main reception rooms have pale green walls and lots of period detail. A Clive Nunn kitchen features ceramic chequer-tiled floors, limestone worktops and a Belfast sink. Upstairs there are five bedrooms.

The basement, which can be accessed from inside and outside the house, could be fitted out as a two-bedroom apartment.

Currently it contains a kitchen, livingroom, shower room and a room which was once the large working rectory kitchen.

The house, set on 10 acres in a landscape he describes as "Arcadian", has been a constant backdrop to O'Donoghue's work.

"At first I didn't expect that it would have influenced my work but over the years it has seeped into the painting. Every day I walk the land around here with my dog and I have got to know the place intimately."

The landscape features prominently in a series of paintings about memory and history he is currently working on for a show in Berlin, he says.

O'Donoghue's work is done in sensitively restored and extended stable buildings. The studio complex with over 370sq m (4,000sq ft) has enough room to accommodate O'Donoghue's large-scale expressive paintings.

The main high studio with an 8m high ceiling has a glazed opening overlooking a walled garden. Also in the stableyard is a pretty stone house, a one-bedroom apartment. Plans for converting other stable buildings into accommodation have also been drawn up.