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Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 526, 9 May 1933, Page 7

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, LANE COLLECTION DE YALERA AND COSGRAVE COMBINE ON ONE POINT. RESTORATION OF PICTURES. Mr. de Valera has joined forees with Mr. Oosgrave — in endorsing the demand for the restoration to Dublin of the late Sir Hugh Lane's collection of thirty-nine modern foreign pictures, now in the Tate Gallery (says the London Daily Telegraph). An appeal for the restoration was contained in a recently-publish'ed work, "Hugh Lane and His Pictures," by Professor Bodkin, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, who has taken :an active part in the controversy that has waged since Lane went down in the Lusitania in 1915. When President of the Council in January, 1932, Mr. Cosgrave described this hook "as an outline of Ireland's case written in the confident hope that it will be found 'to he irresistible on equitable grounds." As his successqr, Mr. de Valera now adds this endorkement in the circular which goes out with the hook: "This hook, which deals with the career of an Irishman who strove nohly to serve the cause of culture in his country, has been prepared as a gift from the Government of the aorstat Eireann to those who love justice and to those who love the arts." Sir Hugh Lane, at his death, left a codicil which countermanded his gift to London. The codicil, however, was drafted without legal advice, and lacked the essential signatures by two , witnesses. In 1924 Mr. J. H. Thomas J presided over a sp'ecial committee on 1 the question. The report, which was 1 not, however, unanimous, said that ; Lane "thought h'e was making a legal j disposition," but the committee reject- j ed the idea of a special Act to put the codicil right. The position at present is that the trustees of our National Gallery have placed the disputed pictures in the Duveen wing at the Tate Gallery. They have offered the pictures on loan, but this Dublin refuses. Instead, it has prepared Charlemont House for . their reception.