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This exceptional collection includes portraits of the Yeats family as well as an impressive group of Jack B Yeats’s paintings, from early favourites such as The Liffey Swim (1923) to later expressionistic work such as Grief (1951).

Seven rooms do justice to this extensive collection devoted to 18th- and 19th-century Irish art. Works by Nathaniel Hone the Elder are representative of the 18th century, while Nathaniel Hone the Younger begins the transition to the Impressionists, represented by Roderic O’Connor and Walter Frederick Osborne.

Paintings in this school span from the Tudor period to the early 20th century with a particularly good 18th-century section. Hogarth, Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough and Raeburn are particularly well represented.

The lovely Italian collection ranges from the Renaissance to the 18th century. Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ (1602) is the most outstanding piece in the 17th-century works of art.

Monet’s A River Scene, Autumn (1874) is one of the highlights of the French collection, most of which dates from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

One of the interesting paintings in the Flemish collection is a collaborative work, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1628), with figures by Peter Paul Rubens set in a Jan Brueghel II landscape .

Goya, Velázquez and Murillo are among many great artists in this collection, which concentrates on the 17th century. The modern era is represented by Picasso’s Still Life with Mandolin (1924).

The Baroque collection is divided in two parts. Room 44 has the Baroque Italian, Spanish, French and Flemish paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries. Room 26 is a gallery devoted to the whole Baroque age in Italy.

The financial input from Shaw’s estate has enabled the gallery to extend its collections and facilities over the years. This elegant room is lined with portraits of dignitaries, as well as The Marriage of Strong-bow and Aoife by Daniel Maclise (1854).

The main galleries added at the first level of this wing concentrate on modern Irish art, showing the rise of Modernism (rooms 1–5). On other floors there are study rooms, temporary exhibition areas and audio-visual facilities. It is a magnificent addition flooded with light.