Irish art as a gift — what suits which occasion

This is a reference page, not a sales pitch. It answers the question we are asked most often — what Irish art suits this particular occasion? — with named works and honest reasons, including the reasons not to choose something. If you want to browse instead, the full catalogue is there.

One practical note before the occasions: every print here is open edition and made to order, so nothing sells out and nothing has to be decided in a hurry. Prints ship free worldwide, and orders are produced at the hub nearest the delivery address — Ireland, the UK, the US, Canada or Australia — so a gift going to Boston or Sydney is not posted from Dublin and does not arrive with a customs bill.

A wedding present

The obvious choice is Frederic William Burton's The Meeting on the Turret Stairs, and it is the one most people buy. Be aware of what it actually shows: two lovers parting, moments before one of them is killed. It was voted Ireland's favourite painting in 2012 and it is genuinely tender, but it is a farewell, not a celebration. Plenty of couples love it precisely for that. Some would rather not have it over the mantelpiece.

If you want something unambiguously warm, Lavery's The Green Sofa is a quiet, private picture of someone entirely at ease. For a couple with a modern flat and no interest in Victorian romance, Mainie Jellett's Achill Horses is bold, cubist and unmistakably Irish without being sentimental about it.

A housewarming or a new home

There is a right answer here and it is Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin — there is no hearth like your own hearth. It is the Irish proverb for exactly this moment, and giving it in Irish rather than English is the whole point of it.

Céad Míle Fáilte works for a hall. For someone who has bought a house in a particular place, the place itself is usually better than a proverb — see the next section.

For someone who has left Ireland

The rule here is specific over general. A print of the Cliffs of Moher is a nice picture of Ireland; a print of the exact stretch of coast someone grew up on is a different object entirely. Ask where they are from before you buy anything.

The places we print include Glendalough in Wicklow, Benbulben in Sligo, the Dingle peninsula in Kerry, Murlough Bay and Fair Head on the Antrim coast, the Ha'penny Bridge in Dublin and the Cliffs of Moher in Clare. If the place you want is not there, ask us.

A map of Ireland is the safe choice when you do not know the county — it names everywhere, so it always contains the right place somewhere.

An anniversary

Mildred Anne Butler's Shades of Evening is the quiet one — rooks settling into a tree at dusk, painted in 1904 from her own garden in Kilkenny, where she painted more or less everything she made. It suits a long marriage better than a grand romantic gesture does.

A christening or a new baby

Sarah Purser's A Lady Holding a Rattle, painted in 1885, is the literal answer and a good one. Codladh Sámh — sleep well — is the Irish-language choice for a nursery.

For someone who reads

Famous Irish Writers puts O'Casey, Joyce, Yeats and Beckett in one frame and is the one people buy for a study. For a single writer, John Butler Yeats's portrait of his son W.B. was painted in 1900, when the poet was thirty-five and the Nobel Prize was twenty-three years away. John B. Keane suits anyone from Kerry or anyone who has seen The Field.

For someone who plays

Turlough O'Carolan is the harper every traditional musician knows — blinded at eighteen, forty years on horseback, two hundred surviving tunes. Luke Kelly for the ballad singers, the uilleann piper for the pipers, and the harp if you want the instrument rather than a person.

If you are spending under €75

Most prints here start between €55 and €75 for the smallest unframed size, so the question is usually not whether you can afford a good one but which size to choose. Gifts under €50 collects the smallest formats. Framing roughly doubles the price and is worth it if the gift is going straight onto a wall; unframed is better if the person has their own framer or particular taste.

Sizes, framing and delivery

Prints are made on 250gsm archival matte paper, acid-free and FSC-certified. Framed options are solid oak or ash with protective glazing and arrive ready to hang with a hanging kit. Unframed prints up to A4 ship flat; larger sizes ship rolled in a tube. Delivery runs Ireland 3–7 business days, UK 4–8, USA 5–10, Canada 6–12, Australia 7–14, and every order ships free.

If you are buying for Christmas, order by early December for delivery outside Ireland and the UK — production plus transit is the constraint, not stock, since every print is made to order.

Related

Irish artists we print — who each artist was and where their work hangs. National Gallery of Ireland works we print — the works whose originals are in the national collection, with accession numbers.

Buy Irish Art is a small Irish studio in Glasthule, County Dublin, trading since 2016.