Preserving Legacy: Enhancing Conservation at Crawford Art Gallery

Members of the public are invited to attend a free talk during Heritage Week that focus on the conservation of a true national treasure. The Goose Girl (1888) is a much loved oil painting by Edith Somerville in the collection of Crawford Art Gallery.

The Goose Girl is now the subject of conservation treatment while the doors of Crawford Art Gallery are closed for its major redevelopment. Supported by the Heritage Council through the Heritage Stewardship Fund 2025, this crucial work will ensure the historic painting’s future.

This public talk will shed new light on the painting, exploring its history and the steps being taken to care for it in Crawford Art Gallery’s new mobile conservation laboratory. Each talk will have three speakers: conservator Chiara Chillè, registrar Jean O’Donovan, and curator Michael Waldron.

This initiative underscores Crawford Art Gallery’s commitment to best-practice heritage care, adhering to a principle of minimal intervention—carrying out only those treatments necessary to stabilise and preserve the original condition of an artwork.

The Goose Girl is by far the largest and most accomplished of Somerville’s works held in a public collection in Ireland and attests to the artist’s desire to be remembered as a “great painter.” Somerville stands among a remarkable generation of Irishwomen—including her cousin Rose Barton and Mildred Anne Butler—who practised successfully as professional artists, particularly during the 1870s and 1880s.