Since his childhood in Dublin, the famous Irish Playwright and Critic, George Bernard Shaw, spent many hours wandering the Rooms of the National Gallery of Ireland, which he credited for being the place to which he owed "much of the only real education I ever got as a boy in Eire".

Just before his 94th Birthday, he completed his last Will, leaving one third of all his posthumous royalities to the National Gallery in Ireland.

Maureen Beary Ryan is an Art Historian and currently a Patron of Irish Art at The National Gallery of Ireland. For 18 years she acted as Administrator of The Friends of The National Gallery of Ireland.