A Venetian mystery: two paintings by Walter Osborne in the Kildare Street and University Club, Dublin

In 1916, Sir Robert Henry Woods (1865–1938), eminent surgeon and Unionist Member of Parliament, presented two large-scale paintings by Walter Osborne (1859–1903) to the University Club, Dublin, now known as the Kildare Street and University Club. Drawing on new research, this article seeks to counter the long-standing suspicions surrounding the attribution of these works to Osborne, and through hitherto unused contemporary materials, outline the circumstances of their creation, the larger group to which they once belonged, and the story they tell about an ambitious artist seeking to further his career in Victorian Dublin. Further to this, the case of Osborne’s Venetian paintings illuminates a previously unexplored area of collecting in nineteenth-century Dublin, demonstrating the networks that existed between the city’s artistic and professional élites.