If anyone knows the struggle of trying to make a living as an artist, it’s Denise Donnelly.
She grew up in a single-parent household where her artist mother’s ability to sell a painting from the railings on Merrion Square, or not, was the difference between a good dinner and a not so good one.
As a child she helped. “Outside, in the freezing cold, all through the winter. I met a man recently who told me of one of my mother’s paintings he had bought from us on Merrion Square and I actually remembered it because we got a really good cooked chicken as a result,” she says.
By that stage she was already a veteran, having started off selling in Blackrock Market at the age of 12.
Her mother, Clare O’Farrell, is one of numerous artists she represents in her South Frederick Street business, the Doorway Gallery.
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Donnelly grew up in Stillorgan, trained as a chef and worked briefly in an office. But the lure of art was too strong.
It was while selling one of her mother’s pieces “on a very windy” Saturday on Capel Street 25 years ago that a passer-by offered her the use of an empty unit he owned around the corner on Francis Street for a peppercorn rent. She was 21 and suddenly a gallery owner.
The unit was a huge warehouse so to fill it she got creative. Inspired by the Salon des Refusés, the exhibition of works famously rejected by the official Paris salon in the mid-19th century, she hired a van and parked up outside Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. Her aim was to sign up the works of artists not selected for its annual exhibition, and stage a show of her own.
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Her chutzpah landed her a slot on RTE, generating invaluable publicity. She continued doing the show annually and has retained many of those artists ever since.
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As footfall fell in Francis Street over the years, however, and its antique shops began to close, she moved to her present location, a unit with a beautiful bay window in South Frederick Street.
During the Covid pandemic sales soared as people spent more on their homes, enabling her to open a second unit in Stillorgan.
Like any successful gallerist, her main selling point is a great selection of good works, but if she has a unique selling point it is perhaps her determinedly down-to-earth approach to art. Her philosophy is to make art as “accessible as possible”, she says.
That includes services such as a “try before you buy” option, which allows potential buyers to take home a piece for a couple of days to see how they feel about living with it. In all the years she has offered the service, only once did someone abuse it, “borrowing” a piece simply to create an impressive backdrop for a dinner party.
She keeps her price point to a fraction of some of the other well-known galleries around town. “Where their average prices might be €10,000 to €15,000, ours is €2,000 to €3,000, and we’ve loads for under €500 too so we’re very affordable. We also offer payment plans, which has helped to bring in a younger audience.”
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Stock changes every week, with a new artist in residence coming in, most of whom will visit the store at weekends to meet with customers.
Again it’s all about accessibility — and zero pretension. Donnelly says: “You don’t have to know anything about art. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you connect with a piece.”
Prices are visible, so that helps visitors feel comfortable too. This stems from an incident when, as a much younger woman, she stepped into a gallery to ask the price of a picture in the window. “The owner said, ‘If you have to ask, little girl, you can’t afford it.’ And I just thought, well, that’s what I’m not going to be like.”
