Now folks, Mame Baudet is back from the Fair City. Fine weather, not a Dublin donkey to be seen on the Luas unfortunately but their earless (or nearly) very distant cousins - they are all mammals after all - the Howth harbour seals were in great form I must say. Was there to see my friends and also to attend the opening of the new Asian art exhibition at the National Museum-Collins Barracks.

I also seized the opportunity to visit the National Gallery exhibition on paintings from Finland, "Northern Stars and Southern lights" which I would recommend.

Then, I went on with my donkey survey in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland. I started with the Irish painting collection in the Milltown wing level 1. Not very successful to tell the truth. The present display has only one painting with donkeys on it. It is "A view of Dublin from Chapelizod" by Birmingham born artist William Ashford. You won’t spot the long-eared at first sight I reckon. But once you get closer to the painting there they are, towards the right, the very small yet unmistakable silhouettes of a few donkeys to be seen on the opposite bank of the river.

I was more successful in the Milltown wing, level 2 with Flemish and Dutch paintings. The back side of a donkey and the ears of another are visible on Jan Victors’ "The Levite and his concubine at Gibeah", which is a mid-17th century work. There is also a donkey head, keeping his ears flat on Pieter Lastman’s "Joseph selling corn in Egypt" while a caricaturaly exhausted one appears by Joseph’s side on Jacob Pynas’ "Landscape with the flight into Egypt", early 17th century. And last come the two heavily loaded donkeys under the arch of a bridge, one of them drinking, on the left of an "Italianate landscape" by Nicolas Berchem.

Now donkeys also have an exotic flavour and feature frequently in Orientalist paintings. Mind you, there is no Orientalist school of painting as such. So called orientalist artists were, for most of them, very traditionally trained academic artists as far as their technique was concerned. But the exoticism of Northern Africa, of the Near and Middle East appealed to them. Some didn’t cross the border of their native France, but others visited those distant countries. Narcisse Berchère (1819-1891) did. He went to Greece, Egypt, Palestine and Syria. He was even picked up by Ferdinand de Lesseps as the official painter who would brush-record the cutting of the Suez Canal. The National Gallery has "An Arab caravan resting on the shore" by him. Two donkeys wait patiently on the right by the side of a group of women sitting and chatting.

The Gallery also owns two paintings by another - more famous - French academic artist, Jean Léon Gérôme. Be aware, by the way, that an exhibition on his work is in the pipeline at the Musée d’Orsay in the next two or three years. Gérôme, who was to be famous for his historical accuracy - and also because he was to be one of the most vocal opponents of the Impressionists - love travelling and visited the Balkans, Egypt, Turkey, Palestine, Greece, Algiers…to name but a few.

In his "An Easter scene, guards at the door of a tomb" a donkey carrying a lady walks proudly beside the man we may surmise is his owner. And I believe I have already mentioned elsewhere Gérôme’s "A caravan on the Nile, the gulf of Aqaba". There, on the foreground, leading the caravan, an Arab sits on his donkey, obviously a mare, as the lovely foal trots gently behind. There’s a pencil sketch of the foal somewhere on the website and here is the sketch of the mother which I did this time.

That is all I could find in the present display. Now, I’ll keep a sharp eye! I’m pretty sure there are more donkeys in storage!