Ten works on paper you wish you'd bought at the 193rd RHA show

The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (RHA) has held an annual exhibition, displaying hundreds of artworks, every year, bar four since 1826.

Traditionally a summer show, for collectors new and seasoned it offers the largest selection of Irish art to be found in one place for sale, on view for free and open to the public for ten weeks. With artworks ranging from €65 to €60,000 this year, it really is a show for every pocket. Last year's exhibition saw more than €550,000 of art sold.

It's finally time for Ireland’s largest and longest running exhibition of visual arts. The RHA Annual Exhibition is now open! Come join us to celebrate our bicentenary 🎉#RHA #RHA200 #RHAAnnualExhibition #ArtsCouncilSupported #ArtsIreland pic.twitter.com/IRR0IxoJVG
— RHA Gallery (@RHAGallery) May 22, 2023

Every year without fail, the exhibition's best value works are snapped up first. Here's our critic’s selection of ten works on paper you might wish you’d been quick, or cash-rich, enough to buy for yourself, along with a few suggestions for other works to keep an eye on.

Including drawing, photography and various forms of print, works on paper tend to offer better value for money if you have your eye on a particular artist but know that their larger paintings or other works are beyond budget.

NB: Of the editioned print-works listed here, most still have some of the limited edition available.

1. Alice Maher RHA, Mary Magdalene listening to her hair, €8,500

This stand-out metre-wide charcoal, pencil, and chalk drawing deploys familiar motifs for fans of Maher’s work: the female body, the Bible’s other Mary, and an abundance of hair.

2. Elizabeth Magill, Low Dew Point, €3,950

Although Magill works in paint and print, frequently combining both, this landscape triptych is an excellent example of an editioned work on paper offering a (slightly) more affordably entry point than one of the artist’s highly covetable large paintings.

3. Diarmuid Delargy, De Cuellar’s Retreat (Juliana), €750

Produced in an edition of 40, there is an enticing pirate-y darkness to this maritime etching, which refers in fact to the sailing career of Captain Francisco de Cuellar of the Spanish Armada, who was shipwrecked and became a castaway off the coast of Sligo in September 1588.

4. Dorothy Smith ARHA, Unfinished Business I, €1,900

Smith’s drawings are always standout when they appear at the RHA Annual. This one captures in delicate detail the decaying remains of the Celtic Tiger house-building boom, still visible in almost every county in Ireland.

5. Grainne Cuffe, April Aquilegia, €415

Produced in an edition of 50 with ten on sale at the RHA, Cuffe makes ever-popular colour etchings of flowers, of which this is a delicately eye-popping example.

6. Helen O’Sullivan, Myriad of Yellows, €600

This 2019 NCAD-graduate’s thin-striped minimalist copperplate etchings have an almost spiritual feel, and yellow is definitely a colour-du-jour at this year’s show.

7. Banjo Banks, Office Politics, €450

There’s always room for humour at the RHA Annual, and Banks hits the staple on the head with this one.

8. Yoko Akino, Errigal, €720

Kyoto-born Akino moved to Dublin in 1996 and lives now on the Cooley Peninsula, which juts out into the Irish Sea between Dundalk Bay and Carlingford Lough. She brings a measured, Japanese stillness to her work.

9. Lars Nyberg, A Small Pine, €170

A native of Sweden, Nyberg is well-known for his delicate etchings of trees. As the years pass, his tiny drypoints seem to carry an increasingly urgent impetus in the face of the ever-growing climate crisis.

10. Gary Coyle RHA, At the Museum No.142

€3,700. In ways this is an almost perfect work for the 200th year anniversary show at the RHA: a one-off photograph of a simple, darkened space which combines feelings of mystery, mystique, exclusivity and promise.