Director of the National Gallery of Ireland (1927-1935) and first director of the Barber Institute (museum). Bodkin was the son of Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1849-1933) and Arabella Norman (Bodkin) (d. 1931). His father was a journalist and later judge for County Clare, Ireland, and then Member of Parliament for North Roscommon. Bodkin attended Belvedere College and Clongowes Wood College before graduating from the Royal University of Ireland in 1908. He began practicing law in 1911.

Scholar of ancient glass; museum director. Harden's father was the Reverend John Mason Harden (1871-1931), Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, Ireland, and his mother Constance Caroline Sparrow. After Kilkenny College (boarding school) and the Westminster School, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1920, where he studied under William Ridgway, Arthur Cook and Donald Robertson. Cook suggested he study terracottas, first at the British Museum and then in Rome at the British School on a Craven grant. He excavated Tunis with Arnold MacKay Duff in 1923-1924.

Early female art historian of the Italian Renaissance; author of the first systematic study of Christian iconography in the English language. Born the daughter of the Irish miniaturist painter Denis Murphy and English wife (name now lost), the family emigrated to England in 1798, finally settling in London in 1803. Anna Murphy worked as a governess for several wealthy families, one of whom took her to the continent.

Novelist and author of a biography of Salvator Rosa. Owenson was named for her paternal grandmother, Sydney Crofton Bell, disowned by her family after eloping with a farmer. Owenson's father, Robert MacOwen (1744 - 1812), an actor, Anglicized his name to Owenson and married Jane Hill (d.1789). Their daughter, Sydney Owenson, learned narrative, language, folklore, and music from her actor father. After her mother died in 1789, she and her younger sister were sent to Madame Terson's boarding school in Dublin, a Huguenot (Protestant) academy, and Mrs. Anderson's finishing school.

Church minister and author of Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, a standard work for most of the nineteenth century. Pilkington was the son of a watchmaker, William Pilkington. He attended grammar school in Dublin, Ireland, where his family had resettled. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1718 graduating with a BA in 1722 in preparation for church work. He married Laetitia Van Lewen (1712-1750) in 1725 and after receiving a master's degree, promoted with the help of his father-in-law to to curate at St. Andrew's the same year.

Botticelli biographer and director of the Science and Arts Museum of Ireland, 1907-16. Plunkett was the son of Patrick Joseph Plunkett (1817-1918), a builder, and Elizabeth Noble (Plunkett). The family income, derived from the Rathmines, Dublin, allowed Plunkett to attend school at Nice and Dublin (1863-7), Clongowes Wood College, county Kildare (1867-9), and beginning in 1872, Dublin University. At Dublin he studied Renaissance and medieval art among other topics, ultimately graduating in 1884. That year he married Josephine Cranny (1858-1944).

Early scholar and illustrator of medieval Celtic art. Stokes was the daughter of William Stokes (1804-1878), a physician, and Mary Black (Stokes). Her paternal grandfather was Whitley Stokes (1763-1845) a physician and author of an English-Irish dictionary. Her father's friends included the archaeologists and scholars James Henthorn Todd (1805-1869), George Petrie (1790-1866), William Reeves (1815-1892), Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886), and Edwin R. W. Quin (1812-1871), third earl of Dunraven; these family friends inspired an interested in archaeology.

Together with William Young Ottley, wrote a catalog for the British Gallery, 1818. Tresham was an art student at the Dublin Society of Artists where he won a prize in 1773. After moving to London, he met John Campbell, later 1st Baron Cawdor (1753-1821). It was likely with Campbell that Tresham journeyed to Rome in 1775 where he remained for 14 years. In Rome he met the various artists who comprised the classical revival movement, including Antonio Canova (Tresham was Campbell's agent with Canova), Henry Fuseli, and Thomas Banks.