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    • Archive for March, 2016

    RARE IRISH £50 NOTE FROM 1928 AT DIX NOONAN WEBB

    Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016
    The Irish 1928 £50 note.

    The Irish 1928 £50 note.

    A rare Irish 1928 £50 note – one of only about 20 examples available to collectors – comes up at Dix Noonan Webb in London on April 11.  Estimated at £14,000-18,000  it highlights a strong selection of 100 Irish banknotes.  After the 1922 establishment of the Irish Free State a currency commission was set up to advise the government of a monetary system.    The first series of notes – with denominations from ten shillings to £100 – was issued on September 10, 1928. Only 10,000 of the £50 notes were issued and it is the most difficult to find. Around 20 of them are thought to have survived outside public collections.  The print run for the first £100 note was lower, but many more of them are known to have survived.

    Lady Hazel Lavery, wife of the artist Sir John Lavery, appears on all the notes. The new currency was linked to sterling.  Other rarities include a Royal Bank of Ireland £10 note from 1929 (£4,000-5,000), and two Central Bank of Ireland £1 notes from 1943.  During the Second World War Irish notes were printed in England and sent to Ireland. They were stamped with code letters so that they were easy to remonetize if the ship was attacked or the cash captured.

    A pair of war coded 1943 £1 notes.

    A pair of war coded 1943 £1 notes.

    A Royal Bank of Ireland £10 note

    A Royal Bank of Ireland £10 note from 1929.

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    A SKELETON CLOCK AT MEALY’S IN CASTLECOMER

    Monday, March 21st, 2016
    A skeleton clock, pewter, an early depiction of Waterford city and a set of 17 mahogany dining chairs from Cork Chamber of Commerce will all feature at Mealy’s Spring Fine Art sale in Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny on March 22 and 23.  The auction includes one of Ireland’s largest private collections of clocks and timepieces and the pewter collection of the late Geoffrey O’Connor of Co. Kerry. The catalogue cover is a 19th century brass skeleton mantel clock in the form of the Sir Walter Scott monument in Edinburgh from the collection of Michael Guerin, who died in 2015. It is estimated at 700-1,000.There are unique Irish clocks including both long case and a double fusee wall clock with an intricate case carving by Chancellor and Son of Dublin as well as English, French and German clocks.

    An early watercolour View of Reginald’s Tower in Waterford by John George Mulvany (1766-1838) is certain to arouse local interest (1,200-1,800).  The pewter collection includes work by the highly collectible Austen and Son of North Main St., Cork.

    (See post on antiquesandartireland.com for March 14, 2016)

    A skeleton clock (700-1,000).

    A skeleton clock (700-1,000).  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 1,180

    An early watercolour of Waterford, A view of Reginald's Tower by John George Mulvany (1766-1838) (1,200-1,800)

    An early watercolour of Waterford, A view of Reginald’s Tower by John George Mulvany (1766-1838) (1,200-1,800)  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 6,000

    A set of five Irish pewter hay stack measures by Austen and Son, North Main St., Cork (400-600).

    A set of five Irish pewter hay stack measures by Austen and Son, North Main St., Cork (400-600).

    A Killarney davenport (5,000-6,000).

    A Killarney davenport (5,000-6,000).  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 5,400

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    THE SHOES OF ANDY WARHOL

    Saturday, March 19th, 2016

    A complete portfolio of hand-coloured lithographs of shoe designs by Andy Warhol – À la recherche du shoe perdu – together with Shoe and Leg, produced c1955 comes up at Sotheby’s in London on March 22. Warhol was a commercial illustrator for fashion magazines and advertising agencies, and in 1955 he was appointed the sole illustrator of the I. Miller shoe campaign. Warhol made new drawings of shoes each week for advertisements in The New York Times and À la recherche du shoe perdu links directly to his work for I. Miller. Shoes became Warhol’s signature product. In the early 1960s, he moved to the more commercial Pop imagery with which he is now associated.

    The hand-colouring was done by Warhol and his friends – with Dr. Martin’s aniline watercolour dyes – often during ‘colouring parties’. As such, each print is unique. It has been estimated that approximately 100 of each illustration were produced. The captions were written by American poet, Ralph Pomeroy, and transcribed in distinctive calligraphy by Warhol’s mother, Julia Warhola. The text often directly references popular culture, whether Alfred Hitchcock (‘Dial M for Shoe’), Gertrude Stein (‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Shoe’) or Marcel Proust – the title of the portfolio is a riff on Proust’s famous novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past).  The portfolio of 18 prints is estimated at £100,000-150,000.  They come up at Sotheby’s sale of Prints and Multiples.

    UPDATE: The Warhol portfolio made £293,000 in a sale which realised £3.2 million.

    ANDY WARHOL 1928 - 1987 A LA RECHERCHE DU SHOE PERDU; AND SHOE AND LEG

    ANDY WARHOL
    1928 – 1987
    A LA RECHERCHE DU SHOE PERDU; AND SHOE AND LEG

    ANDY WARHOL 1928 - 1987

    ANDY WARHOL
    1928 – 1987

     

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    A LANDMARK SALE OF SHAKESPEARE’S FIRST FOLIOS AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, March 18th, 2016
    Shakespeare - The First Editions

    Shakespeare – The First Editions

    A landmark sale of the first four folios, the first four editions of Shakespeare’s  collected works takes place at Christie’s in London in May. The Folios will be offered in a four-lot auction commemorating 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) on May 25.  The sale is led by an unrecorded copy of the First Folio, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, widely considered the most important literary publication in the English language. The First Folio contains 36 plays, 18 of which had not previously been printed and would have otherwise been lost forever. It is estimated at £800,000-1.2 million.

    The plays of Shakespeare, preserved for posterity in these volumes, define our knowledge of Shakespeare the man, the playwright, the poet and the actor. The Four Folios will tour to New York from 1 to 8 April 1 to April 8 and go on public display in London from April 20 to 28 April to celebrate Shakespeare’s 400thanniversary on April 23.

    Margaret Ford, International Head of Books & Manuscripts, says: “The universality and timelessness of Shakespeare’s insight into human nature continues to engage and enthrall audiences the world over. Even four centuries after his death, his plays touch and transform lives and continue to be read and performed from Albania to Zambia. It is deeply moving to handle the first printed record of his collected plays and to be reminded of their tremendous impact. Especially exhilarating is bringing a newly recorded copy of the First Folio to public attention, and to be able to offer a set of the Four Folios in this important anniversary year.”

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    AN OPTIMISTIC FRANCIS BACON SELF-PORTRAIT FOR ST. PATRICK’S DAY

    Thursday, March 17th, 2016
    Francis Bacon - Two Studies for a Self-Portrait (1970)

    Francis Bacon – Two Studies for a Self-Portrait (1970)

    A rare optimistic Francis Bacon self-portrait will lead Sotheby’s sale of Contemporary Art in New York on May 11. Two Studies for a Self-Portrait (1970) is at auction for the first time with an estimate of $22-30 million.  It has been in the same private collection since soon after it was painted.   While Bacon is renowned for capturing the tortured psychological depths of human existence in his portraits, the overwhelming positivity of Two Studies for a Self-Portrait renders this work almost unique in the artist’s oeuvre. Here we see an elated Francis Bacon on the cusp of his career-defining retrospective at the Grand Palais in 1971 (Bacon was only the second living artist, after Picasso, to be afforded this honour), and in the throes of his relationship with George Dyer, whose suicide a year later was to haunt Bacon (and shape his art) for decades to come.

    It was exhibited twice: at the acclaimed 1971 Grand Palais retrospective and at the Marlborough Fine Art Small Portrait Studies exhibition in London in 1993.  Its iconic status lies in the fact it was chosen to adorn the cover of Milan Kundera and France Borel’s definitive book Francis Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, confirming its position at the absolute zenith of Francis Bacon’s most significant and enduring body of work. Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s is fulsome about the work:  “Two Studies for a Self-Portrait goes straight in at number one of all the paintings I’ve handled in my career. Discovering a work such as this is like finding gold dust. To my mind, the painting is worthy of a place alongside the very finest self-portraits of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Picasso. It’s certainly among the greatest self-portraits ever offered at auction.”

    Bacon created only two other self-portraits in this dual format. One of them, Two Studies for a Self-Portrait (1977) sold at Sotheby’s in February 2015 for £14.7m ($22.4m). The year 2016 is set to be a red-letter year for Francis Bacon.  There are upcoming exhibitions at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco (sponsored by Sotheby’s), at Tate Liverpool, and at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The most significant publication on the artist for 30 years, Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné, edited by Martin Harrison, will be released in the next few months and is expected to reveal no fewer than 100 unseen works by the artist.

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    JAPANESE ART AT CHRISTIE’S IN PARIS

    Wednesday, March 16th, 2016

    A personal collection of Japanese art reflecting the taste of four generations of experts and collectors comes up in Paris on June 21.  The Portier family, major figures of the Asian art market in France, will offer 90 lots at Hotel Drout through Beaussant Lefèvre in association with Christie’s.  Highlights include 8 exceptional Japanese stamps from the Edo period. They are mainly okubi-e (portraits of actors) by masters  Toshusai Sharaku (active between 1794 and 1795), Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), Kitagawa Kunimasa (1773-1810) and Utagawa Toyokuni (1769-1825). Each piece was acquired by Henri Portier and his son André (1886-1963), great-grandfather and grandfather to Patrick, Thierry and Emeric Portier, through various auctions held at Drouot in the 1900’s.

    With the exception of three exhibitions where some stamps were shown (Utamaro in 1976 and Sharaku, portraits d’acteurs at the Huguette Bérès Gallery, Paris and Toulouse-Lautrec and Utamaro in 1980 at the Mitsukoshi museum, Tokyo), these works have remained out of the public eye since their acquisition over a century ago.

    Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 ? -1806) Deeply Hidden Love (Fukaku shinobu koi), from the series Anthology of Poems: The Love Section (Kasen koi no bu), with pink mica ground Oban tate-e (80,000-100,000). © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2016

    Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 ? -1806)
    Deeply Hidden Love (Fukaku shinobu koi), from the series Anthology of Poems: The Love Section (Kasen koi no bu), with pink mica ground
    Oban tate-e (80,000-100,000). © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2016

    oshusai Sharaku (active circa 1794-1795) The actor Segawa Tomisaburo II as Yadorigi, the wife of Ogishi Kurando, with dark grey mica ground Oban tate-e: (50,000-70,000) © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2016

    Toshusai Sharaku (active circa 1794-1795)
    The actor Segawa Tomisaburo II as Yadorigi, the wife of Ogishi Kurando, with dark grey mica ground
    Oban tate-e: (50,000-70,000) © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LIMITED 2016

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    YEATS, O’CONOR, LE BROCQUY, HENRY AT JAMES ADAM

    Wednesday, March 16th, 2016

    Louis le Brocquy, Jack Butler Yeats, Roderic O’Conor, Colin Middleton, Dan O’Neill, Barrie Cooke, Patrick Collins, John Luke, Gladys MacCabe, Markey Robinson, Arthur Maderson, Harry Kernoff, Maurice Wilks, Percy French, all feature at the sale of Important Irish Art at James Adam in Dublin on March 23.  The cover lot is A Connemara Village by Paul Henry (70,000-100,000).  The catalogue, which lists 211 lots, is online.  Here is a small selection. This being Cheltenham Week we have included a couple of horse images:

    (See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 8, 2016)

    Louis le Brocquy (1916-2012) Being, watercolour (10,000-15,000)

    Louis le Brocquy (1916-2012) Being, watercolour (10,000-15,000)  UPDATE: THIS MADE 17,000 AT HAMMER

    Man Reading by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1947) - (60,000-90,000).

    Man Reading by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1947) – (60,000-90,000).  UPDATE: THIS MADE 92,000 AT HAMMER

    Nassau Blair Brown (1867-1940) - Charmer, Skipaway and Skipoker, a set of three from 1913 (3,000-5,000)

    Nassau Blair Brown (1867-1940) – Charmer, Skipaway and Skipoker, a set of three from 1913 (3,000-5,000)  UPDATE: THIS MADE 3,800 AT HAMMER

    Roderic O'Conor, Nu Brun Assis (8,000-12,000)

    Roderic O’Conor, Nu Brun Assis (8,000-12,000)  UPDATE: THIS MADE 30,000 AT HAMMER

    Liam O'Neill (b 1954) Hometurn (4,000-6,000)

    Liam O’Neill (b 1954) Hometurn (4,000-6,000)  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 8,000 AT HAMMER

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    A KINSALE SILVER BOWL WITH ALMOST MYTHICAL STATUS

    Tuesday, March 15th, 2016
    The Kinsale Silver bowl

    The Kinsale Silver bowl

    A Kinsale silver bowl with an almost mythical status has surfaced with well known silver dealer William Crofton of L and W Duvallier, Dublin and London. A second generation dealer of 40 years standing Crofton said the piece – made by Robert Armstrong around 1750 – is the rarest provincial bowl he has ever had.

    “It is very hard to describe the feeling you get when you see such a fantastic piece out of the blue. I believe only enthusiast’s or collectors regardless of what they collect can truly relate to it” he said.  “As I turned the bowl over it was like time stood still and it took me an extra couple of seconds for my brain to workout exactly what I was looking at. It is the only time I have ever come across this maker in real life in nearly 40 years”.
    There are less than six pieces known to have been made by Robert Armstrong. The definitive work on Cork Silversmiths by John Bowen with Conor O’Brien makes the point that Kinsale’s ancient significance derived from its position as the most important sea port on the southern coast of Ireland. A nearly identical bowl by Robert Armstrong is illustrated in Irish Georgian Silver by Douglas Bennett.  Bowls of this type of different sizes were made throughout Ireland in the first half of the 18th century as speciality items.  This one is on offer with a price tag of around 45,000 euro.

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    LARGE BRONZE OF DANIEL O’CONNELL AT MEALY’S

    Monday, March 14th, 2016

    In the season of history and memorabilia in Ireland it is worth noting that an unusual large scale bronze of Daniel O’Connell comes up at Mealy’s sale in Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny on March 22-23.  Inscribed NY and dated 1881 it is by American Denis B Sheahan (fl 1870-1900) and is estimated at 2,000-3,000.  The auction will include one of Ireland’s largest private collections of clocks and other timepieces from the estate of the late Mr Michael Guerin (1937-2015) whose lifelong passion for collecting and the careful restoration of antique clocks has led to this outstanding and varied collection of over 100 clocks & timepieces from across Ireland and Europe and the collection of the late Mr Geoffrey O’Connor of Co. Kerry, a Pewter Society member, including his pewter collection.  The catalogue is online. Here is a small selection:

    Daniel O'Connell by Denis B Sheahan (2,000-3,000)

    Daniel O’Connell by Denis B Sheahan (2,000-3,000)

    An 18th century red chinoiserie lacquered long case clock by James Defontaine, London c1735 (3,000-4,000).

    An 18th century red chinoiserie lacquered long case clock by James Defontaine, London c1735 (3,000-4,000).  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 5,600

    A pair of 12 branch crystal chandeliers (5,000-6,000)

    A pair of 12 branch crystal chandeliers (5,000-6,000)

    A c1800 Irish soup ladle by William Fitzgerald, Limerick (4,000-5,000).

    A c1800 Irish soup ladle by William Fitzgerald, Limerick (4,000-5,000).

    Eugene Pavy - Falcon Hunt (7-00-1,200).

    Eugene Pavy – Falcon Hunt (7-00-1,200).

    An Irish William IV serving table (1,500-2,500).

    An Irish William IV serving table (1,500-2,500).

    An Anglo-Indian sandalwood and ivory workbox (1,000-1,500).

    An Anglo-Indian sandalwood and ivory workbox (1,000-1,500).

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    FISCHER-SPASSKY MATCH RECALLED IN LONDON AUCTION

    Monday, March 14th, 2016
    A selection of Lothar Schmid's historic chess pieces.

    A selection of Lothar Schmid’s historic chess pieces.

    One of the most important collections of early chess pieces – from the collection of Lothar Schmid referee of the historic match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky –  comes up at Sotheby’s in London on April 20.  Each piece carries huge significance in the evolution of the game throughout Persia and the Middle East. Highlights include an almost complete 10th-century set (£20,000-30,000).  Lothar Schmid (1928-2013) a ‘Grandmaster’ is famed for refereeing what became known as the “Match of the Century”.  The 1972 Cold War face-off between the American challenger Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union was staged in neutral Reykjavik. Fischer won.

    Schmid assembled one of the greatest collections of historic chess pieces, as well as a vast collection of books relating to the game. The library is said to be the world’s largest and most complete, comprising more than 50,000 volumes on the subject. It includes rare copies such as the first printed chess book, dated 1497.  The collection, estimated at £73,800-117,200, will feature as part of Sotheby’s Arts of the Islamic World sale.  T

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