A private collector in Ireland acquired The Comerford Collection of predominantly Irish Miniatures at Chiswick Auctions in London last week and has offered it for display at a Waterford Museum. The collection of 121 lots achieved a total of £98,000 and attracted strong interest from Irish collectors. It was compiled over forty years by the late John and Pauline Comerford, who descended from the Irish miniaturist John Comerford (c.1770-1832).
The couple’s love of the art form led them to source works by some of the leading Irish miniaturists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The entire collection of 121 lots sold, achieving a total of £98,000.
The collection was studiously added to over many years and demonstrates the evolution of miniature painting in Britain, Ireland and the Continent from the late 16th to the 19th Century. It features the work of some of the greatest exponents of the portrait miniature art form including Christian Friedrich Zincke, Jean Andre Rouquet, Nathaniel Hone, Jeremiah Meyer, Charles Robertson, George Engleheart, Abraham Daniel, William Wood, John Smart and Richard Cosway. It will go to the Waterford Museum House of Treasures and be displayed in the new silver museum. This had been scheduled to open in late May in Waterford and will now open sometime in the autumn. The collection was bought under the guidance of the curator by a private buyer.
Specialist in charge of the sale Suzanne Zack commented: “We were delighted with the results of this first stand-alone sale of Fine Portrait Miniatures, which included the spectacular Comerford Collection. Good results throughout the sale show that the portrait miniature market is very much alive.”
Highlights included lot 143, a portrait of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt by Edward Robert Hughes, which sold for £9,375 against a pre-sale estimate of £8,000-12,000. Other high prices were achieved for a fine portrait miniature of a dashing Officer (lot 18), dating from circa 1765/70 by Jeremiah Meyer R.A. (British 1735-1789), which achieved £4,500 and a portrait miniature of an unknown Lady, circa 1790 (lot 36), by Horace Hone A.R.A. (Irish 1754/6-1825), which sold for £4,125.
