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  • Archive for June, 2020

    FOUR PINBALL MACHINES BY THIEBAUD AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, June 12th, 2020

    Wayne Thiebaud’s  Four Pinball Machines, 1962 will come up as a central highlight at Christie’s ONE: A global sale of the 20th century, on July 10. With an estimate of $18-25 million it is expected to more than double the artist’s world auction record currently held by Encased Cakes, 2011, which made $8.5 million in November 2019.

    Alex Rotter, Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s, remarked: “It is always a privilege to have the opportunity to present a painting that is categorically recognized as one of the best works that an artist has ever created, but in this case it is particularly exciting given its prominence within the canon of Pop art. This is precisely the case with Thiebaud’s Four Pinball Machines, 1962. In his centennial year, Thiebaud is among the most loved and revered artists of the 20th century, both for his extraordinary artistic talent and vision, but also for the delight that his paintings instill into anyone who stands before them. Four Pinball Machines is a painting that combines all of the qualities that people treasure about Thiebaud’s work: an iconic subject imbued with American nostalgia, the joyful palette and the masterly quality of the expressionistic brushstrokes. This work is the most important example by the artist in private hands

    Wayne Thiebaud – Four Pinball Machines, 1962. UPDATE: THIS MADE $19,135,000

    ANTIQUE FURNITURE AND COLLECTIBLES AT HEGARTY’S

    Thursday, June 11th, 2020

    More than 270 lots will come under the hammer at Hegarty’s online sale in Bandon on June 14. Antique furniture, jewellery, garden pieces, rugs and collectibles including old Irish glass will come under the hammer. There are three online platforms for this auction, Easy Live Auctions, The Saleroom and Invaluable.

    A pair of Gainsborough armchairs (1,250-1,500). UPDATE: THESE MADE 1,200 AT HAMMER

    WHITE GLOVE JEAN ARP HOMMAGE SALE

    Wednesday, June 10th, 2020

    Torse by Jean Arp was the the top lot at Christie’s Paris Hommage a Jean Arp, Collection Greta Stroeh online sale which has just finished. It made €394,000 at an auction where 75% of lots sold above estimate anbd 32% of registered buyers were new. The sale total was €1,176,625 in an auction which was 100% sold by lot and by value.

    Torse by Jean Arp

    AFFORDABLE IRISH ART SALE NOW ONLINE

    Wednesday, June 10th, 2020

    THE catalogue for Morgan O’Driscoll’s online sale of affordable Irish art is now online. The auction runs until June 15 between 6.30 pm and 11 pm.

    ANN PRIMROSE JURY (1907-1995) RUA Kerry Coastline. (400-600). UPDATE: THIS MADE 460 AT HAMMER

    DEATH OF SCULPTOR JEANNE RYNHART

    Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

    Dublin born Bantry based sculptor Jeanne Rynhart has died aged 74. Her work includes the statues of Annie Moore at Cobh, Co. Cork and at Ellis Island, New York and the Molly Malone statue at Suffolk St. in Dublin. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 1969.

    Jeanne Rynhart – Molly Malone at Suffolk St. in Dublin.

    ART FROM AN IRISH COLLECTION AT SOTHEBY’S PARIS

    Tuesday, June 9th, 2020

    Works by Zao Wou-Ki and Pierre Soulages from an Irish collection are to feature at Sotheby’s Paris Art Contemporain evening sale on June 24. This sale is anchored by a museum quality selection of blue-chip Post-War and Contemporary Art. 17.5.63 by Zao Wou-Ki is estimated at 1.5-2 million, Peinture 65 by Soulages has an estimate of 500,000-700,000.

    ZAO WOU-KI 17.5.63

    A VIEW OF ROUNDSTONE BY YEATS MAKES 70,000

    Monday, June 8th, 2020

    THIS 1916 view of Roundstone, Connemara by Jack Butler Yeats made a hammer price of 70,000 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online Irish art sale on June 8. Westport Famine Ship by John Behan made 27,000, Evening, a Chinese ink of paper drawing by Yeats made 24,000, Lisa by Daniel O’Neill made 19,000, The Evening Tide by Patrick Hennessy sold for 18,000, Tom Cromie by Colin Davidson made 12,500, a charcoal drawing of landscape with clouds by Paul Henry made 10,000, Girls Playing in the Woods by George Russell made 9,500, Dusk by Arthur Maderson made 8,500 and Rugby by Pauline Bewick made 8,000.

    NO APPRECIATION FOR MAJOR PAINTING BY LE BROCQUY

    Sunday, June 7th, 2020

    On May 18 in the year 2000 the Irish artist Louis le Brocquy made headlines when his Travelling Woman with Newspaper sold for a record £1,158,500 at Sotheby’s. The buyer was Michael Smurfit. He is now selling off some of his collection so the same painting will come up at Sotheby’s in London next September 9, this time with an estimate of £700,000-1,000,000. In pure investment terms this amounts to no appreciation for a fascinating work of art by one of the leading Irish artists of his generation.

    Louis le BrocquyTravelling Woman with Newspaper, oil on board, 1947-48. UPDATE: THIS FAILED TO SELL

    GLOBAL ART MARKET GATHERS PACE

    Sunday, June 7th, 2020

    Change is gathering pace in the global art market.  The restrictions wrought by pandemic has forced the market to adapt in all sorts of inventive ways. ONE: A global sale of the 20th Century is a new auction event at Christie’s on July 10.  Using streaming technology Christie’s will hold a relay style auction of Impressionist and Modern, Post War and Contemporary art and design across four time zones.  The aim is to create an engaging platform for selling major works of art  to a global audience. With $20-30 million works like Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger Version F, Lichtenstein’s monumental Nude with joyous painting and Ed Ruscha’s Annie all available this amounts to a further blurring of the line between digital and live sales. There will be four consecutive sessions in Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York. It will replace New York’s 20th Century evening sale originally scheduled for June 22.
    In this brave new topsy turvy world Oliver Barker, an auctioneer at Sotheby’s, will take to the rostrum in London on June 29 to conduct an auction in New York. This digital auction, live streamed in high definition around the world, will allow bidders participate by phone or online, in a sale of Contemporary Art immediately followed by the Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale.  These big ticket sales at Sotheby’s were originally scheduled for New York in May.  Works can be viewed online from June 8 or by appointment at Sotheby’s Manhattan galleries. Francis Bacon’s 1981 “Triptych inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus” is estimated to make at least $60 million.  Bacon’s theme of divine punishment is taken from Aeschylus’s most famous trilogy The Oresteia in which Clytemnestra murders her husband Agamemnon in revenge for the sacrifice of their daugher Iphigenia.  When Orestes finds out he kills his mother to avenge his fathers death, provoking the avenging Furies who drive Orestes insane as a punishment. At times like this the highest levels of the art market tend to be best insulated against price drops largely because sellers at these stratified levels can afford to hold back. There was a 5% drop in the global art market last year, representing a $3.3 billion drop in sales over the stellar year of 2018.  Digital sales by major auction houses so far this year have been highly successful with many lots going over estimate.  Expectations are high.

    Roy Lichtenstein – Nude with joyous painting. UPDATE: THIS MADE $46,242,500

    ROGER FRY’S PORTRAIT OF E.M. FORSTER AT BONHAMS

    Saturday, June 6th, 2020

    Roger Fry’s 1911 portrait of E.M. Forster is at Bonham’s Modern British and Irish art sale in London on July 1. In that year Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) had recently reached a new audience and a breadth of critical acclaim with his fourth novel Howards End, published in 1910.  Friends from King’s College included the writer Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932) and Roger Fry (1866-1934). Dickinson and Fry were close friends and both followed with great interest Forster’s career, beginning with his first novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905). Over the years, Fry seems to have read everything Forster published. There was great praise for A Passage to India (1924) – ‘a marvelous texture – really beautiful writing,’ he wrote to Virginia Woolf. In an early draft of A Room with a View, Forster included a character called Rankin (later dropped from the novel), an art historian attending tea-parties in Florence. The estimate for the work is £30,000-50,000.

    ROGER FRY (BRITISH, 1866-1934)
    Portrait of E.M. Forster. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £352,062