Painted in a fever of activity Fleurs dans un verre by Vincent van Gogh will highlight Sotheby’s evening sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York on October 28. This is one of about 70 canvases completed by van Gogh in the 70 days before his suicide in the village of Auvers. It is estimated at $14-18 million. The online auction will feature works from the Brooklyn Museum including a Monet and Surrealist art by Man Ray, Giorgio de Chirico and Rene Magritte. The evening of exciting sales will kick off with a Contemporary Art sale highlighted by a 1958 Mark Rothko which pre-empts his celebrated Seagram Building murals now at the Tate in London. Untitled (Black on Maroon) is estimated at $25-$35 million.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) – Fleurs dans un verre. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $16,007,300.
IN an era of fake news and false cures it is well to be reminded that perspectives change and judgement is fairest when not delivered with 20:20 hindsight. One lot at Mullen’s Collectors Cabinet sale in Laurel Park, Bray on October 31 pairs the Swastika decorated Nazi German flag with the Irish tricolour and recalls a day of straight arm salutes at Dalymount Park in Dublin in 1936. Hitler had been Chancellor for three years, Germany had already violated the Treaty of Versailles, a concentration camp had just opened near Berlin. But Auschwitz, Belsen and the attempted implementation of Final Solution were all in the future, German finances were strong, Berlin had hosted the Olympic Games. When Ireland defeated Germany by five goals to two at Dalymount Park the Nazi party was popular and there was little inkling of the darkness soon to descend on Europe and the world. The visitors were feted.
Mullens auction includes the collection of Christy Rooney from The Liberties, a lifelong Manchester United and Ireland supporter. Nearly 4,000 programmes will be offered in 64 lots with estimates from €60-€700. Among them is one of the most sought after Irish programmes, the Ireland v Germany match of 1936. Lot 471 is estimated at €600-€800. A 1986 facsimile of the Book of Kells is estimated at €5,000-€7,000. Lot 455 is the Broadcast Favourite gold medal awarded to Count John McCormack by the American Radio Exposition Company in 1925. This is estimated at €2,000-€3,000. There are 1916 Rising and Irish War of Independence medals, books including an 1849 post office directory and calendar, militaria including swords and percussion pistols, and a large selection of collectible items including film posters. There is an added poignancy to lot 448, the 1964 Goldfinger poster as Margaret Nolan, the actress whose gold painted body featured in the film, has just died of cancer aged 76 and Honor Blackman, who played Pussy Galore, died earlier this year.
UPDATE: THIS SALE HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS
UPDATE: THIS MADE 4,000 AT HAMMER DECEMBER 5, 2020
Ireland by William Crozier (1930-2011) is from Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International art evening auction online on Tuesday, October 27. A Dublin viewing planned for this weekend had to be postponed due to the latest Covid-19 government restrictions but the sale will go ahead. This small work is signed and titled verso and is estimated at 1,500-2,500. There are 176 lots in the sale, which is headed by Andy Warhol’s portraits of Mohammed Ali. UPDATE: THE CROZIER SOLD FOR 3,200 AT HAMMER
The live streamed London to Paris auction at Christie’s achieved £90.2 million last evening. Peter Doig’s Boiler House led the evening sale series when it sold for £13.8 million. David Hockney’s Portrait of Sir David Webster, sold to raise funds for London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, made £12.8 million. The Paris avant garde section was led by Pierre Soulages, whose Peinture 162 x 130 cm, 9 juillet 1961 sold for €5,392,500. Over 190,000 viewers tuned into the sales through Facebook, You Tube, Christies.com and Christie’s Live.
A large John Shinnors work from 1998 made a hammer price of £40,000 at Dreweatts saleroom in Newbury, Berkshire, today. Rising Kite, Clare Island Cycle from a corporate collection in the UK had been estimated at £10,000-15,000. It was one of the highlights at Dreweatts auction of modern and contemporary art. The auctioneers hailed the painting as: “a seminal example of Shinnor’s bold expressive style”. Represented by Taylor Galleries in Dublin the work of the Limerick artist is held by numerous public and private collections such as the Arts Council of Ireland, Ulster Museum, Belfast, Limerick City Art Gallery and the National Self Portrait Collection.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for October 11, 2020)
John Shinnors – Rising Kite, Clare Island Cycle (143.5 x 284.5cm (56¼ x 112 inches)
A timed online fundraising auction of work donated by Irish artists runs at Whyte’s until October 27. The Imogen Stuart Standing Stone fundraiser of 47 lots is for a piece of public sculpture at Otranto Park near Sandycove in Dublin. German by birth Imogen Stuart, now 92, is one of Ireland’s most respected artists and a Saoi of Aosdana (people of the Arts in Ireland). One of her most recent larger projects is a design for a granite sculpture, a ‘standing stone’ twelve feet in height and weighing between seven and eight tonnes. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has agreed to contribute to the erection of the sculpture and to maintain it once completed. But such a large piece of stone will be very expensive to quarry and carve, transport and install. A sum of probably more than 50,000 is needed and artists have donated work for the fundraiser for this project.
Imogen Stuart RHA – The Good Shepherd. Design for sculpture for the Church of the Good Shepherd Churchtown Co Dublin. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 480
AN opportunity to submerge those lockdown sorrows arises at Sheppards wines and accessories online auction in Durrow on October 22 and 23. The sale of over 800 lots is broken up into three sessions and the catalogue is online.
A new world record for Paul Henry sealed the success of Whyte’s Irish and International online art auction in Dublin last evening. The Henry, A Sunny Day, Connemara, made 420,000 at hammer in a sale which brought in 1.6 million. Among the other hammer prices were The Meal, Samoa by Mary Swanzy (48,000); Triptych, a lithograph by Francis Bacon (44,000); Fleurs sur une chaise by Roderic O’Conor (42,000); Our Lady of Lourdes, a stained glass panel from the Harry Clarke Studio with an estimate of 3,000-5,000 (36,000); Painting by Mainie Jellett (36,000) and Water, Light Bahamas by Tony O’Malley (36,000).
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for October 17, 10 and 7 2020).
This 18th century French faience shaped oval tureen from Marseille is at the James Adam sale of the Ib Jorgensen collection in Dublin today. The lid has a twig and fruit handle and it is estimated at 1,000-1,500. A total of 126 lots or art, furniture, silver and collectibles will come under the hammer at the auction this afternoon. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Global icon Mohammed Ali was ahead of the curve and larger than life. He looms large in Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online art auction which runs until October 27. A portfolio of four screenprints of Ali by Andy Warhol is, at €200,000-€300,000, the most expensively estimated lot in the sale.Long before Black Lives Matter, when Mississippi was burning, Ali embarked on a search for a more just society. His questioning, talented and interesting character made him a fascinating study for a portrait. Warhol conveys a strong sense of his persona using face, arms and clenched fists. Ali was 37 at the time, an icon of the game. One of the portraits shows him looking down, as if in humility.In a note to the catalogue Peter Murray, the former Crawford Gallery curator, recounts how in 1977 Warhol was commissioned by Richard Weisman to paint silkscreen portraits of ten famous athletes. The resulting prints, titled Athletes, are among the artist’s best-known works. Warhol took polaroid photographs of the boxer in fighting poses and at rest. The resulting images transferred to canvas using acrylic and silkscreen ink transformed into art that was instantly popular amongst art collectors and the public. The paintings were produced in a limited edition of eight, while the subsequent print edition, of which this is one, was limited to one hundred and fifty. It is just one of a number of treasures, Irish and international, in an auction of 179 lots. Harry Kernoff’s treatment of a landscape in Connemara (€20,000-€30,000) could not be more different than the paintings of Paul Henry. Banksy’s Morons (Sepia) from 2007 is a send up of the art auction business estimated at €20,000-€30,000. Sean Scully’s 9.2.89 has an estimate of €80,000-€120,000 and Hughie O’Donoghue’s Red Earth VI (1995) (€30,000-€50,000) is positively scorching. An original gouache by Bridget Riley is estimated at €100,000-€150,000 while a 2019 papercut portfolio by Ai Weiwei has an estimate of €14,000-€18,000. This is a serious sale, which will be of huge interest to collectors in Ireland and abroad. Through viewings in London and New York in pre-pandemic times Morgan O’Driscoll has built up a following for his major sales that has a long international reach. In the process he has given Irish art and artists a welcome shot in the arm.
ANDY WARHOL – MOHAMMED ALI. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 210,000 AT HAMMER.
