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A lone figure stands at the waters edge in Waiting for the Ferry, Low Tide, 1946.  This enigmatic Yeats work is the catalogue cover lot at Whyte’s evening sale of Important Irish and International Art in Dublin on March 22. It was acquired by American sculptor Helen Hooker O’Malley in the same year that she sought a divorce from the Irish revolutionary Ernie O’Malley.  The O’Malleys were important collectors of Yeats in the 1930’s and ’40’s.  His collection, sold by Whyte’s and Christie’s in Dublin in 1919, grossed €5.5 million. She bought it from Leo Smith, who had been co-director of the Waddington Gallery in Dublin before setting up the Dawson Gallery in 1944. Helen gifted it to Liam Redmond, with whom she founded the Dublin Players Theatre in 1944, and it is now estimated at €100,000-€150,000.  Redmond was married to Barbara MacDonagh, daughter of poet Thomas MacDonagh who was executed after the 1916 Rising.

The virtual auction of 153 lots features work by sculptors John Behan and Rowan Gillespie, paintings by Louis le Brocquy, Paul Henry, Patrick Scott, Camille Souter,  William Crozier, James Humbert Craig, Gladys Maccabe, Dan O’Neill and international artists Tracey Emin, Bob Dylan and Damien Hirst.Francis Bacon and Louis le Brocquy met in the 1940’s in London and remained friends until Bacon’s death in 1992.  Bacon penned the introduction to a le Brocquy retrospective in 1966. It was not until 1979 that le Brocquy created an image of Bacon and it was one of the few portraits of people he knew personally.  His oil of canvas Image of Francis Bacon is estimated at €120,000-€150,000.  A watercolour image of Beckett, estimated at €15,000-€20,000, is one of a number of works by le Brocquy in this sale. Spring in Wicklow, a 1920’s landscape by Paul Henry is estimated at €150,000-€200,000. There is much Irish work to choose from with art by Tony O’Malley, Donald Teskey, John Shinnors, William Crozier, John Kingerlee and others. Among these is a still life by Christy Brown with an estimate of €2,000-3,000.A small oil on canvas of ships in moonlight by the noted Dutch artist Johnan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891) is estimated at €8,000-€12,000. A 2019 lithograph by Tracey Emin (75/200) entitled I Loved my Innocence has an estimate of €3,000-€4,000 and two unnumbered etchings by Damien Hirst from an edition of 68 are each estimated at €1,000-€1,500. Bob Dylan’s are has proved popular in Ireland at past sales and this auction offers three prints by the American singer songwriter at estimates ranging from €1,200 to €5,000.