The contents of Lotaville, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork will be included at a live and online three day sale by Aidan Foley in Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare on September 26, 27 and 28. Among them are a watercolour by Joseph Carey of Blackrock Castle, Cork (€400-€600), A View on the Thames by Augustus Burke (€6,000-€10,000), a set of 12 Cork mahogany dining chairs (€3,000-€5,000) and a tennis bracelet (€12,000-€16,000). Viewing gets underway today. The sale of 2,000 lots will include contents from houses in Adare and Nenagh.
This exceptionally fine copy of the Monuments of Egypt and Nubia by Ippolito Rosellini housed in a custom made mahogany case sold for a hammer price of 74,000 at Fonsie Mealy’s sale of the library at Howth Castle today. The first edition of the elephant folio, Pisa, 1832-1834 with plates is inscribed: “Presented by his Grace the Duke of Northumberland K.G.F.R.S. President R.I.,”. The lot came together with a second set in original condition with plates in original wrappers and a complete set of the original text volumes.
Viewing is now underway in Dublin for Whyte’s evening and online sale of Irish and International art on September 27. Shown here is A Games of Dominoes, Brittany, 1893 by William Henry Bartlett ROI, RBC (1858-1932). Lot 121 is estimated at 20,000-30,000. Bartlett is represented in The National Gallery of Ireland, and in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, as well as public galleries in England including Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Leeds and Liverpool, and Melbourne Australia. The sale of 158 lots includes on the international side art by Bob Dylan, David Bowie, a Madoura plate by Picasso and a Picasso lithograph.
A Games of Dominoes, Brittany, 1893 by William Henry Bartlett ROI, RBC (1858-1932). UPDATE: THIS MADE 26,000 AT HAMMER
Diego y yo is a quintessential example of Frida Kahlo’s singular approach to portraiture. Intense and emotional, this important work by the beloved and renowned artist is poised to shatter her current auction record of $8 million. When it comes up at Sotheby’s Modern evening sale in New York in November it may become the most valuable work of Latin American art ever sold at auction. The estimate for the final fully realised bust self portrait completed before her death in 1954 is in excess of $30 million.
The Modern Evening Sale, formerly the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, will inaugurate a larger reorganisation of Sotheby’s General Fine Art evening sale with further details yet to be announced. Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s Chairman and Worldwide Head of Sales for Global Fine Art, remarked: “Frida Kahlo’s emotionally bare and complex portrait Diego y yo is a defining work by one of the few artists whose influence transcends the world of fine art to pop culture and beyond. To offer this portrait in our Modern evening sale in November heralds the recent expansion of the Modern category to include greater representation of underrepresented artists, notably women artists, and rethink how they have historically been valued at auction.”
REGENCY DINING TABLE AND A SET OF 10 HICKS CHAIRS AT VICTOR MEE. UPDATE: THE TABLE MADE 2,400 AT HAMMER, THE CHAIRS 2,000
This Regency dining table and set of Hicks dining chairs is among the highlights at the third annual Palace Collection sale by Victor Mee at the Bishops Palace, Kilmore, Co. Cavan on September 28, 29 and 30. Both the sale and the viewing will be live and online. Among the outstanding Georgian lots are an exceptional Irish fireplace fluted with Siena marble, an Irish Georgian giltwood mirror and an Irish Georgian longcase clock. A pair of brass bound turf buckets are similar to one at Powerscourt House. Among the lots of historic artwork is a pair of 18th century Flemish tapestries, an oil on canvas portrait of a nobleman by Franz Stampert (1675-1750) and an 18th century portrait of William of Orange. Rarities include an Oriental brass censer in the shape of a Ho Ho bird and there is a selection of Oriental bronzes.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Because it Hurts the Lungs (1986). UPDATE: THIS MADE £8.2 MILLION
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Because it Hurts the Lungs (1986) will be a highlight of Christie’s live and livestreamed 20th / 21st Century: Evening Sale including Thinking Italian in London on October 15. The multimedia work depicts a life-size green figure with a russet, cyclopean skull against a white ground. Basquiat has applied sheets of his own drawings and text, among them a cryptic extract from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci that lends the work its title: “Why the thunderbolt kills a [man and] does not wound him, and if the man blew his nose he would not die. Because it hurts the lungs.” Further collage and pigment adorn two boxes that protrude from the surface, including a drawing of the Lester Young Quartet’s 1944 jazz record Afternoon Of A Basie-ite, Japanese script, snatches of dialogue from Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Ajax, and a grinning, eyeless black head wearing a mitre-like crown. It is estimated at £7,000,000-10,000,000. UPDATE: 20TH / 21ST CENTURY: EVENING SALE INCLUDING THINKING ITALIAN, LONDON REALISES A TOTAL OF £64,561,000 / $88,254,887 / €75,923,736
Salute/Farewell to Rosses Point by Jack B. Yeats. UPDATE: THIS MADE 140,000 AT HAMMER
Salute/Farewell to Rosses Point by Jack B Yeats (€120,000-€160,000) is a highlight at Adams evening sale of Important Irish Art on September 29. It dates to 1946 and is one of a number of works from the 1940’s, when Yeats was in his seventies, that hark back to his youth. As a boy the artist frequently travelled on the pilot boats for merchant ships headed to Sligo. The Adams sale kicks off with a 1997 watercolour by John Doherty of a lightship. There are some attractive coloured pencil drawings by Mary Swanzy, watercolours by Gerard Dillon and Andrew Nicholl and ink on paper works by Patrick Scott. An arresting self portrait by William Leech has an estimate of €20,000-€30,000. There is a similar estimate on two works by Dan O’Neill, Cold Spring Morning, Donegal and Spanish Girl.
Self Portrait with window and table by William Leech. UPDATE: THIS MADE 17,000 AT HAMMER
The Pump of St. Nicholas, Antwerp was one of the first open air paintings that Walter Osborne made on the Continent and was exhibited in Dublin in 1883. It is estimated at €70,000-€100,000. Don Quixote by Sean Keating and Coloured Rain by Basil Blackshaw are each estimated at €30,000-€50,000. There is art by Tony O’Malley, Jane O’Malley, George Campbell, Nano Reid, Mainie Jellett, Norah McGuinness, Patsy Dan Rogers, Brian Bourke and Markey Robinson as well as sculpture by John Behan, Sonja Landweer and others in a well chosen evening auction of 146 lots.
Citadel (2021) is the title of this piece by the Emly, Co. Tipperary based abstract artist Michael Hales. It comes up as lot 58 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Off the Wall online art auction today with an estimate of 800-1,200. The catalogue is online and the sale kicks off at 6.30 pm. UPDATE: THIS MADE 900 AT HAMMER
This set of eight George III mahogany framed dining chairs in Chippendale style, 19th century, come up at the James Adam At Home sale in Dublin on September 21. They are estimated at €3,000-€5,000. The sale kicks off at 11 am. UPDATE: THESE MADE 3,800 AT HAMMER
Fine Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German and English volumes from 1515 to 1920 and important books on travel, botany and history are included in Fonsie Mealy’s live and online sale of the library at Howth Castle on September 22 and 23. next Wednesday and Thursday (Sep 22-23). Bibliophiles from around the world will connect to the sale with rarities incuding The Munster Farmers Magazine (1812-1816), the Botanical Magazine 1746-93 with more than 10,000 illustrated plates, log books of British warships, ecclesiastical history, Lutyens plans for Howth Castle and volumes covering a vast range of subjects. There is important original manuscript work and correspondence from Saint John Henry Newman, signed, presentation and annotated copies, together with periodicals in large runs. There is a collection of early books by George Berkeley, fine coloured plate books of botanical and travel interest, a good collection of 19th century English poetry, photographs and a collection of material, atlases, addresses and manuscripts, scrap albums of watercolours and prints and photograph albums relating to the Gaisford-St. Lawrence family and the local area of Howth Castle Estate.
Lot 368 is a descriptive catalogue of the prints of Sir Joshua Reynolds signed by the artist. UPDATE: THIS MADE 750 AT HAMMER
The entire contents of the Howth Castle Library is generally in fine original condition and in fine bindings. Dean Thomas Gaisford in 1812, at the age of 32, was elected Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University, a position he held for 43 years, until his death in 1855. He was Dean of Christ Church, Oxford from 1830 for 25 years. The St. Lawrence family came to Howth in 1177. Howth Castle is one of the longest continuously inhabited private homes in Europe.
