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The wonderful surroundings of Townley Hall near Drogheda will be the viewing venue for Adams annual Country House Collections sale on October 18 and 19. Viewing will take place at the Francis Johnston designed neo-classical masterpiece on October 15, 16 and 17. The live and online auction with around 700 lots will take place at the St. Stephen’s Green saleroom on October 18 and 19. The sale will showcase fine Irish Georgian furniture and Irish Old Master artworks.
Andy Warhol’s seminal portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat will be a leading highlight at Christie’s 20th Century evening sale in New York in November. It comes to market with an estimate in excess of $20 million. Warhol elevates the young Basquiat to his pantheon of cultural icons which includes Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. The work celebrates the remarkable friendship between the two artists. Thought to be the only example in private hands, this rare and deeply personal work dates from 1982. Warhol’s depiction of Basquiat stands as the only known portrait executed in oxidation form, and one of its sister paintings is housed in the permanent collection of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. This example has been in the collection of Peter Brant for nearly two decades, and has been widely exhibited, most recently at the Whitney Museum’s 2018-2019 Warhol Retrospective, Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again.
This Dublin copper token made £1,860 against an estimate of £40-60 at Dix Noonan Webb’s sale of tokens, tickets and passes in London. It was one of a number of Irish tokens from the Collection of Barry Woodside. The 63 lots had a pre-sale estimate of £7,000 and achieved a total of £27,361. It was 100% sold. The highest price was for this token depicting a horse and jockey and stamped James Large. He is believed to have been the inn holder at the Horse and Jockey, 26 Lincoln Place in 1855. It was bought by a private collector in the Irish Republic.
THIS is an Irish Georgian economy dining table. Comprised of a fold over tea table, a double drop leaf table and a single drop leaf table it can function three ways. Fully extended it measures three metres in length. Each table is raised on ring turned legs with rounded pad feet. It comes up at Hegarty’s live online auction from Bandon, Co. Cork on October 10 with an estimate of €2,000-€3,000.
Anne Yeats, The Everyday Fantastic has just opened at the National Gallery of Ireland. Anne Yeats, chief designer for the Abbey Theatre, worked in oils and designed for theatre and publication. The daughter of W.B. Yeats, she was raised within the culture of the Irish Gaelic Revival. She moved between traditional and modern worlds, and drew creatively on her observations and her imagination. Anne started working at the Abbey Theatre at 16; founded Graphic Studio, Dublin in 1960; and was a founding member of Aosdána. She managed the Yeats family archive and donated part of it to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1996. Anne Yeats’s own archives and sketchbooks were donated to the Gallery by her brother Michael in 2002.The exhibition highlights creativity, experimentation and process in Yeats’s art practice across a number of decades, demonstrating the importance of artists’ archives and the role they play in an artist’s work – as a location where creativity, experimentation, failure and progress in art practice are documented. The exhibition continues until October 9, 2022.
The international autumn selling season gets underway in earnest this month. Major auction houses have been issuing previews of what to expect. Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale in London on October 14, to coincide with the Frieze and Frieze Masters art fairs, will be headed by what they cheerfully describe as the most famous artwork of the 21st century, Banksy’s Love is in the Bin. Global news and instant art history happened when Girl with a Balloon was shredded just after the hammer came down on a million pound bid in 2018. It was then authenticated by Banksy and given a new title of Love is in the Bin. The new owner decided the wise thing to do was bank on Banksy and kept it. It now comes to market with an estimate of £4 million – £6 million (€4.67 million – €7.01 million).
This is the dawning of the age of minorities and in what will be an undoubted shot in the arm for black transgender women artists MGM resorts will sell their Picasso’s in Las Vegas on October 23 and build a new collection with a focus of diversity. The art market of the future will feature artists from a more diverse range of backgrounds, particularly from groups who have been discriminated against. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Because it Hurts the Lungs (1986) will be a highlight at Christie’s live and livestreamed 20th/21st Century evening sale including Thinking Italian in London on October 15. The title of the work is taken from a cryptic quote by Leonardo: “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”. Winston Churchill, whose Tower at Koutoubia Mosque” sold for a record £8.3 million in March, will highlight Christie’s Modern British art evening auction in London on October 20. The Bridge at Aix en Provence was gifted to the Swiss paint manufacturer Willy Sax, who supplied Churchill with his artistic materials and would become a lifelong friend. It is now estimated at £1.5-£2.5 million (€1.75-€2.92 million).As part of a global expansion Bonhams has just opened its first dedicated saleroom on the Continent at Rue de la Paix in the heart of the luxury district in Paris. There will be a sale of Antiquities next Thursday (October 7). This will be followed one week later by a sale of Post War and Contemporary art.
According to Christie’s there is an intriguing possibility that this remarkable pair of George II giltwood console tables could be Irish. A closely related pair was supplied to Marcus Beresford, 1st Earl of Tyrone (1694-1763) for his country seat at Curraghamore, Co. Waterford and Thomas Johnsons influential Collection of Designs published in 1798 featured similar tree form consoles. These consoles come up at Christie’s Exceptional Sale in New York on October 13 with an estimate of $100,000-$150,000 (€85,3230-€127,985). UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR $187,500
A timed online autumn art sale runs at Whyte’s until October 18. Pictured here is Early Evening, Donegal by Desmond Kinney which is estimated at 800-1,200. Many well known Irish artists are included in this sale of affordable works. With almost 300 lots and guides from as low €80 to a top estimate of €5,000 this sale will encourage both first-time buyers and seasoned bidders to ‘click and win’ in this tempting online-only offering.
AN iconic, private collection of Fabergé masterpieces from the collection of Harry Woolf takes place live at Christie’s in London on November 29 during the Autumn Russian Art sales season. There are 86 pieces from Mr. Woolf’s extraordinary Fabergé collection personally composed over a period of nearly fifty years from the 1970’s until 2019. They range from jewelled hardstone animals and decorative photograph frames, to pill boxes, scent bottles, silver pieces and jewellery. Harry Woolf is recognised for having collected only the very finest examples and has one of the most exemplary Fabergé collections known to have been curated by any private collector in the last fifty years. The study of wild strawberries pictured here is estimated at £200,000-300,000.
More than ten rare pieces from this prestigious collection (not included in Christie’s sale) are included in the forthcoming Fabergé: From Romance to Revolution exhibition at the V&A in London. This opens on November 20.
UPDATE: THE SALE REALISED £5,203,250, MORE THAN DOUBLE THE PRE-SALE LOW ESTIMATE
