Around €5 million worth of Irish art changed hands at Sotheby’s successful day of sales of Modern British and Irish Art and online Irish art today. The top Irish lot was Early Morning, Tangier by Sir John Lavery which made £340,000. The most expensively estimated Yeats of the sale, A Nor’ Western Town, estimated at £350,000-£550,000 and from the collection of Sir Michael Smurfit, failed to find a buyer. A Welcome by Yeats by £226,800 and Paul Henry’s West of Ireland Landscape made £327,600. The Village by the Lake by Paul Henry sold for £277,200.
At the online Irish art sale Lavery’s portrait of Mrs. Charles Baker made £214,000 and his Study for St. Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg made £113,400. The Face of Victory by Yeats made £100,800, and Engravings by Yeats made £88,200. A Woman Thinking by Sir William Orpen made £81,500 and The Great Blasket by Paul Henry made £75,600. Are You There by Rowan Gillespie made £107,200, Eruption by Cian McLoughlin made £52,920, Heaven is a Place on Earth by Jack Coulter made £42,329 and Cook Shack by Leah Hewson made £8,190.
