Gabriele Ricciardelli (1690-1782) – A View of Dublin Bay from Mount Merrion. UPDATE: THIS LOT WAS ACQUIRED PRIOR TO THE SALE BY A NATIONAL CULTURAL INSTITUTION
A recently discovered masterpiece painting of Dublin Bay by Gabriele Ricciardelli (1690-1782) will lead the Irish Old Masters auction at Adam’s on December 4. Ricciardelli, who moved from Southern Italy to Dublin in 1753, was the first to paint this spectacular view, which was at Powerscourt until 1948. A view of Dublin Bay from Mount Merrion is estimated at €80,000-€120,000.
The auction at 6 pm on Thursday offers 52 lots. It includes landscapes, seascapes, still lives, portraits and A Fight in a Tavern in Innishannon by Nathaniel Grogan (c1740-1807) which is estimated at €6,000-€8,000. The auction is on view at Adam’s at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin and the catalogue is online.
Nathaniel Grogan (c1740-1807) – A Fight in a Tavern in Innishannon. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Tony O’Malley (1913-2003) – Summer Breeze, Callan, Co. Kilkenny 1981 UPDATE: THIS MADE 11,500 AT HAMMER
From a unique modernist take by John Luke of a dead tree in 1933 and Paul Henry’s 1929 view of The Great Sugarloaf to a 2003 oil on panel diptych of Birds in our Saltee Islands by Elizabeth Cope, a seascape by Donald Teskey and Children playing at the seaside by Dorothea Sharpe (1874-1955) Ireland in all its multiple glories is celebrated in the art at Whyte’s sale in Dublin on the evening of December 1.
Whyte’s has valued the 143 lots on offer at €1.2 million, a measure of how far the market has progressed in the first quarter of the 21st century. Summer Breeze, Callan, Co. Kilkenny by Tony O’Malley marries the influence of his native place with the light of the Bahamas. The partially abstracted oil on board, full of flowing movement, has an estimate of €12,000-€18,000. The photo realism of another Kilkenny born artist stands in sharp contrast to this work. Now based in west Cork the artist John Doherty’s c2000 edgy, dramatic and architectural painting of the Poolbeg Lighthouse has an estimate of €18,000-€22,000.
The heavily worked White House, Shooting Star by John Shinnors – approached in another entirely different way – offers a contrasting and pleasing landscape scene by night.
JOHN LUKE – THE DEAD TREE UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Diversity in Irish art is nothing new. The two leading lots of the auction, The Dead Tree by John Luke and The Great Sugarloaf by Paul Henry could not be more different. Painted just a couple of years apart and representing classical and modern style each one is estimated at €100,000-€150,000.
There is art by Leo Whelan, Roderic O’Conor, Eva Hamilton, Frank McKelvey, Dan O’Neill, Patrick Collins, Rowan Gillespie, John Behan, Michael Warren and many other artists in a catalogue available to see online. Viewing at Whyte’s today, tomorrow and Monday will be followed by a live auction at Freemason’s Hall on Molesworth St. in Dublin is from 6 pm on Monday.
Elizabeth Cope – Birds in our Saltee Islands 2003. UPDATE: THIS MADE 4,000 AT HAMMER
Michael Angelo Hayes (1820-1877) – The Kildare Hunt 1858. UPDATE: THIS MADE 50,000 AT HAMMER
An 1858 painting of the Kildare Hunt by Michael Angelo Hayes will lead Fonsie Mealy’s winter fine art and antique sale in Castlecomer on December 3 and 4. Estimated at €40,000-€60,000 it is part of a range of items celebrating our equestrian heritage including the Tralee Races Cup, the Blennerhassett Plate and the Kilkenny Hunt Cup.
The Hayes painting is a large group portrait outside Bishopscourt House near Straffan, Co. Kildare. It depicts the Earl of Clonmel, Lord Cloncurry, the Marquis of Drogheda, Thomas Connolly, Captain Colthurst, Sir John Power and many more identifiable figures.
More than 1,000 lots of antique furniture, art and collectibles are to be auctioned. There is a Faberge link gold bracelet, a selection of gold coins, a 19th century dining table on four pods, a Peel P50 one person commuter car from the early 1960’s, a 1963 Morris Minor, a pair of French Empire four branch candelabra, a specimen marble table and a silver ladle by Samuel Johns, Limerick among the leading lots. The catalogue is online.
A vintage Peel P50 one person commuter car. UPDATE: THIS MADE 8,000 AT HAMMER
A Kashmir sapphire and diamond ring by Boucheron will lead a sale of fine jewellery and ladies watches at Adam’s in Dublin on December 4. The sapphire weighs 5.08 carats and the ring is estimated at €100,000-€150,000 but it might be advisable to break out the piggy bank if you really, really want it. So far this year Adam’s sold a Kashmir diamond and sapphire ring for €540,000 at hammer, an early 20th century Kashmir sapphire brooch for €540,000 and a c1900 Kashmir sapphire and diamond brooch for €550,000. This one dates to the first quarter of the 20th century and was acquired in the 1930’s by the Guerlain family of perfume fame in Paris.
Tapestry is the title of the just opened exhibition of new work by world renowned, unstoppable Sean Scully – who turned 80 this year – at the Kerlin Gallery in Dublin. It brings together four distinct bodies of work rooted in a deep engagement with the emotional potential of abstraction. There are recent pencil on paper drawings; hand woven tapestries in collaboration with Mourne Textiles with the drawn line translated into fibre, texture and weight; new large paintings from the Stack series and a selection of new oil on copper paintings. Modest in scale these are rich in colour and emotional depth. The show highlights how drawing functions as a foundational structure in Scully’s work and reveals how Scully’s practice is constructed line by line. Marks accumulate and interlock and are layered into larger forms. The show runs until January 24. Pictured here is Tappan Wall Yellow, 2025, an oil on copper at Kerlin. Another show by Scully – Blue – opens today at Thaddaeus Ropac Marais in Paris and runs until January 17.
Paul Henry RHA (1877-1958) – Coastal Landscape with Galway Hookers
This 1930’s painting by Paul Henry made a hammer price of €170,000 at Adam’s sale of Important Irish Art. It is from the collection of former Taoiseach John A Costello and is believed to have been purchased directly from the artist as it was never on the market before. Another Henry painting from the Costello collection of a Connemara Village was sold by Adam’s in 2016 for €119,000 at hammer.
Other top hammer prices from Adam’s sale on November 26 were: Mary Swanzy, A Cubist Landscape (€38,000); Gerard Dillon, Inishmore Lads, (€32,000); Harry Clarke, Faust in the Witches Kitchen (€30,000); Louis le Brocquy, Cuchulainn in Warp Spasm (1999) (€26,000; Hughie O’Donoghue, Night Cargo (€20,000) and Nathaniel Hone, Hay Wynds (€15,000).
Majella O’Neill Collins (b.1964) – North of Sherkin Island (2024). UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,700 AT HAMMER
This oil on canvas by the Sherkin based artist Majella O’Neill Collins comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online off the wall auction of affordable Irish art which runs until December 2. The estimate is €1,500-€2,500. More than 450 lots from a wide variety of artists will come under the hammer. Among them are Graham Knuttel, Eileen Meaghar, Desmond Carrick, Sean Scully, James Brohan, William Crozier, Tony O’Malley, Markey Robinson, Elizabeth Cope, Louis le Brocquy and Mr. Brainwash.
INCUNABULA: The Nuremberg Chronicle by Anton Koberger, 1493 SOLD FOR €35,000 at hammer
One of the most important German incunables (a book printed before 1501) and the most extensively illustrated book of the 15th century made a hammer price of €35,000 at Purcell Auctioneers in Birr today. The Nuremberg Chronicle by Anton Koberger dates to 1493, the very first edition Latin in Gothic Rotunda type. A Pictorial History of the World, the Nuremberg Chronicle was written over several years by the doctor and book collector, Hartmann Schedel, who was commissioned by two Nuremberg merchants. It was originally published in Latin in an edition of around 1400-1500. The Chronicle also incorporates geographical and historical information on European countries and towns. The narrative is divided into 11 parts – the so-called world ages, and is profusely illustrated by images of biblical and historical events, and topographical views of towns and countries in Europe and the Middle East, including Jerusalem and Byzantium. It contains the bookplate of The Right Honourable Robert Henry Meade 1879 (Meade GCB, was the second son of the 3rd Earl of Clanwilliam and Lady Elizabeth Herbert. Clanwilliam, an Irish peer, had served as Private Secretary to Lord Castlereagh and subsequently as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.).
Daniel Nelis is the winner of the National Gallery of Ireland’s AIB Portrait Prize with this work, an oil on panel portrait of his wife Andrea titled Late Spring. Along with a €15,000 prize he will receive a €5,000 commission to create a new work for the National Portrait Collection. John Foley and Conor O’Leary received highly commended prizes of €1,500 for their works Biddy Boy and The Final Portrait. Guorui Sui, aged 11, was selected as the overall winner of the AIB Young Portrait Prize for his work My Own World of Fantasy.
The artist and curator from Donegal said the portrait was painted in the months before his marriage. “Andrea has been a recurring presence in my work. The painting does not seek to sentimentalise our relationship, but to bear witness through an intimate and intrusive lens, with elements such as the fabrics and heather rendered with the same scrutiny as the figure. Such moments of quiet reflection, experienced in the vivid reality of the present, are of greatest interest in my work.” Nelis studied Fine Art Painting at Ulster University, later completing an MA in Art History, Collections and Curating at University College Dublin. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, at the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts.
Roderic O’Conor, 1860-1940 – PAYSAGE AUX ARBRES (LANDSCAPE WITH TREES), c.1890
This small oil on canvas by Roderic O’Conor made a hammer price of €340,000 at de Veres on November 25. According to the art historian Jonathan Benington new evidence indicates that Paysage aux Arbres sits earlier in O’Conors chronology than previously thought and, as such, the picture should be viewed as a key turning point in his career. There is even a suggestion of striping in the foliage of several of the trees a hint of things to come 18 months later.
Other top lots at de Veres include Standing Blue by Sean Scully (€140,000), Cottages Connemara by Paul Henry (€130,000), Nature Morte by Roderic O’Conor (€115,000), Composition (1922) by Mainie Jellett (€70,000) and Aran Man (Self-Portrait) by Sean Keating (€65,000).
