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  • Archive for May, 2026

    CONTENTS FROM TWO POPULAR HOSTELERIES AT AUCTION

    Saturday, May 2nd, 2026

    Interior of Reidy’s Wine Vault bar to be sold by Lynes and Lynes. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR €73,000 AT HAMMER

    Reidy’s Wine Vaults in Cork or the Black Cat in Kilkenny?  Against a background where the market for collectibles is performing strongly contents from these popular and now closed watering holes will come up at sales by Aidan Foley and Lynes and Lynes next week.

    Aidan Foley will hold three days of online sales with antiques, silver, art, automobilia and pub memorabilia on May 4, 5 and 6 at 6 pm each day.  Along with some contents from Kilkenny’s Black Cat bar on Black Mill St. in Kilkenny there is art by Mabel Young, Carol Ann Waldron, Ivan Sutton, Markey Robinson and Sean Keating.  The auction has a good selection of vintage forecourt signs, enamel signs, modern dealership signs and paraphernalia like oil cans which are also in strong demand.  The auction is on view in Doneraile over this Bank Holiday weekend.

    The fine interior bar fittings from Reidy’s Wine Vault at Lancaster Quay in Cork, which has been sold and is to become a restaurant, will come under the hammer as one lot at a sale by Denis Lynes on May 9.  The bar counter, which measures over 29′ in length, back bar, dividers, cabinets and light fittings is estimated at €70,000-€120,000.  There will be viewing on the premises on May 6 from 10 am to 5 pm.  In March the complete fittings from the West End Bar in Portadown, one of the oldest licensed premises in Co. Armagh, made a hammer price of €120,000 at an auction by Victor Mee.

    Mabel Young (1889-1974) – A Cottage in a landscape at Aidan Foley’s sale. UPDATE: THIS MADE 900 AT HAMMER

    THE LEWIS COLLECTION AT SOTHEBY’S IN LONDON

    Friday, May 1st, 2026

    Gustav Klimt –  Bildnis Gertrud Loew (Gertha Felsoványi) from 1902

    This ethereal portrait by Gustav Klimt from the Lewis Collection – the most valuable single collection ever offered in London – will come under the hammer at Sotheby’s in June. Gertrud Loew was a member of fin-de-siècle Viennese society, later known by her married name Gertha Felsoványi, who was aged 19 when this portrait was painted. It is estimated at £20-£30 million. Assembled over decades by Joe Lewis, former owner of Tottenham Hotspur, and his daughter Vivienne, many of the works in the collection have been exhibited in major museums across the globe. There is art by Egon Schiele, Amadeo Modigliani, Francis Bacon, Gustav Caillebotte, Lucian Freud, Chaim Soutine and Picasso in a collection estimated to make in the region of £150 million.

    Born and raised in London’s East End, Joe Lewis felt a natural affinity as a collector with the School of London painters, such as Bacon and Freud, whose work confronted the human condition with an uncompromising intensity. That early passion became the foundation for what is today one of the world’s most important private collections of modern art, shaped by a fascination with the human figure in all its forms. From Klimt, Schiele and Modigliani to Caillebotte, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bacon and Freud, the Lewis Collection captures the radical inventiveness of the leading artists of the 20th century, and includes some of the greatest works of modern figurative painting to remain in private hands.


    The June sale follows the presentation of four School of London masterpieces from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s London in March, which doubled their combined low estimate to realise a total of £35.8 million,. It also follows last September’s record-setting sale of the Pauline Karpidas collection, which achieved £101 million to become the highest-value single owner sale ever staged in London.

    Highlights will be unveiled at Sotheby’s in New York tomorrow. The auctions will be held on the week of June 22 in London.

    FRANCIS BACON – TWO STUDIES FOR SELF-PORTRAIT. (£8 – £12 MILLION).