The Potato Harvest by Paul Henry broke the million euro barrier.
With Paul Henry breaking the million euro barrier for the first time the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival is not the only cause for celebration this October Bank Holiday weekend.
As the autumn leaves drift by the window the art market ain’t misbehavin’. In fact it has been hitting the right notes all over the show. Thus far October has been an astonishing month.
The sale of The Potato Harvest by Paul Henry for £883,200 (€1,043,290) at Sotheby’s over a top estimate of £350,000 (€414,700) was somewhat of a surprise though nonetheless overdue. With rock solid saleroom performances Henry has been among the most bankable of Irish artists for a very long time.
The Potato Harvest, first exhibited in 1919, introduces many of the defining features of his mature style – the low horizon, dramatic coastal atmosphere and careful balance between figure and landscape. In 2013 The Potato Diggers by Henry made a hammer price of €400,000 at Adam’s in Dublin. Other examples from this series are in public collections like the Ulster Museum in Belfast.
Boys Catching Crabs in Connemara by Gerard Dillon sold for €333,655 at Sotheby’s.
It was a stellar evening for Irish art at Sotheby’s where a private collection of nine Irish paintings was on offer. The combined estimate was £1.4 million (€1.6 million) and six of them sold, making more than €2.37 million. Little Spanish Dancer (Girl in Red Shawl) by Sir William Orpen made £358,400 (€424,652), Boys Catching Crabs in Connemara by Gerard Dillon made €281,600 (€333,655), Red Rocks and Foam by Roderic O’Conor made £243,200 (€288,156), A Winter Sea by Paul Henry made £192,000 (€227,490) and Galway by Jack B Yeats made £81,920 (€97,063).
These results were more than enough to keep the blues at bay even as three paintings, by Sean Scully, Yeats and Henry, failed to find buyers.
Study for a figure by Francis Bacon from the Peter Simon Monsoon collection sold for €127,075,402 at Christie’s.
There were celebrations at Christie’s too. The combined 20/21 evening sales generated £218,603,400 (€258,389,219). There were bidders from around the world and more than 10,000 people turned up for viewings in London. The leading lots were Wassily Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben (The colourful life) 1907 which made £31,560,000 (€37,394,000) and Piet Mondrian’s Composition III (1920) which made £25,235,000 (€29,899,815). The evening sale of the collection of Peter Simon – founder of the Monsoon clothing chain – made £107,508,800 (€127,075,402). This was the highest value single owner collection ever at Christie’s in London. The top lot was Francis Bacon’s Figure in Movement. It made £17,185,000 (€20,361,733).
Sales of Irish art in Ireland have been going very well this autumn too. Paul Henry’s Connemara Landscape made €140,000 at hammer at Whytes, Against the Stream by Yeats made €125,000. Crossing the City by Yeats and Nude by the Sea by Mainie Jellett each made hammer prices of €120,000. At Adams Errigal by Paul Henry made €95,000 at hammer.
No blue notes are being struck here. If all this is a bit beyond the budget there is always great art out there to be enjoyed for next to nothing. Hilma af Klint, Artist and Visionary – the first major exhibition in Ireland devoted to one of Sweden’s most celebrated modern artists – is now on show at the National Gallery in Dublin. The exhibition, which explores the time, place and circumstance that shaped her unique artistic vision, runs until next February 7.
