This genre painting by the mostly unknown 19th century artist Mary McGee is redolent of an Ireland that used to be. McGee was a student at the Dublin School of Art and worked predominantly around Drumcondra. Early in her career she exhibited a design for a fan mount at the International Exhibition in London and regularly exhibited at the RHA between 1874 and 1896. Woman Tending Flowers at a Cottage Door is signed and dated 1889 and estimated at 600-800. The oil on canvas is lot 35 at the timed online sale of Important Irish Art at James Adam which runs to March 24.
Mary A. McGee (fl.1874-1896) Woman Tending Flowers at a Cottage Door. UPDATE: THIS MADE 650 AT HAMMER
A parody by Banksy of actress Demi Moore’s iconic Vanity Fair cover comes up at Sotheby’s livestreamed marquee auction on March 25 with an estimate of £2-3 million. The two-metre-tall canvas was first unveiled in 2006 as the poster image for Banksy’s debut and breakthrough U.S. exhibition, which cemented his status. Titled ‘Barely Legal’, the self-proclaimed “three-day vandalised warehouse extravaganza” took place in an impoverished area of Los Angeles. The location was kept secret until hours before the opening. Advertisements featuring the poster juxtaposed against the Hollywood sign were pasted around the city in the lead up and to promote the show, Banksy also left an inflatable replica of a Guantánamo Bay detainee in Disneyland. During the three-day view the exhibition famously drew 30,000 visitors – among them Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jude Law, Keanu Reeves, Orlando Bloom, Dennis Hopper, Cameron Diaz and Sacha Baron Cohen. The LA Times reported that $5 million worth of art was sold during the opening two hours.
Banksy – Original Concept for Barely Legal Poster (After Demi Moore), 2006. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £2,677,000
“So when she saw me, she went crazy about my hair and absolutely wanted to do my portrait with my hair loose” French art critic Denyse Proutaux explained in a 1931 letter to her partner Phillippe Dyvorne. The resultant re-discovered portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil is the top lot at Christie’s South Asian, Modern and Contemporary Art auction in New York on March 17. “As it was for a competition and she had very little time, I posed almost non-stop for three days, and that’s why I couldn’t write to you as I had promised you. I’ve never known such an amazing girl, you know Phil?” Proutaux wrote. Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Budapest in 1913 to a Hungarian mother and Indian father. Living between Hungary, France and India she painted people and places with an intensity that remains unparalleled in modern Indian art and was elected as an associate of the Grand Salon in Paris in 1933. Sher-Gil died unexpectedly in 1941 in Lahore at the age of 28. Most of her documented work is in the national collection of Modern Art in New Delhi. Portrait of Denyse is estimated at $1.8-$2.5 million.
Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941), Portrait of Denyse. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Waiting for the Ferry, low tide by Jack B. Yeats UPDATE: THIS MADE 135,000 AT HAMMER
A lone figure stands at the waters edge in Waiting for the Ferry, Low Tide, 1946. This enigmatic Yeats work is the catalogue cover lot at Whyte’s evening sale of Important Irish and International Art in Dublin on March 22. It was acquired by American sculptor Helen Hooker O’Malley in the same year that she sought a divorce from the Irish revolutionary Ernie O’Malley. The O’Malleys were important collectors of Yeats in the 1930’s and ’40’s. His collection, sold by Whyte’s and Christie’s in Dublin in 1919, grossed €5.5 million. She bought it from Leo Smith, who had been co-director of the Waddington Gallery in Dublin before setting up the Dawson Gallery in 1944. Helen gifted it to Liam Redmond, with whom she founded the Dublin Players Theatre in 1944, and it is now estimated at €100,000-€150,000. Redmond was married to Barbara MacDonagh, daughter of poet Thomas MacDonagh who was executed after the 1916 Rising.
Share the Feeling by John Behan. UPDATE: THIS MADE 2,500 AT HAMMER
The virtual auction of 153 lots features work by sculptors John Behan and Rowan Gillespie, paintings by Louis le Brocquy, Paul Henry, Patrick Scott, Camille Souter, William Crozier, James Humbert Craig, Gladys Maccabe, Dan O’Neill and international artists Tracey Emin, Bob Dylan and Damien Hirst.Francis Bacon and Louis le Brocquy met in the 1940’s in London and remained friends until Bacon’s death in 1992. Bacon penned the introduction to a le Brocquy retrospective in 1966. It was not until 1979 that le Brocquy created an image of Bacon and it was one of the few portraits of people he knew personally. His oil of canvas Image of Francis Bacon is estimated at €120,000-€150,000. A watercolour image of Beckett, estimated at €15,000-€20,000, is one of a number of works by le Brocquy in this sale. Spring in Wicklow, a 1920’s landscape by Paul Henry is estimated at €150,000-€200,000. There is much Irish work to choose from with art by Tony O’Malley, Donald Teskey, John Shinnors, William Crozier, John Kingerlee and others. Among these is a still life by Christy Brown with an estimate of €2,000-3,000.A small oil on canvas of ships in moonlight by the noted Dutch artist Johnan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891) is estimated at €8,000-€12,000. A 2019 lithograph by Tracey Emin (75/200) entitled I Loved my Innocence has an estimate of €3,000-€4,000 and two unnumbered etchings by Damien Hirst from an edition of 68 are each estimated at €1,000-€1,500. Bob Dylan’s are has proved popular in Ireland at past sales and this auction offers three prints by the American singer songwriter at estimates ranging from €1,200 to €5,000.
No less than 24 lots of Irish art will kick off an online sale by Dreweatts of Newbury, Berkshire on March 18. The auction of Modern and Contemporary Art starts with a private Irish collection from artists ranging from Colin Middleton to Gladys Maccabe to Felim Egan. Dreweatts say the collection has been passionately assembled over the last 30 years by a private individual and that the art on offer touches on the recurring themes including nostalgia, escapism and a sense of identity.Estimates are from £600-£800 for a charcoal drawing by William Conor to £10,000-£15,000 for two works by Gerard Dillon. The artists featured are Gerard Dillon, William Conor, Colin Middleton, Markey Robinson, Gladys Maccabe, Maurice MacGonigal, Maurice Wilks, Frank McKelvery, Kitty Wilmer O’Brien, Henry Healy, Basil Blackshaw, Graham Knuttel, Sean McSweeney, Ciaran Clear, Felim Egan and Martin Finnin. Dreweatts sold a large work by the Limerick artist John Shinnors for a hammer price of £40,000 last October.
Untitled (Blue) by Felim Egan (1952-2020). UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Until October, the most Mike Winkelmann — the digital artist known as Beeple — had ever sold a print for was $100. Now he is among the top three most valuable living artists. Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a collage of all the images that Beeple has been posting online each day since 2007, achieved $69,346,250 at Christie’s, New York today.
The record-smashing NFT sale comes after months of increasingly valuable auctions. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique files that live on a blockchain and are able to verify ownership of a work of digital art. Buyers typically get limited rights to display the digital artwork they represent. In October, Winkelmann sold his first series of NFTs, with a pair going for $66,666.66 each. In December, he sold a series of works for $3.5 million total. And last month, one of the NFTs that originally sold for $66,666.66 was resold for $6.6 million.
Beeple (b. 1981), EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS 21,069 x 21,069 pixels (319,168,313 bytes) Minted on 16 February 2021. This work is unique.
The sale of the first purely digital NFT based work of art by a major auction house achieved a new world record for any work of digital art, the highest price for any lot in any online-only auction, the highest price for any winning bid placed online, and the highest total for any online-only auction. There were bidders from 11 countries and 22 million visitors tuned into Christie’s for the final minutes of bidding. Christie’s say that there were 33 active bidders, 55% from the Americas, 27% from Europe and 18% from Asia. 91% were new bidders at Christie’s.
Digital Art has been an established artistic medium since the advent of the personal computer. However, before the introduction of NFTs and Blockchain technology it was impossible for even the most celebrated digital artists to claim their place in the art market. These mechanisms have paved the way for future of art of purely digital means.
Beeple said:“Artists have been using hardware and software to create artwork and distribute it on the internet for the last 20+ years but there was never a real way to truly own and collect it. With NFT’s that has now changed. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the next chapter in art history, digital art. This is work that has just as much craft, message, nuance and intent as anything made on a physical canvas and I am beyond honored and humbled to represent the digital art community in this historic moment.“
Mike Winklemann
Noah Davis, Specialist, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarked: “Christie’s is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Beeple, a brash pioneer among digital artists, to present the first purely digital NFT-based work of art ever offered by a major auction house. We see this as a pivotal moment for the future of New Media and even the practice of collecting itself. Everydays–The First 5000 Days is a monumental work comprised of 5,000 individual images created over the course of as many days, giving viewers the opportunity to zoom in and witness Beeple’s often irreverent but always engaging evolution as an artist pixel by pixel. The capacity to represent 13 years of an artist’s career in a single work perfectly illustrates the limitless nature of this medium. Not unlike the advent of Street Art as a blue chip collecting category, NFT-based art is on the threshold of becoming the next ingeniously disruptive force in the art market. Christie’s is proud to be in the vanguard of this exhilarating movement.”
Long long ago the entertainer, artist and songwriter Percy French (1854-1920) painted a picture of Gortnamona and put the words of his famous song on the back. The watercolour comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online sale of Irish art which runs to March 15. Lot 3 in a sale of 440 has an estimate of 2,000-3,000.
Gortnamona by Percy French. UPDATE: THIS MADE 5,200 AT HAMMER
A self portrait by Edvard Munch is among the highlights at Sotheby’s cross category Modern Renaissance sale in London on March 25. The major spring evening sale will cross categories and geographies, spanning over 500 years, from Old Masters to the 21st century. Among the highlights are works by Munch, David Hockney, Jean Dubuffet, Piero del Pollaiuolo, Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso.
Edvard Munch – Self portrait with palette (£4.5-6.5 million). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £4,334,400
A universal tribute by the artist Banksy to those fighting Covid-19 worldwide comes up at Christie’s 20th century art evening sale in London on March 23. Banksy’s Game Changer will be offered with a pre-sale estimate of £2,500,000-3,500,000. It appeared at Southampton General Hospital during the first wave of the pandemic in May 2020. It was always his intention that it should be auctioned and a reproduction will remain at the hospital. Proceeds from the sale will benefit the NHS.
UPDATE: Game Changer sold for £16,758,000. Proceeds will be used to support health organisations and charities across the UK that enhance the care and treatment provided by the NHS. Christie’s will donate a significant portion of the Buyer’s Premium to these cause
With everything from a rare Victorian steeplechase board game, a pair of 19th century model brass cannons, a suite of three Paul Storr meat covers and a painting of the East Indiaman Hotspur leaving Tyne on her maiden voyage in 1851 by William Garthwaite Sheppards online sales by Sheppards in Durrow on March 11 and 12 are brimful of interest. On offer are contents from Eyrefield Lodge Stud at The Curragh, home to Sir Edmund and Lady Susan Loder, as well as some other clients of Sheppards. Equestrian portraits, wonderful antique oak furniture, ceramics, glass, garden and conservatory pieces, racing memorabilia, wines and all the trappings of an exceptional home and garden come up at this sale. The steeplechase game dates to c1865 and is attributed to E.C. Spurin, London. Complete with mahogany cased board it is estimated at €800-€1,200. At the other end of the scale is a colourful Louis le Brocquy Aubusson tapestry of a garlanded goat with an estimate of €50,000-€80,000. A 19th century breakfront bookcase is estimated at €30,000-€40,000 but much of the fine furniture in this sale is far more affordable. There are wine tables, work tables, chairs, chests of drawers and cabinets including an attractive George III with vaulted back and scallop shell interior (€800-€1,200). The suite of three Paul Storr silver meat covers dates to 1811 and is estimated at €2,000-€3,000. A Chinese puce enamelled chrysanthemum dish is estimated at €800-€1,200 and a large Chinese porcelain jardiniere on stand is estimated at €1,500-€2,500. The pair of 19th century model brass cannons are estimated at €500-€800. The 1851 oil on canvas by William Garthwaite is estimated at €800-€1,200 and two pairs of Art Nouveau stained glass panels are each estimated at €400-€600. For the convenience of online bidders the auction of more than 800 lots will be broken up into four sessions, each of around 200 lots at 10 am and 2 pm on each day. The catalogue is online.
Rare Victorian steeplechase board game. UPDATE: THIS MADE 3,800 AT HAMMER
