Jeff Koons, Balloon Monkey (Magenta) (2006-13, Price Realised: £10,136,500)
Jeff Koons’ seminal sculpture Balloon Monkey (Magenta) (2006-13) sold for £10,136,500 at Christie’s today, raising vital funds for humanitarian aid for Ukraine. Presented for sale by Victor and Olena Pinchuk, proceeds from the sale will be used to assist soldiers and civilians gravely wounded by war who urgently require prosthetics, medical treatment and rehabilitation to recover as much quality of life as possible.
Representing childhood innocence and joy for both children and adults alike, Balloon Monkey (Magenta) stands as a monumental symbol of hope and solidarity with those men, women and children living in war-torn Ukraine who have suffered terrible loss.
JOHN BUTLER YEATS (1839-1922) – Study of Jack B. Yeats. UPDATE: THIS MADE 700 AT HAMMER
This pencil drawing study of the artist Jack B Yeats by his father the artist John Butler Yeats is lot 4 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current online art auction which ends on June 27. Originally from the Yeats family collection, then in a private collection, it is estimated at 700-1,000. The catalogue for the sale is online.
Lacquered wooden panel of a seated young beauty with flowers by Alix Ayme. UPDATE: THIS MADE 80,000 AT HAMMER
The fabulous arts of Asia – magnificent, rich, colourful, symbolic, auspicious – will come under the hammer at three days of sales at James Adam in Dublin kicking off next Tuesday. More than 1,000 lots including newly discovered masterpieces of fine Chinese and Himalayan art will feature in two Asian Spring auctions and one of decorative Asian art. There will be global interest in an auction series which has been already previewed at the Pagoda Fair in Paris. Irish collectors and those dipping their toes into this market for the first time will find plenty of opportunities at sales where estimates range from €80 to €400,000.
In an era of fakes, knockoffs and forgeries seasoned collectors of Asian art value provenance very highly. These auctions are rich in works from well known collections like that of Carlos Alfredo Tornquist Altgelt (1885-1953); Juan Carlos Katzenstein (1925-2018); Jorge Casares of Buenos Aires and Canadian industrialist Baron Sir Duncan Orr-Lewis. The top lot of the auction is a rare six panelled lacquered wood screen of a Mekong River landscape with village by Vietnamese artist Le Quoc Loc (1918-1987). This 1943 panel is estimated at €200,000-€400,000. From snuff bottles to carved animals to screens and vases there is enough jade to make one green with envy. On day one there are Sino-Tibetan gilt bronze figures, rock crystal censers, blanc de chine porcelain vases, Chinese export porcelain, silver, cloisonne ware, an opium tray, furniture, art and scrolls.
Le Quoc Loc – Six panelled lacquered wood screen of a Mekong River landscape with village. UPDATE: THIS MADE 360,000 AT HAMMER
The emphasis on Wednesday is on Vietnam, Indochina, Asian painters and Japan. There are some Japanese prints along with a selection of art and artefacts headed by the six fold lacquer screen by Le Quoc Loc and a beautiful lacquer panel with a Byzantine inspired gold ground by Alix Ayme (1894-1989), professor at the Indochina Fine Arts College in Hanoi. The artist, once a pupil of Maurice Denis, was instrumental in the revival of the ancient art of lacquer which she taught in Hanoi. On Thursday the sale of decorative arts is brimful of interest. The Chinese incorporate auspicious symbols in nearly every aspect of life, including arts and culture. All sorts of symbols represent their aspiration for a longer, more prosperous and happier life. Lot 701 is a Famille Rose eight boys bottle vase. Three of them are climbing up the vase, and the depiction of five on the shoulders is particularly auspicious as it signifies the saying “wu zi deng ke” referring to the supreme achievement of one family whose five sons passed the civil service examination. (In my view the most auspicious thing about this is that they did not live next door!).The catalogue is online and viewing is underway at St. Stephen’s Green.
Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, R.A. – Vanity. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £176,400
This 1915 work by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, which comes up at Sotheby’s Modern British auction in London on June 30, was once in the collection of the world renowned Irish tenor Count John McCormack. He was an avid collector of up and coming artists in the early 20th century. The subject is the artist’s wife Anaïs. By 1915, the Brockhursts had moved to Ireland following the outbreak of war. Oliver St John Gogarty took them under their wing, and they were to remain in Ireland until 1919. Brockhurst produced some of his most experimental and exquisite works during this period, and he was friends with and worked alongside Augustus John and his circle. Vanity is estimated at £40,000-£60,000.
A JADE SNUFF BOTTLE CHINA, LATE QING DYNASTY. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
This jade snuff bottle is lot 11 at three days of sale of Asian art at James Adam in Dublin next week. The catalogues for Asian Spring 1, Asian Spring 2 and Decorative Asian Art are online and in person viewing gets underway at St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin on June 24. The auctions, which feature lots from noted collections, have already been previewed at the Pagoda Fair in Paris.
Joseph van Aken – A Musical Gathering. UPDATE: THIS MADE £15,120
This painting of A Musical Gathering was once part of the Berridge Collection at Ballynahinch Castle, Co. Galway. It comes up at Sotheby’s Old Masters day auction on July 7 with an estimate of £12,000-£18,000. Bidding for this sale which offers Flemish landscapes, Dutch marines, Netherlandish still lifes, Italian religious paintings and classical landscapes, to British portraits and historic view paintings of London, and a variety of canvases from nineteenth-century continental Europe, opens on July 1. A Musical Gathering was removed from Ballynahinch in 1924 and retained by the Berridges. In 1872 the Ballynahinch estate in county Galway, was bought by Richard Berridge, a London brewer, from the Law Life Assurance Society. In the mid 1870s he is recorded as owning over 160,000 acres in county Galway. In 1888 Bateman asserted that Richard Berridge was “the largest landowner in Ireland”. The Galway estate was purchased for sporting purposes and the Berridges built a number of fishing lodges, including those at Inagh, Fermoyle and Screebe. The estate remained in the family’s possession for only two generations. Over 70,000 acres was vested in the Congested Districts’ Board in 1915. The family retained a house in the locality and some fishing at Screebe until the late 20th century.
Yves Klein – Anthropométrie de l’époque bleue,(ANT 124) (1960). UPDATE: THIS MADE £27,197,000
A defining 1960 work by Yves Klein, Anthropometrie de l’epoque bleue will highlight Christie’s 20th/21st Century London evening sale on June 28. Coming to market for the first time it consists of eight solid blue imprints against a shimmering azure backdrop. It was painted after he had developed International Klein Blue and was in pursuit of ways to transcend the body and the physical realm.
Now live for browsing Christie’s 20/21 London to Paris sale series focuses again on artistic synergies between London and Paris throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Irish Georgian marble fireplace. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
An Irish Georgian fireplace with a neoclassical style Adams plaque and an ornate Victorian cast iron spiral staircase will be feature lots at the online Lynes and Lynes sale from Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork on June 25. The auction is comprised of 361 lots. There is an executors contents from west Cork, part contents from a religious order and furniture and silver from estates and collections in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Limerick. The most expensively estimated piece, at €12,000-€15,000, is the fireplace. Along with the 14′ high spiral staircase (€2,000-€3,000) this can be viewed in situ. It will be up to the purchaser to dismantle and remove them.
Victorian cast iron spiral staircase. UPDATE: THIS MADE 3,700 AT HAMMER
A fine pair of oval antique Waterford mirrors with alternating blue lozenge and gilt fluted cut glass studs will be of interest to collectors. They are estimated at €6,000-€8,000. A Georgian long case clock with brass dial by Thomas Cahill of Waterford is reasonably estimated at €1,000-€1,500. A Limerick silver soup ladle measuring 14 and a half inches in length by Patrick Connell – Limerick silver is always a rarity – is estimated at €400-€600. An early Cork silver salver by John Nicholson comes with an estimate of €300-€500. A pair of Irish pole screens, most likely by the Dublin firm of Williams & Gibton, is estimated at €300-€500. There is a soup plate from the old Cork Mansion House service. This was designed by renowned Cork based architect George Richard Pain (1793 to 1838), who was a pupil of John Nash, as the Lord Mayor’s dinner service for what was then the Mansion House and is now the Mercy Hospital. The plate is estimated at €100-€200. There are some Meissen plates with the crossed swords mark and a French ormolu mantel clock with Sevres panels is estimated at €1,000-€1,500.
DANIEL O’NEILL (1920-1974) – HEAD UPDATE: THIS MADE 19,000 AT HAMMER
Dan O’Neill, Louis le Brocquy, Jack B Yeats, John Shinnors and Mr. Brainwash all feature at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online evening sale of Important Irish Art on June 20. The auction kicks off with a Study for a Stained Glass Window by Evie Hone and there is art by Mainie Jellett, Percy French, Arthur Maderson, Cecil Maguire, Flora Mitchell, Sean Keating, Rose Barton, Mildred Anne Butler and a wide variety of Irish artists whose work is sought after. The catalogue is online.
Francis Bacon – Study for Portrait of Lucian Freud, 1964 (Estimate in excess of £35 million) Courtesy Sotheby’s. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £43,336,000
Francis Bacon’s magnetic portrait of Lucian Freud will highlight British Art: The Jubilee Auction at Sotheby’s in London on June 29. Paintined in 1964 the full-length portrait illuminates the powerful dialogue of friendship and epochal rivalry which would engulf two titans of art history and spur them to create some of their greatest works. The pair had first met 20 years earlier and would go on to share an intense friendship for over 40 years until jealousy and petty rows would ultimately splinter relations forever in the mid-1980’s.
Though their visual styles differed considerably, both artists were deeply committed to the human figure, painting each other on numerous occasions over the years. Indeed, for Bacon, Freud would become a recurrent – and one of the most significant – subjects of his work in the 1960’s. Bacon believed that: “the living quality is what you have to get. In painting a portrait, the problem is to find a technique by which you can give over all the pulsations of a person…The sitter is someone of flesh and blood and what has to be caught is their emanation.”
The black and white photographs taken by their mutual friend John Deakin would become Bacon’s primary source material as he painted Freud obsessively. Of great personal significance, Bacon would keep these photographs with him for the rest of his life, and they were rediscovered torn, crumpled and splattered with paint in his studio following his death.
