Pieter Brueghel the Younger – The Massacre of the Innocents
The Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Brueghel the Younger was the top lot at Christie’s Old Masters evening sale in London this evening. It made £2,422,500 over a top estimate of £1.5 million. The auction launched Christie’s winter edit of Classic Week in London and realised £10.3 million. El Greco’s Portrait of a Gentleman, 1570, one of the earliest surviving portraits by the artist and one of the last to remain in private hands, led three restituted works from the Priester Collection, and made £1,222,500. There were 46 lots offered and 33 were sold.
A marble figure of the Capitoline Aphrodite known as The Hamilton Aphrodite, one of the greatest Roman sculptures in private hands, sold for £18,582,000 at Sotheby’s in London today. It had been estimated at £2-£3million. Dating back to the 1st or 2nd century AD marble lays claim to being the finest single piece of ancient sculpture ever to have resided in Scotland, where it spent 144 years between 1776 and 1919, as one of the main attractions of Hamilton Palace, the seat of the Dukes of Hamilton. The Aphrodite entered the collection of Hamilton Palace in 1776, when it was purchased in Rome by Douglas Hamilton, 8th Duke of Hamilton and 5th Duke of Brandon (1756–1799) from the Scottish neoclassical painter and art dealer, Gavin Hamilton (1723–1798, of no relation to the Duke).
It was acquired by William Randolph Hearst in 1920 and by the Hungarian born New York based art dealer Joseph Brummer in 1940. It was last sold at auction at Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York in 1949.
The sizzling winter season of Irish art sales is on track to surpass €10 million this week. Sales at Sotheby’s, de Veres, Bonhams, Whyte’s and Morgan O’Driscoll have already achieved an aggregate of at least €9 million. A big sale of Important Irish Art at James Adam next Wednesday is certain to bring this figure racing past the €10 million post. At Whyte’s the most expensively estimated Yeats painting ever at auction – The Shouting at €1.5 million – €2 million – made a hammer price of €1.4 million (€1.74 million with fees and VAT). Women artists fared particularly well and works by Grace Henry, Letitia Hamilton and Nano Reid shot past their top estimates. The Fortune Teller by Grace Henry made €37,000 at hammer over a top estimate of just €7,000, a new world record for the artist. There was also a new world record for Graham Knuttel.
This Aubusson tapestry by Louis le Brocquy at Adams was commissioned for Setanta House. UPDATE: THIS MADE 80,000 AT HAMMER
Adams will offer major works by Yeats and Colin Middleton next Wednesday. Among the le Brocquy’s at Adams is Ancestral Head (€60,000-€80,000) and Cavannagh, an Aubusson tapestry commissioned from the artist for Setanta House (€80,000-€120,000). There is a Composition by Evie Hone (€30,000-€40,000) and Cubist Landscape, Trees, Houses by Mary Swanzy (€20,000-€30,000). The auction features three landscapes by Paul Henry headed by Cottages and Turfstacks in the West of Ireland (€140,000-€180,000) along with sculpture by F E McWilliam, John Behan, Imogen Stuart, Breon O’Casey, Rory Breslin, Cliodna Cussen and paintings by Sir William Orpen, George Campbell, Camille Souter, Dan O’Neill, Tony O’Malley, Basil Blackshaw, John Shinnors, John Boyd and Donald Teskey. This sale promises to bring a remarkable season to an exciting close.
The hectic pace of 2021 continues as the auction world zooms into December. A number of stunning sales in the offing next week in Ireland offer collectors a wide range of stellar choices in the fields of antiques, art and collectibles. Fonsie Mealy’s Christmas Rare Books and Collectors sale is at the Talbot Hotel, Stillorgan on Tuesday and Wednesday, four days of sales with amazing contents from the Cronin collection at Seafield House, Donabate, Co. Dublin get underway at Sheppards in Durrow next Tuesday and the Outstanding Irish Art sale at James Adam on Wednesday evening will follow a strong sale of fine jewellery and watches at Adams on Tuesday. And Aidan Foley will offer more than 2,000 lots at three days of online sales from tomorrow with viewing in Sixmilebridge today.
A full size replica in silver plate of the Liam McCarthy Cup at Fonsie Mealy. UPDATE: THIS MADE 9,000 AT HAMMER
Among more than 1,000 lots at Fonsie Mealy is a prized first edition of Ulysses by James Joyce and full replicas in silver plate of both the Liam McCarthy Cup and the Sam Maguire Cup There will be international interest in.an original engraved facsimile copy of the American Declaration of Independence issued by Order of Congress in 1823 when it was noted that the ink on the original document was fading. This particular copy has direct provenance by family descent to Charles O’Connor, the Irish American democratic lawyer who in 1872 became the first catholic to be nominated for a US Presidential election. With everything from the antiquities of Ireland to Monty Python this auction is on view at the Talbot Hotel, Stillorgan on tomorrow and Monday.
One of a pair of museum quality late nineteenth century satinwood bookcases at Sheppards. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD.
Sheppards have a pair of museum quality 19th century satinwood bookcases from the collection of Cork businessman Liam Cronin. There is a Mannerist Mannerist painting of The baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, once owned by Augustine Roche, Lord Mayor of Cork. His dispersal sale by Marshs, Cork in 1916 had to be postponed from April to July because of the Easter Rising. This is an online sale of 1,637 lots with everything from a Chinese Meiping vase to a 19th century neoclassical overmantle. The auction is on view in Durrow on today, tomorrow and Monday.Adams will offer lots of diamonds, as well as rubies, sapphires, emeralds and all sort of gemstones at their fine jewellery sale in Dublin at 4 pm next Tuesday. Viewing for this dazzling sale is now underway in Dubin.
The Adams sale next Wednesday is particularly strong in mid 20th century art. Through the Streets to the Hills by Jack Yeats from 1950 is a view of Fitzwilliam St., Dublin where Yeats lived from 1919 until he retired to the Portobello Home. It is estimated at €100,000-€150,000. There will be much interest too in a contrasting work, Portrait of Lucian Freud in Patrick Swift’s Hatch St. (€20,000-€30,000) which depicts the young artist in Dublin.Other Modernist works include Edward McGuire’s Barn Owl (€6,000-€8,000) and How Many Miles to London Town (€30,000-€50,000), Trojan Horse (€15,000-€20,000) and Abstract with Toy Train (€20,000-€30,000) all by Colin Middleton.
KENNETH WEBB (B.1927) – Spring Meadow. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,500 AT HAMMER
Spring Meadow by Kenneth Webb comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current off the wall online sale of Irish art. The small oil on canvas is estimated at €1,200-€1,800. The catalogue for this sale of 450 lots is online. The auction runs to the evening of December 6.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Portrait of Lucian Freud in Patrick Swift’s Hatch Street Studio. UPDATE: THIS WAS SOLD FOR 19,000
Meet the young Lucian Freud as seen by the Irish artist Patrick Swift. Between 1948 and 1956, when he was a frequent visitor to Ireland, Freud developed a friendship with Patrick Swift, whose studio on Hatch Street he regularly shared. During this time, the two artists observed one another’s work closely; both were interested in portraiture and, to a lesser extent, still lifes. Swift was still in the early stages of his career while Freud had been critically lauded and celebrated in London with a string of acclaimed solo exhibitions. His work had been added to public collections in England and the US before he was selected to represent Britain (with Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson) at the Venice Biennale in 1954.
Swift’s first solo exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries in Dublin in 1952 was met with critical acclaim. He was, by now, part of a more-or-less bohemian set of artists and writers that included Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Nano Reid, and John Ryan; he was also connected to the art dealer Deirdre McDonagh. Freud was introduced to this cultural network through the artist Anne Dunn on his first visit to the city in the late 1940s. On his regular visits to Dublin thereafter, Freud participated in this artistic milieu.
This portrait of Freud at Swift’s studio in Hatch St., Dublin comes up at the James Adam sale of Imporant Irish Art in Dublin on December 8 with an estimate of €20,000-€30,000.
This portrait of a mother practicing healing methods on her son is the winner of the National Gallery of Ireland’s Zurich Portrait Prize. Me Ma Healing Me by Salvatore of Lucan was announced this evening at a virtual ceremony. As well as a prize of €15,000, the artist, who is half Bangladeshi and half Irish, will receive a commission worth €5,000 to produce a new work for the National Portrait Collection. Salvatore of Lucan (b. 1994) creates large-scale works in an attempt to communicate a sense of the world he inhabits. Exploring home, identity and relationships, he creates expansive domestic scenes where the familiar approaches the magical. This is his third inclusion in the Zurich Portrait Prize. The artist explained: “My mother practices sound healing and Reiki, and anytime I’m at home and feeling unwell, she offers to practice on me. I am a distant son and can be sceptical about some of the hippy stuff, but when her hands hover above me, I do feel my mother’s love, and am aware that she is trying to heal me. In making the painting I was inspired by the kind of uncanny, suspended feeling one finds in the alchemist paintings of Leonora Carrington.”
Vanessa Jones and Tom McLean received highly commended prizes to the sum of €1,500 for their respective portraits, Cabbage Baby (self-portrait) and Note to Self. The judges were artist Eamonn Doyle, Róisín Kennedy, art critic and lecturer/assistant professor in the School of Art History & Cultural Policy, UCD and Seán Kissane, Curator at IMMA.
An exhibition featuring the winning portrait alongside 23 other shortlisted works runs at the National Gallery of Ireland until next April 3 alongside the Zurich Young Portrait Prize exhibition of 20 shortlisted portraits. Both exhibitions will travel to Crawford Art Gallery in Cork in 2022. The overall winner of the Young Portrait Prize was Della Cowper-Gray, who is aged 14.
MR. BRAINWASH – Everyday Life (2020). UPDATE: THIS MADE 10,000 AT HAMMER
Everyday Life by Mr. Brainwash comes up as lot 76 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Important Irish Art auction this evening. The unique screenprint with spray, acrylic and paint on wove paper is estimated at 8,000-12,000. Mr. Brainwash is a French born Los Angeles based street artist who, in 2009, designed the cover for Madonna’s Celebration album. Though this is an auction of mainly Irish art and artists there are some international artists like Damien Hirst and Robert Indiana featured. The sale kicks off at 6.30 pm.
Shouting, an epic large scale work by Jack B. Yeats, made a hammer price of €1.4 million at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin tonight. With fees and VAT this amounted to €1.74 million. It had been estimated at €1.5 million – €2 million, making it the most expensively estimated Irish artwork to come to sale in Ireland. Painted in 1950 this visionary work, painted late in his career, is considered to be one of his finest achievements. It ranks as one of the most expensive Yeats paintings ever sold. At the sale of the Ernie O’Malley Collection at Whyte’s in Dublin in 2019 Reverie and Evening in Spring, both by Yeats, made €1.4 and €1.3 million respectively. In 2001 The Whistle of a Jacket made £1.4 million (€1.65 million) at Christie’s in London and The Wild Ones by Yeats made £1.2 million (€1.42 million) at Sotheby’s in 1999. The winter selling season of Irish art has proved to be spectacular so far. Sales at Sotheby’s, de Veres and Bonhams last week achieved an aggregate of around €7 million. With 50 in room bidders, 500 on-line bidders and about 60 telephone bidders Whyte’s added another €2.5 million to that total with 85% of lots sold. There were new world records for Grace Henry and Graham Knuttel. With big sales at Morgan O’Driscoll on November 30 and at James Adam in Dublin on December 8 in the offing the winter selling season for Irish art is set to surpass €10 million easily. Irish women artists fared particularly well at Whyte’s. The Fortune Teller by Grace Henry made €37,000 at hammer over a top estimate of €7,000; A Cove in Lake Garda by Letitia Hamilton made €17,000 over a top estimate of €12,000 and The Stringagh (Co. Meath) by Nano Reid made €12,000 over a top estimate of €8,000.
WALTER FREDERICK OSBORNE (1859-1903) – The Hurdy-Gurdy Player. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
THIS c1887 work by Walter Osborne is lot 25 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current sale of Important Irish Art which runs to the evening of November 30. It is possible that this work was painted in Newbury, Berkshire as Orpen spent much of the 1880’s dividing his time between Ireland and England. In 1887 he was in Berkshire and Hampshire. It is estimated at 40,000-60,000.
