L.S. Lowry’s only known painting of an auction room is to make its debut at Sotheby’s in London on November 23. The Auction is estimated at £1.2-£1.8 million. The bustling scene characteristic of the artist is populated by familiar characters, and even a dog on a lead. The Auction transports the viewer into the centre of the action, with the auctioneer on the rostrum poised to bring the gavel down. As early as the 1920s, Lowry touched on the subject of auctions with a drawing titled Selling Up the Old Antiques Shop. Another painting, Jackson’s Auction and Saleroom from 1952, depicts the exterior of the auction house in Manchester, with furniture amassed outside. In The Auction, this longstanding interest comes to its apex, and the viewer is shown the full glory of a sale in action for the first and only time
Executed on a large-scale in 1958, the work has never been offered at auction, and was acquired by the present owners over two decades ago. It was exhibited at Lowry’s landmark retrospective at the Royal Academy in 1976 and was last shown at AMNUA in Nanjing in China in 2014. It will be a highlight at the Modern British Art auction.
L.S. LOWRY’S ‘THE AUCTION’ UPDATE: THIS MADE £2,556,000
The gracious neo-classical mansion that is Townley Hall near Drogheda offers a fitting backdrop this weekend for viewing the annual James Adam country house collections sale. Irish Georgian furniture is a strong point of this auction along with classical Irish art, silver and collectibles like a 19th century cold painted model of a tiger by Bergman of Vienna. Fine English furniture including a pair of giltwood console tables in the manner of William Kent will also feature strongly in this sale.Ahead of a busy upcoming week of auctions there is viewing at Townley today and tomorrow. If you can’t make it to Townley Hall the catalogue is online. Adams sale is online from Dublin on Monday and Tuesday.
JOHN FERNELEY SNR (1782-1860) An Egyptian Pony, ‘Whisperer’ with Two Irish Terriers and a Goat by a Stream in an Irish Landscape at Adams. UPDATE: THIS MADE 38,000 AT HAMMER
The sale of Irish art and design at de Veres on October 20 – highlighted by an iconic egg chair by Arne Jacobsen from 1958 – caters to a different taste. No matter. The eclectic style now in vogue allows much mixing and matching in any interior. Classical pieces from different eras sit comfortably side by side in many stylish contemporary homes. At de Veres there are chairs by Jacobsen, Mies van der Rohe, le Corbusier and the Norwegian Sigurd Ressell and a gilt metal table identical to one at Chanel’s apartment at 31 Rue Cambon. There are some highly collectible art pieces headed by Donald Teskey’s Cork Landscape (€20,000-€30,000) with work by Louis le Brocquy, Sean McSweeney, Martin Gales and 30 works from the studio of Reginald Grey, a portrait artist who was best man at Brendan Behan’s wedding.
Cork landscape by Donald Teskey at de Veres. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 20,500 AT HAMMER
Whyte’s will encourage new entrants to the art market as well as existing collectors with a timed online autumn art auction of 291 lots which runs to October 18. There are artworks with estimates of from €80 to €5,000. Stalwarts like Louis le Brocquy, Norah McGuinness, Norman McCaig, Gretta O’Brien, Liam Treacy, Arthur Maderson, Markey Robinson, Robert Ballagh, Damien Hirst, Albert Irvin, Hughie O’Donoghue, Donald Teskey, Anita Shelbourne, John Kingerlee, Brian Maguire, Michael Cullen, Camille Souter and many more celebrated artists are all represented.
Boat to Inishbofin by Norman McCaig (1929-2001). UPDATE: THIS MADE 750 AT HAMMER
This 19th century French boulle desk comes up as lot 728 on day two of Adams Country House Collections sale on October 18 and 19. The auction is open for viewing at Townley Hall near Drogheda today, tomorrow and on Sunday. The online is at St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. This is a showcase of some of the finest pieces of Irish Georgian furniture and important Irish Old Master paintings consigned from many fine old country houses, many of the lots never having been on the auction market before. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,800 AT HAMMER
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for October 9 and October 5, 2021)
Bansy”s shredded painting Love is in the Bin has sold for a record £18.5 million at Sotheby’s in London. Nine bidders in the room, on the telephone and online chased the work for ten minutes in a bidding battle. It was sold three years to the month since the work, formerly Girl with Balloon, shredded at New Bond Street in an unexpected piece of performance art and set a record for the artist at the time of £1 million.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for September 3, 2021 and October 11, 2018)
JOHN SHINNORS (B.1950) – Edward Delaney Sculpture, Road to Carraroe (2005). UPDATE: THIS MADE 6,600 AT HAMMER
This oil on canvas by John Shinnors is lot 25 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online art sale on Tuesday October 25. It is estimated at 5,000-7,000. The sale goes on view at Morgan O’Driscoll’s offices in Skibbereen, Co. Cork from October 15-17. This will be followed by Dublin viewings at the RDS from October 22-25.
Banksy’s Sunflowers from Petrol Station from the collection of the British designer Sir Paul Smith will highlight Christie’s 21st Century Art evening sale in New York on November 9. It is estimated at $12,000,000- $18,000,000. It is part of a limited group of Banksy works that belong in the realm of fine art objects as opposed to the street art editions for which he is best known. In this example, the artist presents a painterly and conceptual defacement of the Van Gogh masterpiece, Sunflowers. As well as riffing on the comedy of wilted petrol station flowers – a far cry from Van Gogh’s magnificent blooms – the title implicates the pollution of both nature and culture at the hands of big corporations.
Big Bang Red, a limited edition screenprint of The Rolling Stones by Ronnie Wood, comes up at Hegarty’s art auction in Bandon on October 17. It is from the collection of his former wife Jo Wood and is estimated at 3,300-5,500. Ronnie Wood studied at Ealing College of Art and is a prolific painter.
Irish George II secretaire inlaid with filigree marque. UPDATE: THIS MADE 18,000 AT HAMMER
Serious collectors of fine Irish Georgian furniture will find much of interest at Adams annual Country House Collections on October 18 and 19. Viewing for this annual auction, which this year offers a particularly good selection of 18th century Irish furniture alongside fine examples of classical Irish art and silver, gets underway at Townley Hall near Drogheda next Friday. Among various highly covetable rarities is a c1730/40 George II Irish secretaire cabinet with a scrolled broken pediment inlaid with filigree marquetry and Comedia dell’Arte figures. Adams estimate it at €20,000-€30,000. There is a similar example in Irish Furniture by The Knight of Glin and James Peill. Another mid Georgian Irish secretaire bookcase with a more traditional straight front design, at one stage in the home of Lord Monteagle at Mount Trenchard House near Foynes, is estimated at €30,000-€40,000.An Irish George II mahogany side table in the manner of Richard Cranfield, was in the collection of Lord Leverhulme of Sunlight Soap fame before being sold in New York in 1926. It has an unusual design of corner truss legs and Greek key frieze and is estimated at €20,000-€30,000. A stunning Irish mahogany side table with an apron carved with scrolls and acanthus leaves and a centre scallop shell is estimated at €20,000-€30,000. So is a compartmental George III pier mirror notable for the blue and clear glass bead decoration so associated with Irish mirrors.There is a wonderful dining table measuring over five metres long on three centre quadropod supports. It is estimated at €30,000-€40,000. A set of 18 Regency dining chairs come with an estimate of €20,000-€30,000. Collectible pieces of Irish furniture such as a Killarney work centre table (€2,000-€3,000) are on offer at less stratospheric prices and not everything in the sale is Irish.A remarkable nine piece suite of Anglo-Indian gilt wood furniture, latterly at Prehen House in Derry, was included in the Castletown House, Co. Kildare inventory of 1893 as “Bombay” furniture. It is estimated at €20,000-€30,000. An example of fine English cabinet making is a George III knee hole desk after a design by Thomas Chippendale.Among the silverware is a pair of Dublin 1765 tureens by R. Holmes and a rare Irish George I bullet shaped teapot made in Cork in 1725 by William Clarke. There is a selection of gold boxes from the private collection of an Italian noblewoman. The sale contains two marble busts by the Irish sculptor Christopher Moore, one of the 3rd Duke of Leinster, one of William, 1st Baron Plunkett, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Both date to 1843.Garret Morphy (c1650-1716) is regarded as the first Irish born artist of stature. His 1696 portrait of Anne Boyle, 2nd Lady Mountjoy in a landscape holding a dove accompanied by Cupid, is estimated at €30,000-€40,000. There are two landscapes by James B. McCoy (c1750-1780), whose work is rare, and a double portrait by James Latham (1696-1747) considered the leading portrait painter in Dublin in the first half of the 18th century. A comparable example of this portrait of An Architect and his Son can be found in a family group at Fota.Adams advise that this spectacular sale ought to viewed in person and it can be seen in the elegant and neo-classical surroundings of Townley Hall for three days from next Friday. The live and online auction takes place at Adams St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, saleroom on October 18 and 19.
Garret Morphy (c1650-1716) – Portrait of Anne Boyle, 2nd Lady Mountjoy. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Sandro Botticelli – The Man of Sorrows UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $45.5 MILLION
One of the last great Botticelli masterpieces in private hands will come up at Sotheby’s in New York next January during Masters Week. The Man of Sorrows – which portrays the resurrected Christ – is a late work produced at a time when the artist had come under the influence of fanatical Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola. It has an estimate of in excess of $40 million. It comes to market following the record-breaking sale of Botticelli’s Young Man Holding a Roundel at Sotheby’s last January. It made $92.2 million.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 28, 2021)
