It seems extraordinary but the Hals-Rembrandt exhibition which opens at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem in Holland on November 6 is the first to be devoted entirely to two of the finest masters of the Dutch Golden Age. A total of 19 paintings will be displayed in an intimate setting designed to encourage visitors to look closely and see more. Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn are globally admired for a distinctive, lifelike approach with attention not just on wealthy clients but on children, merry drinkers, actors, musicians and cavaliers. Each 17th century artist is renowned for lifelike portraits and character studies in a loose painting style. The show continues until next February 28. Pictured here is Laughing Boy with flute by Frans Hals, an oil on panel loaned from the State Museum in Schwerin.
Francis Bacon – Portrait of George Dyer staring. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Lithographs by Francis Bacon, a pencil drawing by Michael Quane, works on paper by William Crozier and a large scale landscape photograph by Australian Murray Fredericks feature among 112 works on offer at the art online sale by Lismore based Lot 100. The auction runs until the evening of November 3.
Francis Bacon’s studies and portraits are iconic for their abstracted faces and claustrophobic settings – an expression perhaps his own personal demons. The two ‘Portrait of George Dyer’ lithographs in this sale were issued by the Galerie Maeght in Paris following Bacon’s exhibition there in 1966. The estimate is €800-€1,000 each.
Uccello by Louis le Brocquy UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Uccello, a beautifully simple elegantly sophisticated Aubusson tapestry by Louis le Brocquy heads the Design at the RHA auction by de Veres in Dublin next Tuesday (November 3). Commissioned in 1999 for the offices of A+L Goodbody by the architect Ronnie Tallon this large work of 13 square metres offers a splendid display of jewel like oranges in a cloud of greenery against a deep blue sky. This showstopper estimated at €100,000-€150,000.
A Murano glass ovoid table lamp. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,400 AT HAMMER
The corporate law firm offices have undergone a redevelopment. The A+L Goodbody collection forms part of a very strong art section in this auction. A large part of the collection has been retained. Around 20 works of art have come to market. The selection of contemporary art on offer includes work by William Scott, Pat Scott, Sir Terry Frost, Donald Teskey, Michael Warren, Bridget Reilly, Hughie O’Donoghue, Barrie Cooke, Stephen McKenna, John Shinnors and others.
An Eames lounger, a Saarinen table and a Transaat chair by Eileen Grey are among the leading furniture highlights in this annual sale now on view at the RHA Gallery in Dublin.
Some of the most iconic designs of the 20th century can be seen. Work by renowned and innovative creators like Philippe Starck, Mies van der Rohe, Ico Parisi, Finn Juhl and Arne Vodder is on show here. There are Danish, Italian and French pieces from the 1960’s and ’70’s and design labels like Roche Bobois and Fritz Hansen.
The 1970’s R2D2 Droid Bar. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,400 AT HAMMER
The catalogue cover lot is laden with retro appeal and looks like a Star Wars Droid. Estimated at €1,000-€2,000 the R2D2 Bar dates to the 1970’s and is a cellarette, though not one that many lovers of antique furniture might recognise. It was designed in the days when domestic robots on earth seemed too futuristic even to contemplate. At least in those more innocent times there was no need to worry about the threat of a hostile AI force attacking the entire globe or turning off all country’s freezers,
Offering many pieces that cannot be easily sourced and one off pieces that can transform a space this is a sale worth a serious look. With over 314 lots on offer it is on view at the RHA until next Tuesday. Timed online bidding is underway.
A Fabergé varicolour gold, rock crystal, mother of pearl and enamel sedan chair at Sotheby’s.
Meantime the pièce de resistance at Sotheby’s sale from the vaults of A La Vieille Russie in New York in December is rare Fabergé varicolor gold, rock crystal, mother of pearl and guilloché enamel model sedan chair. Estimated at more than $1 million (€890,000) it is one of only six known miniature sedan chairs by Fabergé. More than 300 museum quality works from the vaults with a combined estimate of more than $15 million (€13.39 million) will be offered.
Founded in Kiev in 1851 the family owned New York institution has shaped generations of collectors and major museum collections. In the future there will be greater emphasis on antique and period jewellery.
Mainie Jellett – Cactus in Bloom made 2,000 at hammer
Cactus in Bloom by Mainie Jellett has just sold for a hammer price of 2,000 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s off the wall online auction of Irish art. The sale is ongoing. Autumn Evening, the upper pool, Glenshane by Arthur Maderson made 7,000 at hammer and Iron Fist by Cian McLoughlin made 1,400. Clown, a gouache on card by Markey Robinson made 3,000.
Estimated at $60-$80 million Litzlbergkeller, which offers of view of Lake Attersee in the Austrian countryside, will lead Christie’s 20th century evening sale in New York on November 17. The estimate might be conservative. Klimt’s Birch Forest (1903) sold for $104.5 million at Christie’s in 2022. The auction will take place just days after the highly anticipated reopening of the Neue Galerie. In the same private collection for nearly three decades, Litzlbergkeller previously set a world record for Klimt when last at auction in May 1997 in the estate sale of Neue Galerie co-founder Serge Sabarasky.
From 1900 through the end of his life in 1918, Klimt spent most of his summers in the Austrian countryside on the shores of Lake Attersee. The present work depicts a scenic view on the lake, centered around the Litzlberg Cellar—a brewery and inn on the north shore where Klimt had formerly stayed during his first several summers in the area from 1900-1907. Painted a decade later, after the artist had relocated to accommodations in a cottage on the lake’s southern shore, the scene reflects on the past.
Adam de Coster (1586-1643) – A young boy reading a music score by candlelight
Just eight days after Adam’s sold an oil on canvas by Adam de Coster (1586-1643) for a hammer price of €60,000 Sotheby’s in Paris sold a different work by same artist for €38,400. At Adams the top lot of the Country House Collections sale at Townley Hall was Concert (Three Figures) by de Coster, regarded as one of the most refined painters of the Flemish Baroque.
In Paris Sotheby’s offered A young boy reading a music score by candlelight by de Coster from the Schlumberger collection with an estimate of €20,000-€30,000. It sold for €38,400. Adam’s had estimated their de Coster at €40,000-€60,000. The subject matters were quite similar but there are three figures in the Irish offering and only one in the French.
Sotheby’s noted that comparable examples include the Man Singing by Candlelight in the National Gallery of Ireland and the Young Woman Holding a Distaff before a lit Candlelight, recently sold at Sotheby’s, New York.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for October 14, 2026).
František Kupka – Espace non-descriptif sold for €9 million.
Sales of the Schlumberger collection and the Modern and Surrealist art auctions in Paris this week brought in the highest ever total for a series of marquee auctions in the city at Sotheby’s. The auctions achieved €137.7 million. The top lot was František Kupka’s Espace non-descriptif which established a new auction record for the artist in France. This was the second highest price ever achieved for a work by Kupka at auction
Seven artists set new benchmarks for the market: František Kupka, Richard Prince, Mark Grotjahn, Gabriel Orozco, Wolfgang Tillmans, Victor Brauner and Vilhelm Hammershøi. “To have sold €137 million worth of art in just under 80 lots – resulting in our highest ever total for a series of marquee auctions at Sotheby’s in Paris – feels like quite an achievement for us, for the city, and the market in general.” Aurélie Vandevoorde, vice-president of Sotheby’s France remarked.
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.
Altarbilder by Hilma af Klint at the National Gallery.
The Bather, an oil on canvas by William Mulready (1786-1863) formerly in the Evelyn Waugh collection, is part of an exhibition and sale of 18th to 21st century Irish paintings and sculpture at the Gorry Gallery in Dublin until October 30. Born in Ennis, Co. Clare Muldready studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London where the Irish genre painter was celebrated for his drawing of the nude figure. In 1853 a selection of his drawings was exhibited at Gore House in a room of their own. Queen Victoria viewed them there against advice and asked to buy one. The Toy Seller, the last painting he showed at the Royal Academy, is now at the National Gallery of Ireland. There are four works by Mulready at this exhibition of 56 paintings.
Kandinsky’s Betonte Ecken is expected to set a new auction record for the artist at Christie’s in New York on November 17. Estimated at $60-$80 million it follows fast on the heels of the London evening sales last week where his 1907 work Das bunte Leben made £31,560,000 ($42 million) and was the top lot of the October season. In Betonte Ecken, painted in Weimar in December 1922-January 1923, the Russian artist attempts to map melody, rhythm and harmony through colour, line and geometry. It was painted at a key moment in the emergence of abstract art.
Monumental in scale and ambition this is a declaration of Kandinsky’s groundbreaking formal language. Formerly in the Guggenheim Museum collection and fresh off the walls of the 2025 Museum Barberini Kandinsky exhibition in Potsdam and the April-August 2026 Calder exhibition in Paris it comes to market from a European collection. The record for a Kandinsky is held by Murnau mit Kirche II (1910) which sold for £37.2 million at Sotheby’s in London in 2023.
(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for October 7, 2026 and March 2, 2023)
