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    THREE ONLINE AUCTIONS IN IRELAND TODAY

    Tuesday, April 14th, 2020

    Morgan O’Driscoll, Aidan Foley and Damien Matthews will all hold online auctions today. The biggest of the sales is the Irish and International Art auction by Morgan O’Driscoll, who has some big ticket items on offer including Celtic Cross in a west of Ireland landscape by Paul Henry (€150,000-250,000), Whik Wood by Ivon Hitchens (€60,000-90,000), Landscape with Figures by George Barret (€60,000-90,000), Altar by Damien Hirst (€17,500-25,000), Roxboro Road Bus Stop V by John Shinnors (€15,000-20,000), Spring Bogland, Ballinaboy by Kenneth Webb (€10,000-15,000); Abstract Composition by William Scott (€6,000-9,000) and three pieces by Jeff Koons, one of the most expensive living artists in the world. They are Balloon Rabbit (Red), Balloon Monkey (Blue) and Balloon Swan (Yellow). All date to 2017. They are all from numbered editions of 999 in porcelain painted with chrome and published by Bernaudaud, Limoges, France.

    Day two of Aidan Foley’s sale at Sixmilebridge today will include Persian rugs, art, antique furniture and collectibles. Matthews of Oldcastle,  Co. Meath will have an online sale with 390 lots of jewellery, gold, silver, watches and Oriental lots at 6.30 pm.  Estimates range from €20-20,000.

    Balloon Swan (Yellow) by Jeff Koons. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    ANDY WARHOL AT TATE MODERN

    Monday, April 13th, 2020

    TATE MODERN is closed. But here is a film of the Andy Warhol exhibition that would have been available to see there in more normal times. Enjoy.

    ROOM WITH A VIEW AT FASHION ILLUSTRATION GALLERY

    Monday, April 13th, 2020

    London’s Fashion Illustration Gallery is running an online auction entitled Room with a View until April 19. There are affordable drawings that Meagan Morrison has made during her travels to and from the most beautiful places on earth as @travelwritedraw, gouache on paper works by Jordi Labanda depicting the chicest of addresses from Marrakesh to Mulholland Drive that you would have to drag yourself away from after lockdown, line drawings of the London skyline by Will Broome and the garden path of Luke Edward Hall’s Gloucestershire home. Bidding closes in staggered lots from 4:15pm to 5.00pm on Sunday 19 April.

    Jordi Labanda Arlés, France 2020

    VIRTUAL VISIT TO MONET’S GARDEN AT GIVERNY

    Friday, April 10th, 2020

    Royal Academy curator Ann Dumas introduces Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny in Normandy for the Painting the Modern Garden, Monet to Matisse exhibition in London in 2016.

    AN IRELAND THAT IS OUT OF REACH AT AN ONLINE SALE THAT IS NOT

    Friday, April 10th, 2020

    This painting by Paul Henry which comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online art auction on April 14, is all about an Ireland that is out of reach to most of us over this lockdown Easter Weekend. The scene for the c1929 work titled Celtic Cross in a West of Ireland Landscape is imagined, the cross is not. It is based on the Cross of Muiredach at Monasterboice in Co. Louth. The catalogue is online, this work is estimated at €150,000-250,000.

    Paul Henry (1876-1958) Celtic Cross in a West of Ireland Landscape. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 105,000 AT HAMMER.

    ZURICH PORTRAIT PRIZE AT NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND

    Wednesday, April 8th, 2020

    The National Gallery of Ireland has announced that entries are now being accepted for the Zurich Portrait Prize and the Zurich Young Portrait Prize. Submissions are invited from across the island of Ireland, and from Irish artists living abroad. The Zurich Young Portrait Prize, now in its second year, is open to young people aged 18 and under and the closing date for entries is July 1.

    The winner will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and commissioned to create a work for the Collection, for which they will be awarded a further €5,000. Two additional awards of €1,500 will be given to highly commended works. Judges are artist Rita Duffy; Dr Philip Cottrell, lecturer and assistant professor at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD; Aoife Ruane, Director of Highlanes Gallery.

    There are four age categories in the Young Portrait Prize and an overall winner will be chosen from a shortlist of 20 works. Winners will receive a bespoke art box and a cash prize. Judges are Head of Education at The Hunt Museum Maria Cagney; artist Colin Davidson; and illustrator, author and comedian Aoife Dooley.

    Sean Rainbird, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, said, “In these extraordinary times, we hope to bring joy to those staying at home with art. Today we open the Zurich Portrait Prize and Zurich Young Portrait Prize, offering artists of all ages an opportunity to connect with their own creativity and with the Gallery. It’s wonderful to have the support of Zurich for the coming years: we are confident that culture will remain central to people’s lives, even in challenging times.”

    The Gallery is closed until April 19, but is finding ways for people to engage with their national collection during this time. Follow the Gallery’s TwitterInstagram and Facebook pages as it moves online including with creative activities for children and families to try at home. A ‘Picture of the Day’ is being shared, as well as weekly sessions on Mindfulness and Art. The Gallery can be explored from home, with a series of Virtual Tours – including the iconic Grand Gallery and Shaw Room.

    AFFORDABLE ART BY JEFF KOONS AT IRISH SALE

    Monday, April 6th, 2020

    Jeff Koons is one of the world’s most expensive living artists. His work deals with popular culture. Led by Rabbit which made $91.1 million in New York last May his balloon animals in stainless steel with mirror image surfaces have sold for vast sums. Three limited edition works by Koons feature at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online auction on April 14. The sale was originally scheduled to take place at the RDS in Dublin later this month, after viewings in London and New York, but was brought forward and moved online only.

    Among the 159 lots are Koons’ Balloon Rabbit (Red), Balloon Monkey (Blue) and Balloon Swan (Yellow). All date to 2017. They are all from numbered editions of 999 in porcelain painted with chrome and published by Bernaudaud, Limoges, France with signature, title and date on the underside. Each one is estimated at 15,000-20,000.

    JEFF KOONS (B.1955) Balloon Rabbit (Red) (2017). UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    DE VERES SEEK TO HELP THE CHARITY SECTOR

    Monday, April 6th, 2020

    The Dublin auctioneering firm de Veres, which postponed a planned Irish art sale and opened the catalogue to offers instead, plans to run a large charity auction in June. They are looking for donations of art and sculpture and anything of quality that could be sold at auction. Bidding will all take place online it will be assembled remotely. Private collectors, artists, galleries and corporate donors are the target. As a result of the lockdown many charities are facing a major shortfall. de Veres ran successful charity sales after the Omagh bombings, the tsunami tragedy and Haiti.

    Opening the catalogue of their proposed sale to offers resulted in a huge influx of enquiries and bids. The auction brought in more than 100,000. There were numerous bidders and vendors coujld decide whether or not to accept the final bid. Sixty five lots were sold.

    THE MADONNA IN PRAYER AT SOTHEBY’S

    Saturday, April 4th, 2020

    Among the works available for private sale at Sotheby’s right now is this one by Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato (1609-1685). The Madonna in Prayer seems an appropriate offering for the time the whole world is now going through. Despite being an accomplished portraitist, Sassoferrato specialized in easel paintings of a devotional nature, usually representing the Madonna alone or with the Christ Child. He was primarily employed by his patrons to provide images for personal spiritual contemplation, and the Counter Reformation’s increased emphasis on veneration of the Virgin and the Marian cult meant Sassoferrato’s intense and moving depictions of the Madonna were much in demand.  The asking price for this work is £275,000.

    DEATH OF JANET MULLARNEY

    Friday, April 3rd, 2020

    Taylor Galleries announced the death today of long-term gallery artist Janet Mullarney RHA. She died at her home in Italy early this morning following a long illness. Acclaimed as one of the foremost sculptors of her generation, Janet was born in Dublin in 1952 and left for Italy as a young woman, studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti (1970-74) and Scuola Professionale di Intaglio (1982-83) in Florence. She divided her time between Ireland and rural Tuscany for the rest of her life.

    Taylor in a statement said Mullarney’s practice was defined by a material bravura that saw her combine bronze, foam, glass, rubber, papier maché, textiles, terracotta, plaster, wax, to form idiosyncratic figurative works that interrogate the human condition. Simultaneously playful, purposeful, experimental and elusive, her sculptures and their meanings, like Janet herself, defy easy categorisation. Instead, they represent a singular artistic vision, the distillation of a life’s work.

    Janet Mullarney exhibited her work extensively in Ireland and abroad, and she has been represented by Taylor Galleries since the 1990s. A member of Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy, in addition to numerous grants and funding awards she received a Pollock Krasner Award (1998), the Irish-American Institute’s O’Malley Art Award (2005), RHA Sculpture Award (2008) and RUA Perpetual Sculpture Award (2009). A major exhibition of new work, My Mind’s i, travelled to several Irish venues in 2015-16, and a retrospective survey show, Then and Now: Janet Mullarney, was presented at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2019. A catalogue raisonné of her work edited by Mary Ryder and Catherine Marshall was published by Irish Academic Press last year.

    Janet Mullarney RHA (1952-2020)