Mucha portrait with Sarah Bernhardt at Adams. UPDATE: THIS MADE 750 AT HAMMER
Memo to the slow food movement. Nothing complements fine dining so much as silver and crystal. The At Home sale by Adam’s in Dublin and R.J. Keighery’s biggest ever single day auction in Waterford offers bags of both. Both auctions are on Tuesday February 24. Pride of place at Adams is a 24 place Sheffield silver thread pattern canteen from around 1947. It weighs over 446 try ounces in total, excluding the stainless steel blades and sits in its own walnut lowboy chest on cabriole legs. The estimate is €10,000-€15,000.
There is an extensive selection of 150 lots of silver at Adam’s, over half from a single Irish vendor, along with antique furniture, mirrors, porcelain and art. A lithograph poster by Alphonse Mucha with Sarah Bernhardt playing Photina in La Samaritaine by Edmond Rostand is among a number of collectible in a sale with more than 500 lots.
At Keigherys a Waterford Crystal Dublin Castle chandelier (€2,500-€3,500) and an Arts and Crafts silver porringer (€1,200-€1,800) are among the leading lots. More than 750 lots will come under the hammer in an auction that offers jewellery, watches, period furniture, Oriental rugs, mirrors and two large pitch pine refectory tables. Both auctions are now on view and the catalogues are online.
An Arts and Crafts silver porringer with green glass liner at Keighery’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
SONJA LANDWEER (1933 – 2018) – BLISTERED OVOID (c2010). UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
This monochrome earthenware piece by Sonja Landweer is at Sheppards sale of Important Irish Art on the evening of February 24. Viewing for the 310 lots sale gets underway in Durrow today and the catalogue is online. The auction includes a curated selection of works from the studio of the late Barrie Cooke and Sonja Landweer. It is centred on the Co. Antrim collection of Gerry Cuddy featuring key figures in modern Irish painting. Bistered Ovoid is estimated at €3,000-€5,000.
Roderic O’Conor – Le Loing at Sundown c1902. UPDATE: THIS MADE €245,000 AT HAMMER
Le Loing at Sundown by Roderic O’Conor will lead Whyte’s sale of Irish and International art in Dublin on March 9. The museum worthy work is the catalogue cover lot for the sale. Valued at €150,000-€200,000 it is also the most expensively estimated lot of 129 in the auction. In the autumn of 1902 O’Conor revisited Montigny, a small town on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau where that he captured the mysterious half light with the sun sitting low on the horizon. O’Conor author Jonathan Benington describes how the works executed at this time were “…characterised by a highly painterly handling of the oil medium, from translucent stains to textured scumblings and thicker calligraphic strokes.”
Liam O’Neill (b.1954) – Turf Cutters. UPDATE: THIS MADE €16,000 AT HAMMER
Turf Cutters by Liam O’Neill is at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online Irish art auction which ends on February 23. Once a source of fuel for home heating and cooking that was widely used in Ireland turf cutting has been banned or restricted on specific bogs. It can no longer be sold commercially, though gifting or exchanging turf between neighbours is permitted. This oil on canvas, which dates to 1994, is estimated at €8,000-€10,000. The catalogue for the auction is online.
Wassily Kandinsky – Le rond rouge (The red circle) (1939). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £12,545,000
Wassily Kandinsky’s large scale canvas Le rond rouge (1939) is a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st century evening sale in London on March 5. It is considered to be one of the most striking works from the final phase of his careeer. Created while the artist was living in Paris with his wife Nina, Le rond rouge captures the vibrancy and dynamism of his mature abstract language at a moment of profound artistic renewal.
After leaving Germany in 1933 to escape the increasingly hostile political climate, Kandinsky settled in Paris, where he immersed himself in the fervent avant-garde art circles of the city. His Parisian years were also marked by a significant shift in style, as he developed a new visual vocabulary that pushed his work in unexpected directions. It remained in his collection until his death in 1944 and has had an extensive exhibition history. Most recently Le rond rougewas on long-term loan to The Courtauld Gallery in London for sixteen years, between 2002-2018. The estimate is £10,500,000-15,500,000.
Lucio Fontana – Teatrino 1964. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
No less than five seminal works by Lucio Fontana from a private German collection, along with pieces by Alberto Giacometti and Sam Francis, will lead the Contemporary evening sale at Sotheby’s in London on March 4. The seven works have a combined estimate of £15 million.
Sotheby’s describe it as the most complete survey of Fontana’s groundbreaking research to come to market in recent memory.
The breadth of Fontana’s experimentation during his most revolutionary years is exposed in work ranging from early punctures that questioned the confines of the picture plane to the dramatic cuts that transformed gesture into a three dimensional space. Most were acquired through the avant garde Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf, where the inaugural 1957 exhibition included the then unknown 29 year old Yves Klein. Fontana’s first solo exhibition here in 1960 was as influential as it was innovative. His language quickly resonated far beyond Europe, informing the work of artists like Klein, Anish Kapoor, Robert Irwin, Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. In their own way each extended the spatial and perceptual possibilities opened by Fontana.
Arabella Bishop, Ireland Director at Sotheby’s for many years, has set up as an independent art advisor. With an unrivalled set of experience bringing prime lots to the national and international market she offers extensive expertise across the complexities of the art market. The service is available through www.arabellabishop.com where help with negotiating the best terms and securing optimum deals for clients across all categories is readily available.
A photograph sent to Christie’s request an auction estimate portal by an unsuspecting owner resulted in a $27.2 million (€23.02 million) sale in New York last week. The previously unknown red chalk study for a foot of the Libyan Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel made nearly 20 times its low estimate and set a record for a Michelangelo drawing. It measures just five and a quarter inches in height. A black chalk study for a leg with bent knee is on the back. Christie’s specialist Giada Damen identified it as an original drawing by Michelangelo, done in preparation for the right foot of the monumental figure at the far east end of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The art brought multiple bidders in the room, on the phone and online to a 45 minute bidding battle at the sale of Old Master and British Drawings.
Henry Moore’s seminal work King and Queen will be a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st Century: London evening sale on March 5. It has been in the same British collection for the past 70 years. Conceived in 1952–53, the sculpture was first cast in an edition of four plus an artist’s cast. This is the only remaining example still in private hands; all other casts are held in major public collections, including the Moa Museum of Art, Atami; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp; and the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. Two subsequent casts were produced specifically for the Tate Collection (1957) and The Henry Moore Foundation (1985). The estimate is £10 million – £15 million.
Chess pieces created by Graham Knuttel. UPDATE: THE TABLE AND CHESS SET MADE €40,000
Affordable art and one expensive rarity feature at online sales ending at Adam’s and de Veres in Dublin next week. A collector wishing to enhance their holding or someone wanting to dip their toe into the market will find these sales a great place to uncover the unending joy and discovery of a journey into art. First get the eye in shape, then learn how to look. Who knows where it will lead?
The expensive rarity that is lot five at the timed online Graham Knuttel II sale at Adam’s which ends from 2 pm on February 10 is a limited edition chess table with a silver and bronze chess set from around 2003. One of an edition of 12 it was designed by artist Graham Knuttel (1954-2023) and furniture maker David Linley, first cousin of King Charles III. The square table with marquetry chess board top is by Linley, the black and white silver and bronze chess pieces by Knuttel. The estimate is €50,000-€80,000.
Everything else in this auction of 123 lots is more affordable. Estimates are from €300 up and most works are to be sold without reserve. There is a large selection of signed prints by the popular Dublin artist whose striking and distinctive art was collected by various celebrities and who designed stamps for An Post to commemorate the Beijing summer olympics of 2008.
His themes have become familiar and his colourful art features cats, fish, birds, sheep, chefs, portraits and sculpture.
The Sinking of the Titanic by Graham Knuttel UPDATE: THIS MADE €14,000 at hammer
The most expensively estimated painting is a relatively cheerful (under the adverse circumstances) work titled The Sinking of the Titanic with a deep blue sea, four calm characters in lifebuoy rings with bottles of some sort of hooch, circling sharks, a distant iceberg and the elevated stern of doomed ship. The estimate for this oil on canvas with disaster everywhere is €10,000-€15,000.
William Crozier, Elizabeth Brophy, Richard Croft, Michael Farrell, George Campbell, Brian Bourke, Hilda Van Stockum, Sean McSweeney and Barbara Warren are all featured at the timed online auction at de Veres which ends from 2 pm on February 11. Estimates range from €100 to €3,000.
It is an interesting selection with work by artists who might not be as well known as they deserve to be. Still Life, Red Teapot and Apples by Richard Croft (1935-2025), President of the Royal Ulster Academy from 1997-2000, is estimated at €600-€900. En Andeche et la Ruche from the Paris Press Series by Michael Farrell (1940-2000) is at €2,000-€3,000 the most expensively estimated work in the auction. It dates to 1977-78. Farrell represented Ireland at the Biennale de Paris in 1967 and there was a retrospective of his work at the Crawford in 2013-14.
The catalogue, which is online, will reward a slow trawl. Art which makes gazillions grabs headlines and can create the incorrect impression that the art market is the preserve of the rich. These two sales demonstrate that this is not the case. Get the eye in and good art can be acquired for little more than the cost of a night out in 2026.
Still Life, Red Teapot and Apples by Richard Croft at de Veres. UPDATE: THIS MADE 650 AT HAMMER
