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John Behan – Famine Ship UPDATE: THIS MADE 11,500 AT HAMMER
A unique bronze Famine Ship by John Behan is among the lots at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current Irish art online auction which runs until next Monday evening (July 20). The estimate is €10,000-€15,000. Among the leading lots in this auction is art by Donald Teskey, Liam O’Neill, John Shinnors, Mainie Jellett, Markey Robinson and Graham Knuttel. There are 254 lots on offer and the catalogue is online.
Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948, the top lot at auction so far made $181.2 million at Christie’s New York in May.
The resurgence in the art market continued in the first half of 2026. Christie’s reported first half revenues of $4.6 billion. Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A 1948 made $181.2 million at Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse in May and is the top lot sold at auction in the first half of 2026.
It has also been a record half year at Sotheby’s, which reported consolidated sales of $4.4 billion, a 58% increase over the first half of 2025. Auction sales at Sotheby’s reached an all time high of $3.4 billion with bidding from 119 countries across 170 auctions.
Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s chairman, Europe, selling Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection in London.
Mainie Jellett (1897-1944) – Study for Fra Angelico/Announciation UPDATE: THIS MADE 14,000 AT HAMMER
This gouache and watercolour on card by Mainie Jellett is lot 18 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish art online auction which runs until Monday, July 20. Study for Fra Angelico/Announciation is signed and dated 1927. It was once in the collection of artist Genevieve de Cissey. The estimate is €5,000-€7,000. The work was exhibited in the acclaimed exhibition The Art of Friendship: Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2025.
The auction offers 254 lots of mostly Irish art.
Spring by William Crozier. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £10,880 including premium.
A collection of artworks by William Crozier will lead Bonhams Modern British and Irish art sale at Knightsbridge in London at noon on July 15. The leading lot is a classical Crozier work entitled Spring, an oil on canvas painted in 1998. The estimate is £10,000-£15,000 (€12,000-€18,000). The sale offers five from a group of six oils by Crozier commissioned by corporate collection in the UK, along with art by Nicholas Hely Hutchinson, Augustus John, Gwen John, Sir William Orpen, Micheal MacLiammoir and Anne Magill.
UPDATE: The most expensive of the Croziers sold was The Plant Room which made £15,360, The Entrance made £10,240, New Field made £8,320 and Meon Valley made £5,120. All prices quoted include premium. A watercolour pen and ink drawing by Michael MacLiammoir made £2,816 over a top estimate of £1,700.
A silkscreen print by John Ffrench (1928-2010) at Adams. UPDATE: THIS MADE 460 AT HAMMER
The timed online picture sale at Adam’s which ends from 11 am on July 14 offers a highly affordable selection of everything from pencil drawings by Mainie Jellett and prints by Anne Madden and Alice Maher to mixed media and charcoal works by Barrie Cooke and a lithograph by Tony O’Malley. The sale kicks off with a selection from Swedish born ceramicist, sculptor, graphic artist and designer Marianne Agren McElroy (1926-2006), an original creative voice in the Ireland of the 1950’s, ’60’s and ’70’s. Auction estimates range from €50 to €5,000. The silkscreen print by John Ffrench illustrated here has an estimate of €200-€400. Many lots are offered without a reserve.
LIAM O’NEILL – TURNING THE SOD UPDATE: THIS MADE €23,000 AT HAMMER
This oil on canvas by Liam O’Neill is at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online sale of Irish art which runs until July 20. Turning the Sod is estimated at €10,000-€15,000. The auction offers 255 lots including work by Donald Teskey, John Behan, Dorothy Cross, William Crozier, George Campbell, Tim Goulding, Martin Finnin, Kaws, Louis le Brocquy, Arthur Maderson, Charles Tyrrell and John Shinnors. The catalogue is online.
An Italian 1970’s mobile cocktail trolley. UPDATE: THIS MADE 360 AT HAMMER
f you are dreaming of outdoor summer drinks in warming up Ireland then a striking mobile cocktail trolley on casters might fill the bill. The selection of vintage mid century modernist furniture at the online art and design auction at de Veres until July 15 includes a retro Italian 1970’s mobile cocktail bar which with little effort could be wheeled to a patio in the heat. The estimate is just €400-€600.
A 1960’s rosewood Italian sideboard with an estimate of €800-€1,200, a pair of Magis Bombo aluminium bar stools (€400-€600), a pair of French space age floor lamps (€400-€600), a burr walnut dining table attributed to Willy Rizzo (€600-€900) and a circular table by Arne Jacobsen (€200-€300) all feature at de Veres. There is no in person viewing thugh lots can be viewed by appointment. The auction of 242 lots features a large selection of artworks and the catalogue is online.
A 1960’s rosewood Italian sideboard. UPDATE: THIS MADE 650 AT HAMMER
Oliver Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, conducting the sale of the Lewis collection.
Cool art generated real heat in the midst of a scorching London heatwave. All sorts of records were broken at Sotheby’s night to remember sales of the Lewis Collection and Modern and Contemporary art.
Four auctions realised £420,488,006 (€487,177,483), the highest total for any season of sales ever staged in Europe.
Sotheby’s sales were led by Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection where 25 paintings made £296 million (€342.95 million). Modigliani’s Seated Nude with Necklace sold for £48.2 million (€55.84 million) and led the nine works which sold for over £10 million (€11.59 million). Among them was art by Picasso, Klimt, Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.
Amedeo Modigliani – Nu assis au collier sold for £48.2 million (€55.84 million).
Competitive and deliberate bidding from around the world lasted for nearly two hours. This was the most valuable single owner sale in London’s auction history. Bidders came from 45 countries. Asian collectors accounted for over one third of the value of the sale.
The collection was assembled over more than two decades by 89 year old former Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis, noted for his significant impact on the art market through his extensive collection and strategic transactions, and his daughter Vivienne. The Lewis collecting philosophy is centred on assembling museum quality masterpieces. Lewis sold his stake in Christie’s, where he was the largest single shareholder, to Francois Pinault in 1998 after a share price surge. Committed to the avant-garde painters of today the Lewis family intend to continue their collecting journey into the future.
Claude Monet – Nymphéas sold for £40.8 million (€47.27 million).
Fuelled by stellar works by Monet, Rothko, Hockney and Kandinsky the Modern and Contemporary auction which followed the Lewis auction brought in another £97 million (€112.38 million). Bidding was again deliberate as opposed to speculative and 40 lots took two hours to sell. The top lot was Monet’s Nymphéas (water-lilies) which made £40.8 million (€47.27 million) to become the most valuable Impressionist work sold at auction in Europe in over a decade.
The combined total of £393.4 million (€455.79) for the two sales set a new single night auction record for Europe. Next day the Modern day auction including art from the Lewis collection totalled £17.7 million (€20.51 million) and the Contemporary day auction added another £9.3 million (€10.77 million).
Gustav Klimt – Portrait of Gertrud Loew sold for £36.1 million (€41.83 million)
The extraordinary Lewis collection traced a line from Viennese portraiture to the painters from the School of London with modern figurative painting at its core. The overall total of 47 works sold from the collection came to £306.6 million (€355.23 million). Together with the £35.8 million (€41.48. million) for the four School of London works sold at Sotheby’s in March led by Francis Bacon’s 1972 self portrait the combined total for the Lewis collection sold at Sotheby’s this year is £342.4 million (€396.7 million).
These sales continued an emerging trend where growth in the global art market is concentrated at the top. Single owner collections of museum quality works continue to be the market driver.
Arrangements 5 is the title of this 2026 oil on linen by Orla Whelan whose exhibition entitled Sulphur is at the Lavit Gallery in Cork until July 11. The artist’s research in collaboration with The Fold art and geology group – whose members explore geology as a source of inspiration for creative practice – focused on specimens of elemental sulphur from the rock collection at University College Cork. Drawn to the intense colour her interest deepened to include the invisible embedded crystalline structure and the historical role of sulphur in alchemy, industry and astronomy.
