This Qianlong Famille Rose ‘Boy and Chicken’ cup made a hammer price of €115,000 at Adam’s sale of Fine Asian Art in Dublin today. It had been estimated at €20,000-€30,000. Cups of this type derive from earlier Chenghua doucai prototypes, particularly chicken-decorated examples. All bear the mark Da Qing Qianlong Fanggu ‘made in imitation of antiquity’ reflecting the Qianlong emperor’s strong interest in archaism. The inscription praises earlier artistic traditions, especially Ming dynasty chicken cups.
A possibly imperial Le Shan Tang seal made €55,000 at hammer, a pair of Imperial copper enamel painted dragon and phoenix covered ewers made €50,000, an Imperial white jade lança bowl made €34,000 and a celadon jade carving of a horse of sea made €15,000.
All the drama and visual intensity of the work of William Blake (1757-1827) is captured in this work titled The Grave: The soul hovering over the body reluctantly parting with life. The pencil, ink and watercolour at Christie’s Old Masters evening sale in London on June 30 with an estimate of £500,000-£800,000 (€579,200-€926,720) serves as a reminder that there is still time the catch the Blake exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland. William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy, with a selection of some his most iconic works along with paintings and drawings by his contemporaries, is a loan exhibition from Tate. It is at the National Gallery until July 19. Blake’s influence on artists, musicians and writers continues to resonate strongly to this day.
The Gaiety Theatre archive. UPDATE: THIS MADE 15,000 AT HAMMER
From the rapid construction of the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 1871 to an incredibly rare 1823 second edition of Frankenstein, the Carton House music collection to the earliest printed house contents sale catalogue in Ireland, Fonsie Mealy’s rare book and collections sale in Castlecomer next week covers a multitude.
The catalogue includes the fascinating fact that the much loved Gaiety Theatre – which opened in 1871 and continues merrily to this day – was reputedly built in just 28 weeks from start to finish. Contrast that with a certain Events Centre in Cork where the first sod was turned ten and a half years ago and sod all has happened since. An archive of around 200 vellum patents and legal documents relating to The Gaiety – Sarah Bernhardt, Eileen Terry, Pavarotti, Maureen Potter, Jimmy O’Dea and the D’Oyly Carte Company have all performed here – is estimated at €7,000-€9,000.
A letter signed by Michael Collins as Minister for Finance. UPDATE: THIS MADE 2,500 AT HAMMER
The Carton House collection of 18th and 19th century music, purchased at the 1949 dispersal sale, is among the largest collections of music from an Irish stately home to come to market. Music by Handel, Beethoven and Haydn is included among 45 volumes in original calf bindings, many signed by the Duke of Leinster (€5,000-€7,000).
The newly discovered catalogue by Baillie Auctioneer for the sale of the goods of the late Edward Wingfield at Powerscourt and his house in Dublin (€3,000-€5,000) announces (confusingly) that it will begin .. “on Tuesday the 25th day of February 1728-29 and to continue till all are sold”. It lists contents from 45 rooms with lots ranging from 24 fine walnut chairs with Barbary leather seats, a Turkey carpet, five pairs of yellow Indian damask curtains to “One young black Stone Horse fit for an officer” and a stage coach with a new seat cloth never used since it was re-lined.
A 1951-52 photograph of Brendan Behan and Micheal MacLiammoir signed by Daniel Farson. UPDATE: THIS MADE 700 AT HAMMER
Irish and international literature is headed by a rare 1823 edition of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, a second (1813) edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and a signed limited edition printing of Bog Poems by Seamus Heaney. A sonnet handwritten by William Wordsworth with provenance to the de Veres of Curragh Chase and the O’Briens of Dromoland Castle is estimated at €1,500-€2,000. A 1951-52 photograph of Brendan Behan and Michael MacLiammoir by Daniel Farson (€700-€900) and a first (1957) edition of From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming (€350-€420) feature among the fascinating lots.
The most expensively estimated of these is the Moore St. flag of Truce, a white linen handkerchief used by Volunteers to surrender during the East Rising (€10,000-€15,000). There is a rare 1918 printing of The Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a 1916 Volunteers green tunic and a 1920 letter signed by Michael Collins as Minister for Finance.
Sporting memorabilia includes a programme for an early soccer international between Ireland and England at Goodison Park, Liverpool in 1907 and a 1914 All Ireland football final programme between Kerry and Wexford which ended in a draw.
The three day sale takes place next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday June 23, 24 and 25. It is on view in Castlecomer on the afternoon of June 21 and from 10 am to 5 pm on June 22. The catalogue is online.
Ist Edition From Russia with Love UPDATE: THIS MADE 400 AT HAMMER
The Islands by Vivien John (1915-1994) UPDATE: THIS MADE €120 AT HAMMER
Aidan Foley’s online evening auctions on June 22 and 23, now on view in Doneraile, offer 122 lots of paintings and prints headed by a Translucent Study by Francis Tansey and a pencil sketch of Lily Yeats by John Butler Yeats. There is a Regency style three pillar dining table, a Victorian boot and stick stand, a Victorian oak consul table, an Edwardian Sutherland table and a pair of gilt framed armchairs among a selection of 82 lots of furniture. A selection of pub memorabilia, garden furniture, porcelain and crystal and a wide variety of collectibles is on offer.
Claude Monet – Nymphéas. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £40,760,000
Nymphéas (1907) by Monet at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction in London on June 24 carries the highest estimate ever placed on a work by the artist at auction in Europe. Painted in 1907 the ethereal and luminous view of Monet’s famed water lily pond at Giverny is estimated at £30-£40 million. Together with the Lewis Collection and other major works on the same evening the painting arrives at a defining moment for the London art market, bringing an exceptional concentration of museum-quality works to auction.
ART DECO WALNUT AND CHROME CONSOLE TABLE. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,200
This Art Deco console table of inverted triangular form is lot 89 at Mullen’s timed online auction which runs at Laurel Park, Bray, Co. Wicklow until the evening of June 21. The estimate is €1,200-€1,800. There are 629 lots on a catalogue which features art, twenty lots of garden furniture, furniture and a wide selection of collectibles.
This lithograph by Henry Moore is at Whyte’s summer online art auction which runs until June 29. Number 9 from an edition of 50 is signed on the lower right and estimated at €1,000-€1,500. The sale of 242 lots includes work by Jack Butler Yeats, Walter Osborne, Estella Solomons, Eva Hamilton, Harry Kernoff, Daniel O’Neill, James Brohan, Liam Treacy, Bridget Flinn, Banksy and Nelson Mandela. Viewing gets underway at Molesworth St. in Dublin today and the catalogue is online.
Scene in Braemar by Sir Edwin Landseer, a little known sister painting to The Monarch of the Glen, is at Sotheby’s Old Masters evening sale in London on July 1. The estimate is £3-£4 million. Painted by 1857, the nearly nine-foot canvas has long been understood as a darker and more mysterious sister painting toLandseer’s iconic image of the Highland stag – one of the most recognisable symbols of British art.
The title locates the scene at Braemar in the eastern Highlands, close to Mar Lodge, where Landseer frequently stayed while stalking in the Deeside forests. This was the part of Scotland he knew most intimately – near Blair Atholl, another of his regular haunts, and Balmoral, the royal residence built for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who were among his most important patrons.
Amadeo Modigliani – Nu assis au collier. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £48,235,000
The 25 defining masterpieces of modern figurative painting from the Lewis Collection at Sotheby’s on June 24 constitute the most valuable single collection ever offered in London.
A nude considered scandalous by Modigliani leads an auction which features stellar artists like Picasso, Schiele, Bacon, Klimt, Freud, Caillebotte and Toulouse-Lautrec. Modigliani’s sensuous Nu assis au collier (Seated nude with necklace) ranks among the most important works by the artist ever to come to market. It is estimated to make around £45 million (€52.1 million). Painted in 1917 it belongs to a series now widely regarded as pivotal in the evolution of modern art, but considered so outrageous at the time the exhibition in which they featured was shut down by the police. Modigliani is one of a rare coterie of artists to have broken the $100 million threshold at auction, not just once but twice – each time in New York. Both were works from this series. The mantle now passes to London where this is one of the highest value works of any kind ever offered in the city and the highest value work by Modigliani ever to be offered in Europe.
Pablo Picasso – Buste de Femme. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £23,855,000
A suite of seven works by Picasso spans eight full decades of his career. The group is led by a highly unusual and evocative portrait of Dora Maar, the vibrant, fiercely independent artist who first attracted his attention by playing ‘knife roulette’ between her splayed fingers on an adjacent table at Les Deux Magots in Paris. As well as becoming Picasso’s muse and lover Maar also became his indispensable intellectual and artistic sparring partner. Given both the provocative nature of their nine year relationship and the tumultuous backdrop against which it unfolded (the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War), the vast majority of Picasso’s renditions of Dora Maar are angular and jagged in form. Buste de femme, unseen for over half a century, is a rare example of something quite different – a generous, sweepingly lyrical rendition of the Dora Maar with whom Picasso was still entirely besotted in 1938 when this work was painted.
Egon Schiele – Danaë. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £17,932,500
With its jewel like surface and geometric patterning Egon Schiele’s Danaë – painted when the artist was just 19 – is seen as a key breakthrough work. Here Schiele imagines the mythological scene in which Zeus descends on Danaë in a shower of golden rain, its heaviness accentuated by the introduction of greens and blacks. Schiele died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 aged just 28.
Bacon’s Two Studies for a Self-Portrait was made in 1977 and captures an artist beset by inner turmoil. Following the suicide of his love George Dyer in 1971 Bacon launched into a period of production that would become the most emotionally fraught but ambitious of his career. Behind these works lies a decade of guilt, bereavement, and self-scrutiny, marked by the deaths of many of those closest to him – not only George Dyer, but also Peter Lacey. When asked in 1979 why he made so many self-portraits, Bacon explained: “people have been dying around me like flies and I’ve had nobody else to paint but myself.”
Many of the works in a sale estimated to make in the region of £200 million (€231.5 million) have been shown in major museums across the globe. They were assembled over decades by Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne. Born and raised in London’s East End, Joe Lewis felt a natural affinity as a collector with the School of London painters, such as Bacon and Freud, whose work confronted the human condition with an uncompromising intensity. That early passion became the foundation for what is today one of the world’s most important private collections of modern art, shaped by a fascination with the human figure in all its forms.
Over the years the collection has been re-shaped. The Lewis journey as collectors is far from over. “We remain committed to the avant garde painters of today, much of whose work is informed by the artists showcased here” a statement said.
Billionaire Joe Lewis, who left school at 15 to help his father run his father’s West End catering business, was born in 1937 to a Jewish family living above a public house in Bow, East London. He holds assets through his Tavistock Group and was previously the majority owner of ENIC Group, the majority owner of Tottenham Hotspur. Accused of tipping off associates and friends with non public information and charged with multiple counts of insider trading in New York in 2023 he pleaded guilty. Lewis was spared jail time, fined $5 million and later pardoned by Donald Trump. His art collection is estimated to be worth $1 billion.
Francis Bacon – Two Studies for self-portrait. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £8,675,000
DAVID HOCKNEY (B. 1937), Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), acrylic on canvas, painted in 1972 sold for $90.3 million at Christie’s in November 2018. Photo: courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
THE art world is in mourning today over the death of David Hockney. He was one month short of his 89th birthday. In a career that spanned seven decades Hockney was always innovative, forward looking, open to new ideas and new ways of seeing. His vivid work, which he continued right to the end, influenced a whole generation of artists. He has been the subject of fascinating retrospectives in major world museums. In Britain the Tate said they would continue to work with Hockney’s team to stage two planned projects next year.
The Hockney exhibition at Tate in 2017 was the most visited exhibition in the museums history.
Announcing his death today Hockney’s representatives said: “The celebrated British artist David Hockney, one of the most important figures in contemporary art in both the 20th and 21st centuries, passed away peacefully at home on 11 June 2026, one month short of his 89th birthday.”
The statement added that his “enduring legacy reflects his underlying enthusiasm for life, his outstanding sense of humour, his immense generosity, and his investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase: Love Life”.
