Tony O’Malley (1913-2003) – Untitled. UPDATE: THIS MADE 950 AT HAMMER
This carborundum print by Tony O’Malley is lot 7 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Off the Wall online art auction which runs until January 19. It is signed with the artists initials and numbered 22/40. The estimate is €400-€600. More than 450 lots will come under the hammer in a sale that features artists like Graham Knuttel, Markey Robinson, Cecil Maguire, Elizabeth Cope, Majella O’Neill Collins, Louis le Brocquy, Elizabeth Brophy, Maurice Wilks, Jane O’Malley, Frank McKelvey and many more. The catalogue is online.
A masterpiece by Canaletto – Venice, the Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day – will lead Christie’s Old Masters auction in New York on February 4. The Bucintoro, the official galley of the Doge and a symbol of La Serenissima, was used exclusively on Ascension Day. The Molo is the quay beside the Doge’s Palace.
The spectacular celebration was a subject Canaletto returned to frequently as he brought the pomp and ceremony of the Venetian lagoon to life. This theatrical masterpiece, his last known rendition on the theme, was commissioned around 1754 by the King family (later Earls of Lovelace) and remained in their possession for almost 200 years. The first, commissioned by Britain’s first Prime Minister Robert Walpole (1676-1745), made a new world record of £31.9 million (€36.5 million) at Christie’s Old Masters evening auction in London last July.
Among the offerings at Christie’s on February 5, during what is shaping up to be an especially strong Classics Week at Christie’s in New York, is an Old Master chalk, pen and ink drawing by Claude Lorrain.
Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) – Female Bather. UPDATE: THIS PAINTING WAS WITHDRAWN FROM THE SALE
This watercolour by Gerard Dillon is at €2,000-€4,000 the most expensively estimated lot at Adam’s timed online picture sale which runs until January 13. With 325 lots in total the sale offers art by Harry Kernoff, Gary Trimble, Stella Steyn, Lillian Lucy Davidson, Robert Ballagh, Mainie Jellett, Thurloe Connolly, Mary Swanzy, Mark Rode and a wide variety of artists. The auction is on view in Dublin from 2 pm to 5 pm on January 10 and 11, from 10 am to 5 pm on Monday and online.
The auction by R J Keighery in Waterford on Monday January 12 includes a lifetime collection of clocks, railwayana and maritime items. A longcase clock with brass dial by Alex Gordon, Dublin has an estimate of €2,000-€3,000 but estimates for many others are lower than this. A 19th century Siebbe Gorman 12 bolt diving helmen is estimated at €1,500-€2,500 and an 1894 timetable for the Dingle and Tralee light railway has an estimate of €6,000-€8,000. There is a selection of old enamel road signs and the catalogue is online.
Paul Henry (1876-1958) – A Grey Day on the Bog (1928). UPDATE: THIS MADE 44,000 AT HAMMER
This oil on board by Paul Henry leads Morgan O’Driscoll’s current Irish art auction which runs online until January 12. It was acquired by the original owner from the 1928 exhibition in London. The estimate is €50,000-€70,000. A total of 288 lots of art are on the catalogue including work by Yeats, Stephen McKenna, Mr. Brainwash, Markey Robinson, James Humbert Craig, Patrick Collins and Frank McKelvey.
IF what you really really wanted somehow did not arrive then Victor Mee’s December decorative interiors sale on December 30 might provide the answer. A full size snooker table complete with lights, cue holder, cues, a set of six caricature paintings, snooker and billiard balls and a plaque with the rules of snooker are on offer. Lot 293A is estimated at 2,000-4,000. The catalogue for the sale is online.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger – The Census at Bethlehem c1604. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £5.2 million
The Census at Bethlehem by Pieter Brueghel the Younger places the Holy Family within a bustling Flemish winter landscape. Villagers queue to register for the census, children skate, throw snowballs and drag sledges across the frozen ground and drinkers gather around a makeshift tavern carved into an oak tree. The sacred is blended into the everyday as the Holy Family at the centre pass quietly through the crowd in a moving nod to the Nativity. The c1604 work exemplified Brueghel the Younger’s ability to capture the divine in the rhythms of ordinary life and is one of the largest known depictions of the subject.
The composition derives from a painting of the same name made in 1566 by the artist’s father, Pieter Brueghel the elder now in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. It is one of the most revered works of the Northern Renaissance. Brueghel the Younger was only a child at his father’s death and he devoted much of his career to preserving and re-interpreting these masterful inventions with his own acute observation of daily life and meticulous detail. The Nativity has always been a favourite subject for artists and this work sold for an above estimate £5,164,000 (€5,903,300) at Sotheby’s Old Masters and 19th century paintings auction in London this month.
Gustav Klimt – Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer sold for $236.4 million
The recovery in the international art market which became apparent in the latter end of 2025 is driven by real art lovers, not speculators or peddlers of bitcoin looking to make a quick buck. The big November art sales in New York generated $2.2 billion (€1.89 billion) in just one week.
At Sotheby’s first auction at their new hq at the Breuer Building, previously the Whitney Museum, Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elizabeth Lederer made $236.4 million (€203 million), the second highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction as well as the most expensive painting sold this year. The first auction at their new home in New York brought in €706 million (€606,450), the highest total ever achieved by Sotheby’s for a one night auction.
Mark Rothko No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) made $62.1 million
Opening night sales at Christie’s in the same week totalled $689,795,000 (€592.45 million). Mark Rothko’s No. 31 (Yellow Stripe) made $62.1 million (€53.34 million) and Claude Monet’s Nymphéas made $45.4 million (€39 million).
No less than 12 paintings sold for more than $20 million each. This follows three years of layoffs at auction houses, closing galleries and sales which in 2024 were down by 12%. Aided by a booming stock market the November art sales in New York generated a 77% increase over the same sales last year.
Frida Kahlo – The Dream (The Bed) made a new world record for a female artist of $54.6 million
Prices for women artists were up. Frida Kahlo’s 1940 self portrait The Dream, the Bed sold for $54,660,000 (€46.9 million) at Sotheby’s to become the most expensive work by a female artist ever sold at auction. Kahlo surpassed the record for Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. I which made $44.4 million (€38.14 million) in 2014.
Earlier this year a painting by Marlene Dumas became the most expensive painting by a living female artist ever when it sold for $13.6 million (€11.68 million) at Christie’s in New York. This month the Louvre in Paris announced that the South African born Amsterdam based Dumas has completed a commission for a vast wall on the Porte des Lions atrium. Liasons consists of nine paintings of faces in canvases of a size that match the marble low reliefs that once hung on the wall. “My faces are a mixture of the past and the present. I cannot paint the horrors of the ongoing genocides of our times directly, but their shadows did affect the mood under which these faces were made” she said in an interview.
Marlene Dumas – Liasons at the Louvre.
The president director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars described Dumas as one of the greatest painters of our time. “When we were thinking about a work for the entrance to the Portes des Lions, which is both the access to the Gallery of the Five Continents and the Department of Paintings, she seemed the obvious choice: she defends and illustrates the medium of painting like few others, and her work is conceived as a space for bringing together different sensibilities and origins. That is exactly what we aimed for to do with this redesigned space. We are proud of the outcome of this magnificent project. Marlene Dumas’ work is a repertoire of ways of painting and drawing, as well as an invitation to confront our humanity” he said.
The art market always needs new buyers. Right now the omens are good. In October Christie’s achieved the highest total of £106.9 million (€121.93 million) for a Frieze week London evening sale in seven years, with world records for Paula Rego, Suzanne Valadon, Annie Morris and Esben Weile Kjaer. In Paris in October the Modernist and Surrealism and its Legacy sales brought in €89.7 million at Sotheby’s, up more than 50% on the same series in October 2024. These are among the trends that continued into the big November auctions. Another emerging trend is for art by women. More female artists are going to get more recognition as galleries strive to become less stale and white male and more inclusive of artists of any gender and ethnicity.
Gustav Klimt – Blumenwiese (Blooming Meadow) sold for $86.9 million in November
Sotheby’s announced projected consolidated sales of $7.0 billion for 2025, a 17% increase on 2024. Auction sales rose 26% year-over-year to $5.7 billion, with sales accelerating significantly in the second half of the year, up 59% versus the second half of 2024. Private sales reached $1.2 billion, down slightly from the prior year. Both the Global Fine Art and Luxury categories posted strong gains, with Global Fine Art sales increasing 15% to $4.3 billion and Luxury sales up 22% to $2.7 billion.
The company sold the most valuable collection of the year for the sixth time in the last seven years – the Leonard A. Lauder Collection – and sold seven of the year’s top ten auction works globally. The company inaugurated its new global headquarters at the Breuer with six white-glove (100% sold) sales totaling $1.17 billion, including the highest total for Modern art sold in one week at Sotheby’s ($843 million), the highest value work of art ever sold at Sotheby’s (Gustav Klimt’s Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer) for $236.4 million) and the largest Contemporary Day sale ever.
Sotheby’s executed its most valuable single-owner sale ever staged by Sotheby’s in London and in Europe with Pauline Karpidas: The London Collection realising a combined total of $137 million.
Landscape with Trees by Roderic O’Conor made €340,000 at hammer at de Veres.
The innate conservatism of the Irish art market was apparent at the big winter sales in Dublin where the dominant artists were the bankable Roderic O’Conor and Paul Henry. Yes the market is developing and making room for modern, postmodern and contemporary Irish artists. Yet while Francis Bacon and Sean Scully will cut it abroad it is the old reliables like Yeats, Orpen, Lavery and Osborne who dominate at home. Who will bring home the Bacon?
Paintings by Irish turn of the 20th century and later artists are in short supply. The best are in public and private collections from which they emerge only rarely. The home market must evolve. At times like this it sometimes seems as if it is being dragged kicking and screaming towards essential evolution. The greatest Irish artists of the last hundred years are still mostly overlooked at the highest levels of the auction market on the home front.
A landscape by Roderic O’Conor topped the bill at the big winter auctions of Irish art in Dublin. Paysage aux Arbres, Landscape with Trees (1890) made a hammer price of €340,000 at de Veres. The Great Sugar Loaf by Paul Henry (1929-30) was the top lot at Whyte’s making €235,000 at hammer. A Coastal Landscape with Galway Hookers by Paul Henry (1930’s) was the most expensive artwork at Adam’s, making a hammer price of €170,000. In October Francis Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf made £13.1 million (€14.88 million) at Sotheby’s in London.
