A total of 242 lots of porcelain, plate, glassware, clocks and collectibles will come under the hammer at Fonsie Mealy’s timed online Spring Collectibles sale which runs to February 22. Among them are a 20th century West African Dan mask with slit eyes and fibre headdress, a set of ten Art Nouveau floral tiles, Cantonese vases, a 19th century French gilt metal and marble clock, a carved Japanese Okimono, a First Period Belleek floral basket, a Victorian rosewood book carrier and a pair of Meissen three branch candleabra. All lots are to be sold without reserve.
Pair of Meissen three branch Candelabra,UPDATE: THESE MADE 160 AT HAMMER
A GEM-SET AND DIAMOND BRACELET.UPDATE: THIS MADE 10,500 AT HAMMER
This tutti frutti design gem set and diamond bracelet is – at 7,000-8,000 – the most expensively estimated lot at the James Adam At Home sale in Dublin on February 22. The sale features antique furniture, art, porcelain, silver, Asian art and all sorts of collectibles. Viewing gets underway on February 18 and the catalogue is online.
An oak framed Art Nouveau settee. UPDATE: THIS MADE 2,200 AT HAMMER
NO less than five works by Claude Monet and a 1961 masterwork by René Magritte will highlight Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction in London on March 2. The sale spans Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Monet x Monet from an American collection presents five works by Claude Monet (with estimates of from £1.2 million to £15 million) painted during a formative fifteen-year period during his career, charting the artist’s pivot from an Impressionist painter to the father of Abstract Expressionism.
Claude Monet – Les Demoiselles de Giverny. UPDATE: THIS WAS THE ONLY ONE OF THE MONET’S TO REMAIN UNSOLD
Magritte’s L’empire des lumières captures the visual paradox that lies at the heart of the artist’s originality. The instantly recognisable work was created in 1961 for Baroness Anne-Marie Gillion Crowet, the daughter of Magritte’s patron the Belgian Surrealist collector Pierre Crowet, and has remained in the family ever since.
Rene Magritte – L’empire des lumières. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 59,422,000 GBP
Here is a video from Sotheby’s about the Monet’s in the sale:
Paul Henry LOBSTER FISHERMEN OFF ACHILL, c.1916-17. UPDATE: THIS MADE 200,000 AT HAMMER
Paul Henry’s Lobster Fishermen off Achill will be a highlight at Whyte’s sale of Irish and International art in Dublin on March 7. It is estimated at 200,000-300,000. The catalogue is online now. Artists represented include Daniel O’Neill, Colin Middleton, Sir John Lavery, Roderic O’Conor, Grace Henry, Walter Osborne, Norah McGuinness, Anne Yeats, John Shinnors, Patrick Hennessy, Patrick Scott, Louis le Brocquy, Pauline Bewick, Stephen McKenna, Margaret Corcoran and many others. A selection of works from the collection of Lady Augusta Gregory is included with work by John and Jack Yeats, George Russell, and Robert Gregory.
A pair of Victorian circular flame mahogany breakfast tables. UPDATE: THESE MADE 2,500 AT HAMMER
French Empire and Gothic furniture will feature alongside Regency and Victorian pieces at Marshs online sale of contents from the Ursuline Convent, Blackrock, Cork on February 26. Prime pieces will include a Victorian D-end dining table extending to 18 feet (€3,000-€5,000), a pair of Victorian flame mahogany circular breakfast tables with inlaid foliate centre decoration (€2,000-€4,000) and a French Empire ebonised mahogany breakfront side cabinet with two mirror door centre presses (€800-€1,000). Among other lots of note are a set of 17 Regency upholstered dining chairs (€3,000-€4,000), a pair of early 19th century carved gilt pine Gothic reliquary cabinets (€1,000-€2,000), five early 19th century oak carved bench seats of various sizes (€800-€1,000), a pair of early 19th century Gothic carved oak high back chairs (€300-€500) and an antique Victorian bergere invalid chair (€300-€500).
The Ursulines came to Cork in 1771 at the invitation of Nano Nagle, who later founded the Presentation Sisters. The sisters came from the convent in Rue St. Jacques in Paris, one of the most influential convents in an Order begun in Northern Italy in 1535 when Angela Merici established the Company of St. Ursula. Between 1767 and 1770 four girls from Cork entered the convent in Paris. In Cork the sisters have now left their Blackrock house and will remain in the city in new settings.The auction will be online only.
A pair of Gothic reliquary cabinets. UPDATE: THESE MADE 1,000 AT HAMMER
A police truncheon from an era when policing methods were not subject to the same scrutiny as they are today and with an Irish connection comes up at Dreweatts in Newbury, Berkshire in a live online sale on February 16. Lot 548 in the sale is an inscribed tipstaff engraved with the name Sir Peter Tait & Co., Southwark St., London. Sir Peter Tait (1828-1890) was a colourful, flamboyant entrepreneur, who was Mayor of Limerick, where he had a clothing business. He also opened one at 95 Southwark Street, near Blackfriars Bridge in London. In March 1872 he won the contract for truncheons to the Metropolitan Police. In 1875, Tait retired and moved to Thessaloniki in northern Greece, to establish a Turkish cigarette factory. This venture was not a success and he died in poverty at the Hotel De France in Batoum, southern Russia, in December 1890, at the age of 62. The tipstaff here is estimated at £400-600.
Truncheons were used before official police forces were founded. Those before the 1880s are considered exceptionally rare and are therefore highly prized and sought-after. The majority of the highly decorated pieces were seen in the 18th century and often featured coats of arms, motifs, symbols and emblems connected to their owner and the region that the owner was from.
Iohannes Haughton (probably John Houghton, Irish, fl. 1741-1775): A mid 18th century sculpted white marble bust of Jonathan Swift. UPDATE: THIS MADE £10,500 AT HAMMER – £13,375 WITH PREMIUM
This sculpted portrait of Jonathan Swift by John Houghton comes up as lot 185 at Bonhams Connoisseur’s library sale at Knightsbridge in London on February 15. There is an interesting provenance to the piece by repute displayed at the Swift ancestral home, Swiftsheath, Kilkenny, Ireland. It came from Robert Swift Esq. (d. 1842), great great grandson of Jonathan Swift’s uncle Godwin Swift, 1627-1695 who raised the writer when his own father died prematurely, and was presented in 1847 to Godwin Swift Esq., cousin of Robert Swift. It passed by descent to Godwin Swift Esq., grandfather of the present owner and author of a handwritten family record (one of a several) compiled between 1928 and 1940, whereby the bust is mentioned. It is estimated at £5,000-8,000.
Francis Bacon – Triptych 1986-7. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £38,459,206,
ONE of Francis Bacon’s last great paintings, Triptych 1986-7, will come to auction for the first time at Christie’s 20th/21st Century on March 1. The London evening sale is a key auction within the 20/21 Shanghai to London series. This triptych, an extraordinary meditation on the passage of time and the solitude of the human condition, is estimated at £35-50 million. The suited figure in the left-hand panel is based on a press clipping of the US President Woodrow Wilson, stepping forward as he was leaving the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919; the right-hand panel was inspired by a photograph of Leon Trotsky’s study taken after his assassination in 1940. In the centre sits a figure resembling Bacon’s then-partner John Edwards, his pose reminiscent of the artist’s beloved George Dyer in the haunting eulogy Triptych August 1972 (Tate, London). Widely exhibited throughout its lifetime, Triptych 1986-7 was most recently seen in the Centre Georges Pompidou’s acclaimed exhibition ‘Bacon en Toutes Lettres’(2019-20).
The year after its creation, Triptych 1986-7 was one of 22 paintings shown at the Central House of Artists’ Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow: the first exhibition by a well-known artist from the West to take place in Soviet Russia. Many viewers did not recognise the Trotsky photograph as a source, but to those who did, the painting’s presence heralded a sea-change in the country’s political attitudes towards art: the Iron Curtain, notably, would fall the next year. It is one of a rare number of large-scale triptychs by Bacon to remain in private hands. Between 1962 and 1991, the artist produced just 28 such works measuring 78 by 58 inches, nearly half of which reside in museums worldwide.
The Enigma black diamond, weighing in at 555.55 carats, sold at Sotheby’s for £3.16 million. The buyer paid in cryptocurrency. The origins of the billion year old carbonado stone are shrouded in mystery and one theory is that it was carried to earth by an asteroid.
Sotheby’s did not identify the purchaser but after the auction cryptocurrency entrepreneur Richard Heart took to social media to claim that he was the buyer of The Enigma. He told his more than 180,000 Twitter followers that “as soon as the payment’s gone through and possession’s been taken” the gem would be renamed the “HEX.com diamond”, in reference to the blockchain platform he founded.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 18, 2022)
THE THIRD LARGEST PIECE OF MARS ON EARTH. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
The third largest piece of Mars on Earth is available to buy at Christie’s Deep Impact: Martian, Lunar and other Meteorites online sale which runs to February 23. It is estimated at $500,000-800,000. Specimens of Mars are by far among the rarest substances on our planet with less than 600 lbs (275 kg) known to exist. These samples arrived here after having been blasted off Mars following an asteroid impact and are identified by their mineralogical, chemical and isotopic signatures. NWA 12690, the third largest piece of Mars on Earth, weighs 20 pounds (9.1 kilograms). Following an analysis by a panel of scientists, this meteorite joined the official registry of scientific record, the Meteoritical Bulletin. Highlights at this auction of 66 lots include meteorites containing the oldest matter humankind can touch and others with gemstones from outer space. Estimates range from $400 to $800,000 and 62 lots are offered with no reserve.
