John Behan RHA – Kyrenia Ship. UPDATE: THIS MADE 5,800 AT HAMMER
Kyrenia Ship by John Behan comes up at Dolan’s timed online Spring auction. The sale goes online today and will run until Monday, March 20. The sculpture is dated to 2008 and is unique. The Greek Cypriot ship, fifteen metres in length, was built in389 BC. It sank around 288 BC three miles off the coast of Kyrenia. The estimate is €4,000-6,000. The sale comprises Irish art and sculpture, almost 60 collectible bottles of Irish whisky including some very rare Midletons, antique furniture and collectibles including rugs and books.
DAMIEN HIRST (B.1965) – Pharmacy Matchbooks. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,400 AT HAMMER
This set of 54 individual matchbooks from a set of 60 designed by Damien Hirst for the Pharmacy Restaurant comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current online art auction. Each matchbook is numbered and stamped with the pharmacy stamp along with the name and address: Pharmacy Restaurant in Notting Hill, London. The estimate for lot 42 is €600-900. The catalogue for the sale is online and the auction runs until March 13.
Frederick Edward McWilliam, R.A. – Mother and Daughter. UPDATE: THIS MADE £40,640
Mother and Daughter by F. E. McWilliam comes up as lot 49 at Sotheby’s Made in Britain sale online until March 14. The bronze is 45 and a quarter inches tall and 22 inches wide. Conceived in 1957 it is number 2 from an edition of 3. The estimate is £30,000-£50,000.
TWO HORSES – LIAM O’NEILL (B.1954) made €35,000 at hammer
Two Horses, an oil on canvas by Liam O’Neill made a hammer price of €35,000 over a top estimate of €7,000 at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin tonight. Another work by the self taught artist Collecting Hay by the Coast, made €17,000 over a top estimate of €12,000. Liam O’Neill has developed a reputation as one of our finest portrayers of rural life, especially around West Kerry. He is a native of the Dingle Peninsula.
The top lot of the sale was Paul Henry’s Landscape, Connemara which made €135,000 at hammer. Old Houses, Pau by Dan O’Neill made €56,000, Docklands VII 2002 by Donald Teskey made €46,000, The Enthusiast by Jack B Yeats made €32,000 and Strange Days by Jim Fitzpatrick made €19,000.
First into Calabria by Camille Souter sold for a hammer price of €18,000 at the James Adam sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on May 1. The artist died on March 3 aged 93. This mixed media work, signed and dated 1962, had a top estimate of €15,000 and was previously in the collection of Sir Basil Goulding. It was exhibited in a show of 12 Irish Painters in New York in 1963. Another work by Souter in the same sale, Red Achill, made a hammer price of €10,000 over a top estimate of 8,000. Born in the UK and brought up in Ireland, Camille Souter trained as a nurse in London before turning to painting in the 1950s and exhibited extensively from the 1960s onwards. She is credited with having produced an extraordinary body of work over nearly 70 years.
Adams sale brought in €1.25 million and was headed by Orpen’s portrait of Yvonne Aupicq as a nun which made €125,000 over a top estimate of €50,000 after a battle between seven bidders. It went to a UK based agent.
Sean Scully’s Wall of Light, Red sold for £1,137,000 at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction in London on March 1. The monumental work from his most celebrated and instantly recognised Wall of Light series was made in 1998 and is among the largest and earliest works in the series. The oil on linen is on two joined canvases. The inspiration came from a visit to Mexico in the early 1980’s where he was fascinated by the stones of ancient walls on the Yucatan peninsula. When animated by light they seemed to reflect the passage of time.
“I can’t exactly explain it, but seeing the Mexican ruins, the stacking of the stones, and the way light hit those facades, had something to do with it, maybe everything to do with it” the artist is quoted as saying in an exhibition catalogue at the Metropolitian Museum, New York in 2005.
Norah McGuinness – Self-Portrait 1942. UPDATE: THIS MADE 8,000 AT HAMMER
No less than seven works by Norah McGuinness, including an arresting self portrait, come up at Whyte’s spring sale of Important Irish Art on March 6. The enduring popularity of the artist should ensure plenty of bidders.During a long career Norah McGuinness found a balance between painting and her design work (she designed theatre sets and costumes, illustrated books and the sales windows of Altmans in New York and Brown Thomas in Dublin for over 30 years). Influences from each field were brought into the other. Unlike her contemporaries, Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone, who also studied in Paris under André Lhote, McGuinness did not fully adopt the Cubist approach but rather fashioned elements of it with a Fauvist appreciation of colour to create her own unique reading of her subject. The seven works in this sale include November on the Liffey (1948) (€8,000-€12,000), Self-Portrait 1942 (€5,000-€7,000) and Coastal Town by Moonlight, 1962 (€7,000-€9,000).
Avila Spain c1920’s by Mainie Jellett UPDATE: THIS MADE 8,000 AT HAMMER
Other works by Irish female artists of the same period include The Businessman by Mary Swanzy (€6,000- €8,000) and a 1920’s work by Mainie Jellett titled Ávila, Spain (€6,000-€8,000). This was painted on one of her first visits to Europe and subsequently gifted by the artist to Sarah Purser, and later gifted to the artist Rosaleen Davey. The top lot of the auction is an iconic west of Ireland scene by Paul Henry which is estimated at €100,000-€150,000. Old Houses, Pau by Daniel O’Neill is estimated at.€20,000-€30,000 and his Mother and Child has an estimate of €15,000- €20,000. Colin Middleton also had a design background and there is an emphasis on texture in his 1976 painting titled Dark Lady (€25,000-€35,000). Marmara Dawn by Stephen McKenna is a large work painted in 2009, his final year as president of the RHA. It is estimated at €15,000-€20,000.
A knife, fork and spoon, stitched to a silk shamrock and framed with a photograph of Michael Collins, form a curious lot at Mullen’s Collector’s Cabinet auction on March 11. This was the cutlery used by Collins at his last meal in the Eldon Hotel in Skibbereen on August 22, 1922, just hours before the ambush at Béal na mBláth later that day. It was later presented to Kitty Kiernan, who gave it to her sister Maud. Maud married Gearóid O’Sullivan, the Irish Volunteer who raised the flag over the GPO during the Easter Rising. It is estimated at €1,500-€2,000. UPDATE: THIS MADE 6,500 AT HAMMER
TONY O’MALLEY (1913-2003) – Collage (1986). UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,400 AT HAMMER
This 1986 oil and collage on toned paper by Tony O’Malley comes up as lot 9 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish art online auction which runs until March 7. It is signed with a monogram on the lower left and measures 6.2″ x 9.6″. The estimate is €1,500-2,500. The catalogue for the sale is online.
NORAH MCGUINNESS HRHA(1901-1980) – NOVEMBER ON THE LIFFEY, DUBLIN, 1948. UPDATE: THIS MADE 10,500 AT HAMMER
November on the Liffey by Norah McGuinness is one of a number of works by the artist at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art on March 6. A major retrospective of her work took place in the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, in 1968 and in 1973 the College awarded her an honorary doctorate. This work, with a Dawson Gallery lable on the reverse, is estimated at 8,000-12,000. The catalogue for the sale is online. The sale is on view in Molesworth St., Dublin until 4 pm on March 6.
