This ruby and diamond cluster ring is lot 44 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online auction of fine jewellery and watches which runs until April 22. Set with an oval cushion-shaped natural ruby weighing 3.08 carats and of Burmese origin, within a brilliant-cut diamond cluster surround weighing approximately 1 carat, mounted in 18 carat gold and platinum it is estimated at €15,000-25,000. The catalogue with 167 lots is online. The auction will be on view at the RDS in Dublin from April 17-20.
A 22 karat gold and colored diamond-set pendant and chain necklace, estimate CHF10,000-15,000 / US$13,000-19,000
A gold and colored diamond pendant given to Quincy Jones by Bono as an 80th birthday present will come up at Christie’s in Geneva on May 11. The Rare Watches live auction at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues with property from the late Quincy Jones includes three highly desirable pieces. His Patek Philippe Nautilus REF. 3700/1JA, the pendant and a Girard Perregaux watch presented to the artist by Andrea Bocelli in recognition for his lifetime dedication to international charitable endeavors.
Quincy Jones and Sir Michael Caine (both born on 14 March 1933), celebrated their 80th birthdays at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The sumptuous event also served as a fundraiser: the 17th annual Power of Love Gala. Whilst addressing the audience Quincy Jones said: “I’m so proud of this night being on behalf of charity. Living, laughing, loving and giving … that’s what life is about.” The evening opened with a pre-dinner performance by Bono, who keyed in on the Sinatra phase of Jones’ career with performances of “I Got You Under My Skin” and “Fly Me to the Moon”. Bono presented a special birthday gift to Quincy Jones: a gold necklace, featuring a 22 carat gold and colored diamond-set pendent with an engraving on the back ‘B4Q80’, standing for ‘Bono for Quincy, 80th birthday’, adding a deeply personal and commemorative dimension to this meaningful piece.
Quincy Jones’ Patek Philippe Nautilus, ref. 3700/1JA was manufactured and sold in 1981, making it Mr. Jones’ property for 43 years. 1981 marked important moments in the artist’s career: he received a Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year and won the award for Best Instrumental Arrangement, as well as overseeing the production of Michael Jackson’s album Thriller (1982).
Patek Philippe Nautilus ref 3700/1JA manufactured in 1981, estimate CHF100,000-200,000 / US$130,000-250,000 |
Rare portrait lithographs of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith signed both by the sitters and artist Sir John Lavery feature at Whyte’s timed online Eclectic Collector sale which runs from April 7-18. Lavery painted portraits of Griffith and Collins in 1921 whilst they were in London negotiating the terms of the Irish Treaty. Within months of their portraits being painted, both men were dead – Griffith of a heart attack, Collins assasinated. The lithographs are based on the oil portraits now in the collection of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin and estimated at €8,000-12,000.
Lot 78 at R.J. Keighery’s annual garden auction in Waterford on April 13 is a pair of round stoneware rose pots measuring 38 cms x 36 cms. The estimate is €200-300. The auction offers over 700 lots including benches, gates, planters, urns and statues. The catalogue is online.
Art by the titans of American Abstract Expressionism – Franz Klein, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – from the collection of dealer and financier Robert Mnuchin could make more than $130 million at a dedicated evening auction by Sotheby’s in New York on May 14.
Led by Rothko’s monumental 1957 canvas Brown and Black in Reds a total of 24 works from the collection will be offered in the standalone sale.
Mnuchin, who died aged 92 last December, loved going to auctions where he was known for shouting out his bids. A New Yorker who graduated from Yale in 1955, he served in the US Army and joined Goldman Sachs in 1957. After a 33 year career there he retired at 56 to pursue a career in art and became a legendary dealer.
Franz Kline – Harleman 1960.
The deeply personal collection, assembled with his wife Adriana over the decades, demonstrated a devotion to pursuing works they loved and wanted to live with. This embodies a collecting ethos mirrored by many art lovers. “The reason to buy art is because you love it, you love it, you love it”, Mnuchin said. Sotheby’s say the examples he chose for his own collection demonstrate “extreme connoisseurship”.
Standing nearly eight feet tall Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Red ($70-$100 million)(€60.6-€86.6 million) dates to 1957. From the artist’s seminal decade when he developed the signature bands of colour it has been in some of the most important exhibitions dedicated to Rothko including the celebrated show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2023-24.
Acquired by Seagrams around 1957 it has been in the Mnuchin collection for more than two decades. The palette was an important influence in the development of the Seagram Murals commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram building in New York in the years to follow. The renowned murals, found today in galleries like the Tate in London and Washington’s National Gallery of Art, showed Rothko’s commitment to expressing basic human emotions like tragedy, ecstasy and doom.
An early transitional Rothko, No. 1 1949 ($15-$20 million)(€13-€17.3 million), stands at the threshold of his breakthrough and was included in the famous 1950 exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery.
Willem de Kooning. Untitled XLII, 1983. oil on canvas, 80 x 70 inches. Private collection.
Mnuchin ranked Willem de Kooning among his most revered artists. The selection on offer in May – led by an example of his late lyrical style Untitled XLII from 1983 – presents a retrospective encapsulation of de Kooning’s career featuring works spanning four decades from the 1950’s through the 1980’s.
Harleman is the finest work by Franz Kline to come to auction in over a decade. This monumental example of his black and white paintings dates to 1960.
Mnuchin was an early supporter of Jeff Koons. Louis XIV is an icon of the artists statuary series and ranks among his most important early works. This example is the artist’s proof from an edition of 3, plus one artist’s proof. The rest of the editions are held in museum collections, including the Nasher Sculpture Center, The Broad, and the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art.
Robert and Adriana Mnuchin were drawn to works that represent defining moments in the career of an artist. As New York collectors of thier time they were in a unique position to champion some of the most innovative and celebrated artists of the second half of the 20th century.
This pair of terracotta rhubarb forcers made €1,800 at hammer
Terracotta rhubarb forcers were a surprise hit at Sheppards sale of contents from Kilroan House, Glanmire, Cork and other clients. Traditional Victorian cloches, which work by trapping heat and blocking light forcing the plant to grow faster and sweeter, had all the allure of hot cross buns on Good Friday at the auction. Two pairs sold for a hammer price of €1,800 each and another pair made €1,600 over estimates of €200-€300.
Elsewhere in the sale a 1915 Royal Worcester covered vase with an estimate of €250-€350 made a hammer price of €4,600. Hand painted with swans in flight it was numbered and designed by one of the most gifted Worcester artists Charles Henry Clifford Baldwyn whose swans became signature pieces. A marine chronometer made €3,000, a life size bronze sculpture of four deer made €10,200, a Regency breakfront bookcase made €7,000 and a William IV four poster bed made €8,500. A view of Blackrock Castle and the River Lee by George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson made €2,700 at hammer.
This 1600 Mughal painting of the Virgin Mary standing in Prayer is rare and almost identical to an example at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. It comes up at Christie’s sale of the Mary and Cheney Cowles collection of Indian paintings and calligraphy in London on April 28. The estimate is £30,000-50,000 (€34,780-€57,970). Christie’s the Mughal incorporations of European motifs and techniques can be seen as expressions of their cultural cosmopolitanism and universal order. Construction of the Taj Mahal started in 1632. The Seattle based couple hold one of the most distinguished private assemblages of East Asian painting and calligraphy in the western world. Their collection tells stories of emperors, poetry, love, faith and daily life across India and the Islamic world. Estimates for this portion of it, comprising 86 lots, range from works offered without reserve to £180,000 (€208,700).
Red Orchard by Louise Neiland at Taylor Galleries at Art Evolve.
With cutting edge contemporary art at Art Evolve in Dublin, the annual members exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork and online art auctions in full swing Irish collectors are spoiled for choice right now. More than 60 galleries and artists are assembled under one roof this weekend at Art Evolve making the RDS a great venue for the culturally curious.
Even if you happen to keep a very close eye on contemporary happenings in the art world there is bound to be new work and new artists to discover. This show offers a great opportunity to trawl through what is currently being created in Ireland and available right now.
Blue Cupped edition 3 by Nigel Rolfe at Green on Red Gallery at Art Evolve.
At Art Evolve the Contemporary Art Gallery Association (CAGA) has joined forces with other galleries and individual artists. The CAGA galleries driving this event are Kevin Kavannagh, Kerlin, Taylor, Oliver Sears, SO Fine Art Editions, Solomon, Molesworth, Hillsborough and Green on Red.
Demand for high end modern art is dynamic according to organiser Patrick O’Sullivan. There is no shortage of variety, affordability and availability making this a good time for art lovers to get their skates on and join in the hunt. More than 9,500 people came to view the first edition last year and interest runs high.
Majestic Vellum Hathor by west Cork based Hammond Journeaux at the Lavit Gallery.
If you cannot make it to Dublin the annual members exhibition by Cork Arts Society at the Lavit Gallery is now underway. This is an annual highlight where work submitted by members is selected for show. Around 100 works from over 300 submitted were chosen by the three person judging panel, Katie O’Grady of The Glucksman, artist Michael Quane and Sarah Foster from the Crawford College.
Exhibitors include Katherine Boucher Beug, Wendy Dison, Paul la Rocque, Deirdre Brennan, Hammond Journeaux, Damaris Lysaght, Ben Reilly, Inge van Doorslaer, Vivienne Bogan, Gerard Daly and Joseph Heffernan. The exhibition continues until April 18.
The Galway based auction house Dolan’s is running a timed online auction with Irish art and rare Irish whiskeys until 6.30 pm next Monday evening. There is a collection of 60 Irish whiskeys, mostly Very Rare Midleton, which attracts global internet demand from as far afield as Sydney and San Francisco.
Among the artists in the auction are Arthur Maderson, Cecil Maguire, Susan Cronin, Mark O’Neill, Charles Harper, Maurice Wilks, George Gillespie, Desmond Turner, Manus Walsh and Anne Primrose Jury. There is a collection of original Hollywood film posters and autographed photographs of stars including Debbie Reynolds, Pierce Brosnan, Maureen O’Hara, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, Meryl Streep and Nick Nolte. The catalogue is online.
Early Easter light on Inishmaan by Cecil Maguire at Dolan’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Einis Eoghain (D) by Felim Egan UPDATE: THIS MADE 420 AT HAMMER
With everything from a cool abstract etching by Felim Egan entitled Einish Eoghain to a cheerful oil on canvas of boats at Dunmore East by Henry Morgan the Spring online art sale at Whyte’s offers much to interest collectors. The timed online auction runs until the evening of March 30.
The most expensively estimated lot is a Moonlit Roman Scene with Figures by Markey Robinson (€3,500-€4,500). The sale offers landscapes, seascapes, drawings, woodcuts, racing paintings, abstraction and a self portrait by Damien Hirst composed of a light box and X-rays (€600-€800). A self portrait – Baked bean boy by Bono is estimated at €400-€600. The online catalogue lists 235 lots with estimates from €80 to €4,500.
Boats in Harbour, Dunmore East by Henry Morgan UPDATE: THIS MADE 950 AT HAMMER
ARTHUR MADERSON – DISTANT BATHERS IN THE PIERCING LIGHT. UPDATE: THIS MADE €10,000 AT HAMMER
This oil and mixed media by Arthur Maderson – Distant Bathers in the piercing light, near Dromana, Co. Waterford, August 1995, is lot 48 at Dolan’s timed online auction of art and whiskeys which runs until March 30. The estimate is €12,000-€14,000 and it is the top lot of the sale. Among the artists whose work will feaure are Cecil Maguire, Charles Harper, Susan Cronin, Mark O’Neill, Markey Robinson, Mat Grogan, Maurice Wilks, Anne Primrose Jury, Manus Walsh, George Gillespie, Norman Teeling, James MacKeown, Frank Egginton, Wycliffe Egginton, Robert Egginton, Patrick Cashin, Douglas Hutton, Paul Stephens, Desmond Turner, Steve Browning, Henry Morgan, Dave West and Peter Curling. The catalogue for the sale is online.
