Oscar Wilde – Two autograph manuscripts, a working draft and a fair copy of the sonnet titled “The Grave of Shelley”, [c.1881] sold for £60,090
A collection of Oscar Wilde memorabilia resulted in a white glove sale at Bonhams in London this month. The 156 lot auction of the collection of Jeremy Mason, who has been collecting Wilde memorabilia for 60 years, made £1.68 million and was 100% sold. The top lot was the last photograph of Wilde, taken on his death bed on November 30, 1900. It made £279,800 over a top estimate of £5,000.
This storied self portrait by Francis Bacon leads one of the finest groups of School of London paintings ever brought to market. No less than four museum quality works by Bacon, Freud and Kossoff are at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction in London on March 4. The Bacon portrait was painted in 1972 in the shadow of a devastating personal loss. Struggling to cope following the death of his partner George Dyer, he obsessively painted himself again and again. Two career-defining portraits by Lucian Freud, and Leon Kossoff’s Children’s Swimming Pool—widely considered the artist’s masterpiece—complete the group. The School of London was a small group of free spirited artists who pursued their separate but related visions. Fully engaged with the world around them, they up-ended tradition and created a completely new path forward for figurative art.
A rare Paddy Whiskey enamel sign UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,360 AT HAMMER
The estimate of €1,400-€1,500 for a 1937 enamel sign for Paddy Whiskey at O’Donovan’s two day sale in Newcastle West on February 24 and 25 is a mark of the strength of the current market for old Irish collectibles. A total of 546 lots of pub contents, memorabilia, enamel signs and vintage advertising will come under the hammer over two online evening auctions. Here you will find everything from a Power’s Whiskey mirror and a fireside bellows by Lucey and O”Connell, Cork to a two sided road sign for Beal na Blath with an Irish harp and a hallmarked Irish silver coffee pot with Celtic knotwork by Bee Moynihan, Limerick, 1970.
John Bellany – Masquerade at Sheppards. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
At this time of year with its focus on the newest interior fashions and the latest colour trends what is overlooked is that beloved paintings changed around at home almost always end up being looked at anew. Try it. If your favourite painting has been hanging in the same place for so long that it is practically part of the furniture it is almost certainly no longer appreciated as it deserves to be. Real art is about looking, not background decoration.
Nothing promotes a refresh so much as an addition to the collection which necessitates a re-hang. Which is where auctions in Ireland next week come into play.
Peter Curling – Neck and Neck at Morgan O’Driscoll. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
How about a fast paced horse racing painting from Peter Curling? A luminous oil of evening light from the final years of artist Joseph Malachy Kavanagh in Brittany, or perhaps something more abstract, modern, post modern, contemporary or now? There is ample opportunity for collectors to spring into action at art sales by Morgan O’Driscoll on the evening of February 23 and Sheppards in Durrow on the following day. Both catalogues are online and will richly reward a long, slow perusal.
Morgan O’Driscoll kicks off with Birds of a Feather, a pastel on paper by Graham Knuttel who proved his popularity at Adam’s highly successful Graham Knuttel Part II sale in Dublin last week where his work sold like hot cakes.
Damien Hirst – Circle Spin at Morgan O’Driscoll. UPDATE: THIS MADE €3,400 AT HAMMER
Variety is a hallmark at O’Driscoll’s sale with everything from a highly colourful abstract landscape by Colin Middleton and a 1969 litho by Louis le Brocquy entitled Death of Fraech from the Tain series to an appetising still life by William Crozier, Equinox 2016 by Felim Egan and a famine ship by John Behan. On the international side the sale offers work by Damien Hirst, Mr Brainwash and Andy Warhol.
Willam Scott, Basil Blackshaw, John Butler Yeats, Countess Markievicz, Liam O’Neill, Frank McKelvey, Pauline Bewick and Rowan Gillespie are all included in the online catalogue of 246 lots.
The 310 lot auction at Sheppards is anchored by the collection of Gerry Cuddy in Co. Antrim and a curated group of works from the studios of Barrie Cooke and Sonja Landweer. The auction offers what Peter Murray describes as one of the “finest landscape paintings” by Grace Henry. It is of Achill Island, painted between 1912 and 1919 and estimated at €12,000-€15,000. This makes it the second highest estimate of the auction, after John Bellany’s Masquerade with an estimate of €25,000-€35,000. Bellany was one of the most influential Scottish artists of the post World War 2 era and David Bowie was among those who collected his work.
George Mullins – Animated River Landscape, Homestead and Castle Beyond at Sheppards. UPDATE: THIS MADE 8,500 AT HAMMER
Animated Landscape by George Mullins (€10,000-€15,000) at Sheppards is one of the very few fully authenticated paintings by the artist that is known. Shaped Form, a bronze by Sonja Landweer, is estimated at €5,000-€8,000 and there is a strong representation by Northern Irish artists like William Conor, Dan O’Neill, James Humbert Craig, Markey Robinson and Maurice Wilks.
The auction offers a breadth of materials across many price ranges with art by Letitia Marion Hamilton, Rose Barton, Albert Hartland, Arthur Maderson, Eoin MacLochlainn, John Shinnors, Kenneth Webb, Ian Pollock, Rory Breslin, Fr. Jack Hanlon, Mildred Anne Butler and many others.
Mucha portrait with Sarah Bernhardt at Adams. UPDATE: THIS MADE 750 AT HAMMER
Memo to the slow food movement. Nothing complements fine dining so much as silver and crystal. The At Home sale by Adam’s in Dublin and R.J. Keighery’s biggest ever single day auction in Waterford offers bags of both. Both auctions are on Tuesday February 24. Pride of place at Adams is a 24 place Sheffield silver thread pattern canteen from around 1947. It weighs over 446 try ounces in total, excluding the stainless steel blades and sits in its own walnut lowboy chest on cabriole legs. The estimate is €10,000-€15,000.
There is an extensive selection of 150 lots of silver at Adam’s, over half from a single Irish vendor, along with antique furniture, mirrors, porcelain and art. A lithograph poster by Alphonse Mucha with Sarah Bernhardt playing Photina in La Samaritaine by Edmond Rostand is among a number of collectible in a sale with more than 500 lots.
At Keigherys a Waterford Crystal Dublin Castle chandelier (€2,500-€3,500) and an Arts and Crafts silver porringer (€1,200-€1,800) are among the leading lots. More than 750 lots will come under the hammer in an auction that offers jewellery, watches, period furniture, Oriental rugs, mirrors and two large pitch pine refectory tables. Both auctions are now on view and the catalogues are online.
An Arts and Crafts silver porringer with green glass liner at Keighery’s. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
SONJA LANDWEER (1933 – 2018) – BLISTERED OVOID (c2010). UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
This monochrome earthenware piece by Sonja Landweer is at Sheppards sale of Important Irish Art on the evening of February 24. Viewing for the 310 lots sale gets underway in Durrow today and the catalogue is online. The auction includes a curated selection of works from the studio of the late Barrie Cooke and Sonja Landweer. It is centred on the Co. Antrim collection of Gerry Cuddy featuring key figures in modern Irish painting. Bistered Ovoid is estimated at €3,000-€5,000.
Roderic O’Conor – Le Loing at Sundown c1902. UPDATE: THIS MADE €245,000 AT HAMMER
Le Loing at Sundown by Roderic O’Conor will lead Whyte’s sale of Irish and International art in Dublin on March 9. The museum worthy work is the catalogue cover lot for the sale. Valued at €150,000-€200,000 it is also the most expensively estimated lot of 129 in the auction. In the autumn of 1902 O’Conor revisited Montigny, a small town on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau where that he captured the mysterious half light with the sun sitting low on the horizon. O’Conor author Jonathan Benington describes how the works executed at this time were “…characterised by a highly painterly handling of the oil medium, from translucent stains to textured scumblings and thicker calligraphic strokes.”
Liam O’Neill (b.1954) – Turf Cutters. UPDATE: THIS MADE €16,000 AT HAMMER
Turf Cutters by Liam O’Neill is at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online Irish art auction which ends on February 23. Once a source of fuel for home heating and cooking that was widely used in Ireland turf cutting has been banned or restricted on specific bogs. It can no longer be sold commercially, though gifting or exchanging turf between neighbours is permitted. This oil on canvas, which dates to 1994, is estimated at €8,000-€10,000. The catalogue for the auction is online.
Wassily Kandinsky – Le rond rouge (The red circle) (1939). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £12,545,000
Wassily Kandinsky’s large scale canvas Le rond rouge (1939) is a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st century evening sale in London on March 5. It is considered to be one of the most striking works from the final phase of his careeer. Created while the artist was living in Paris with his wife Nina, Le rond rouge captures the vibrancy and dynamism of his mature abstract language at a moment of profound artistic renewal.
After leaving Germany in 1933 to escape the increasingly hostile political climate, Kandinsky settled in Paris, where he immersed himself in the fervent avant-garde art circles of the city. His Parisian years were also marked by a significant shift in style, as he developed a new visual vocabulary that pushed his work in unexpected directions. It remained in his collection until his death in 1944 and has had an extensive exhibition history. Most recently Le rond rougewas on long-term loan to The Courtauld Gallery in London for sixteen years, between 2002-2018. The estimate is £10,500,000-15,500,000.
Lucio Fontana – Teatrino 1964. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
No less than five seminal works by Lucio Fontana from a private German collection, along with pieces by Alberto Giacometti and Sam Francis, will lead the Contemporary evening sale at Sotheby’s in London on March 4. The seven works have a combined estimate of £15 million.
Sotheby’s describe it as the most complete survey of Fontana’s groundbreaking research to come to market in recent memory.
The breadth of Fontana’s experimentation during his most revolutionary years is exposed in work ranging from early punctures that questioned the confines of the picture plane to the dramatic cuts that transformed gesture into a three dimensional space. Most were acquired through the avant garde Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf, where the inaugural 1957 exhibition included the then unknown 29 year old Yves Klein. Fontana’s first solo exhibition here in 1960 was as influential as it was innovative. His language quickly resonated far beyond Europe, informing the work of artists like Klein, Anish Kapoor, Robert Irwin, Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. In their own way each extended the spatial and perceptual possibilities opened by Fontana.
