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A group of four works from the collection of Ralph C. Wilson jnr., founder of the Buffalo Bills NFL franchise, will lead Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in London on June 23.  The collection is highlighted by two paintings by Claude Monet.  Ralph Wilson was best known as the longtime owner of the Buffalo Bills. He was also a passionate collection of art.  Seeking out the finest examples he acquired these four examples in the 1990’s. Monet’s La Seine a Argenteuil is estimated at £7-10 million while his 1888 view of Antibes has an estimate of £6-8 million; Jeunes Femme dan les Fleurs by Edouard Manet is estimated at £4-6 million and Les Bords du Loing by Alfred Sisley is estimated at £1-1.5 million.

CLAUDE MONET (1840 – 1926)
LA SEINE À ARGENTEUIL  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £8,358,500

ALFRED SISLEY (1839 – 1899)
LES BORDS DU LOING  UPDATE: THIS MADE £1,082,500

Francis Bacon
Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer (on Light Ground)  (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)  UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR £26,682,500

An outstanding example by Francis Bacon – Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer (on light ground) – will come up at Sotheby’s in London on  June 30.  The small scale triptych dates from 1964 and is estimated at £15-20 million. It is one of only five known depictions of Dyer in this intimate format reserved by the artist for what are widely regarded as the most profoundly personal and  intense portraits of the 20th century.  The record for a small scale triptych by Bacon is £23 million set at Sotheby’s in London in 2011 for his portrait of Lucian Freud.

The rare lifetime depiction of Dyer, the man who was the love of Bacon’s life at the moment when they were most deeply involved, is full of the painterly exuberance that marks out Bacon as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century.  The work is a counterpoint to the black portraits of Dyer painted in the early 1970’s.  Their affair began in 1963. In the autumn of 1971 they travelled to Paris for the major Bacon retrospective at the Grand Palais. Barely 36 hours before the opening George Dyer was found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in their hotel suite.   Grief stricken and haunted, Bacon continued to paint Dyer for a number of years.

This museum quality work is in all likelihood the first painting for which Bacon used the legendary photographs by his friend John Deakin as the source material.  In early 1964 Bacon commissioned Deakin, a former Vogue photographer and a drinking pal,  to take photos of Dyer and other regulars at Soho’s Colony Room. These photographs had a huge influence on his portraits from then on. The painting, which has been in the same collection since 1970, comes to auction for the first time ever. 

The portrait study by van Dyck.  UPDATE: THIS FAILED TO SELL.

A portrait study by Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), recently re-discovered on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow, will be offered at Christie’s Old Master & British Paintings sale on July 8.  Bought by Fr. James MacLeod at an antiques shop in Cheshire for just £400 twelve years ago the work is estimated at £300,000-500,000.  It is a preparatory sketch for van Dyck’s full-length group portrait of The Magistrates of Brussels painted in 1634-35. 

The proceeds of the sale will go towards the acquisition of new church bells for Whaley Hall Ecumenical Retreat House in Derbyshire to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War.

UPDATE: THE WORK FAILED TO SELL

Roderic O’Conor’s Chemin Menant a Grez was the top lot at the highly successful James Adam sale of Imortant Irish Art in Dublin on May 28.  It made a hammer price of 210,000. O’Conor’s Landscape with Garden and Mountain made 36,000 and his Landscape with Trees made 25,000 at hammer.  The fourth, a nude, was unsold.

Cuchalainn IV, a tapestry by Louis le Brocquy sold for 120,000

Jack Butler Yeats – A Dusty Rose sold for 62,000

Beero by William Conor sold for 97,000

Sean Scully – Passenger Line, Black sold for 80,000

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)
HOME WITH THE CATCH

Gerard Dillon’s Home with the Catch was the top lot at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish art in Dublin on May 26.   The  classic west of Ireland image made a hammer price of 60,000.  The work depicts a young family making their way home through the village with the daily catch of fish. The artist first visited the west in 1939 and became enchanted by the people and the scenery.  This was a major theme of his work throughout the 1940’s and ’50’s.  Colin Middleton’s Seated Figure made 25,000 and Trees by Mary Swanzy sold for 22,000.

Among the international artists in the sale Andy Warhol’s Be a Somebody with a Body sold for 50,000 and Love is in the Air by Banksy made 15,000.

(See posts on antiquesandartireland,com for May 22 and May 17, 2014)

Andy Warhol (USA, 1928-1987)
BE A SOMEBODY WITH A BODY, 1985

Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978)
TREES

Colin Middleton MBE RHA (1910-1983)
SEATED FIGURE: 6.72 [1972]