antiquesandartireland.com

Paul Henry’s The Lake is the prime lot at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on November 25.   Painted in 1928 it is a classical west of Ireland landscape and is estimated at 80,000-100,000. The sale represents a broad cross section of Irish art, including contemporary art.  The catalogue, with 228 lots, is online.  Here is a small selection.

Painted in 1915 Sir William Orpen’s portait of Lady Idina Wallace, characterised as The Bolter in three novels by Nancy Mitford, sold for £962,500 at Sotheby’s in London this afternoon. It had been estimated at £800,000-1.2 million.

At the same British and Irish Art sale William Scott’s Blue and White sold for £482,500.  The Bog Road by Paul Henry and Loiterers by Walter Frederick Osborne each sold for £62,250.  Two works by Louis le Brocquy, Child Against a White Wall and The Family sold respectively for £52,250 and £50,oo0.  The top estimate for each was £50,000. A le Broquy Tapestry, The Garlanded Goat, failed to find a buyer.

Sotheby’s auction of British and Irish art realized £7,178,252.  The top lot was Proserpine, a defining image of the Pre-Raphaelite movement  by Dante Gabriel Rosetti which sold for £3,274,500, a record for the artist at auction.  Orpen’s portrait was the second most expensive lot in the auction. It was the strongest and highest price for an early 20th century Irish picture since 2007 and the second highest price for a work by the artist at auction.

 

(See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for October 29, 2013 and July 12, 2013).

Andy Warhol’s Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) sold for $105.4 at Sotheby’s in New York last night. This is a new auction record for a Warhol.  It was the top lot in a contemporary art sale which brought in $394.1 million.  There were 61 lots on offer and 54 were sold, leaving just seven unsold. It brings the total from sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s over the past two nights to over one billion dollars.  While there are new collectors and museums at these stellar levels it has to be said that investors looking to diversify assets are a major force in a contemporary art market which is growing hotter by the month.

A group of paintings from hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen made around $77 million.  The group was headed by an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter  entitled A.B. Courbet which sold for $26.5 million. Steven Cohen’s firm has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and agreed to pay $1.8 billion to settle charges of insider trading.

A 24 part work on paper from 1959 entitled Poems to the Sea by Cy Twombly sold for a record $21.7 million; Untitled, Yellow Tar and Feathers by Jean Michel Basquiat made $25,925,000; Warhol’s Liz 1 (Early Coloured Liz) made $20,325,000: By Twos by Barnett Newman made $20,605,000 and Untitled V by Willem de Kooning made $24,805,000.