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    SPECTACULAR DUBLIN INTERIOR TO BE AUCTIONED OFF BY ADAMS

    Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

    PAIR OF LOUIS XVI GILTWOOD FRAMED MARQUISE ARMCHAIRS, by JEAN BAPTISTE III LELARGE (1743-1802) AT ADAMS. UPDATE: THESE WERE UNSOLD.

    Precious objects from a spectacular interior at one of the most graceful squares in Ireland come under the hammer at Adams on June 21.  The contents of 24 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin will be on view in situ over the preceding three days.

    Kevin and Rose Kelly, synonymous with glossy publications such as World of Interiors and Image, are downsizing.  They are disposing of contents amassed over 40 years of collecting.  The catalogue for the 590 lot sale is on-line.
    The collection draws together paintings from the Irish, English and Dutch Schools, Fine English and French furniture, fine silver, china, objets d’art and a wide variety of decorative pieces. There is a small couture section including Dior and Chanel designer-wear.

    A LOUIS XV GILTWOOD CANAPÉ, BY E.T. NAUROY AT ADAMS. (CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE) UPDATE: THIS MADE 7,500.

    Furniture highlights include a magnificent pair of sumptuously upholstered Louis XV giltwood Marquise armchairs made by Jean Baptiste Lelarge (1743-1802). They are estimated at 40,000 plus. The Kellys purchased these chairs from Bond Street dealers, Partridge. A Louis XV ormolu mounted kingwood and tulipwood bureau plat is signed by Nicolas Petit. Purchased from Monaco dealers Sapjo it is estimated at €30,000/50,000. A Louis XV giltwood framed canapé by ebeniste E.T.Nauroy, also from Partridge, is estimated at €8,000/12,000.
    There are English, Irish and French side-tables, bookcases, a dining table and chairs, mirrors, couches, soft furnishings, garden furniture and beds complete with Lyon silk and silk damask bedspreads and canopies.
    There are 17th and 18th Century portraits include two by Dutch artist Cornelius Johnson (1593-1661) both dated c.1640 and estimated at €20,000+ each. A massive portrait by Godfrey Kneller of a young lady, believed to be the artist’s daughter, Agnes, is estimated at €25,000 +.  There is a family group believed to be of Gerrit Jacob Witszoon, Burgomaster of Delft with his wife and daughter probably painted by Michiel van Mierevelt in the early years of the 17th Century. Irish art includes watercolour sketches by Maurice MacGonigal, two oils by Grace Henry and still lifes by Nicolo Caracciolo RHA and Martin Mooney.

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    REGENCY LIBRARY TABLE FROM GALWAY ESTATE AT BONHAMS

    Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

    A Regency rosewood library table with Irish provenance at Bonhams. UPDATE: IT MADE £264,000

    A Regency rosewood library table originally from Tyrone House, an Irish estate in County Galway, is to be sold at Bonhams, as part of its Fine English Furniture and Works of Art Sale on June 15. Built in 1779 by Christopher St. George (1754-1826) Tyrone House was designed by Waterford architect John Roberts (1712-1796). Christopher St. George lived in the house for twenty years before passing it to his son, Arthur French, who, during the 1820s, also occupied Kilcolgan Castle. By 1905, the family was based between Dublin and America and the contents of the house were split amongst family members.  The table, estimated at £100,000 – 150,000, passed through the St. George family by descent.

    In 1921, the house was burnt down by the IRA, who believed it to be a base for the Black and Tans.   The Irish Georgian Society acquired the ruin in 1972.  It is a moody local ruin opposite the St George family mausoleum which inspired John Betjeman to write in his poem, Ireland with Emily:
    ‘There in pinnacle protection
    One extinguished family waits
    A Church of Ireland resurrection
    By the broken, rusty gates’
    UPDATE:  The library table sold for a remarkable £264,000 at Bonhams.

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    WARHOL’S DEBBIE HARRY AT SOTHEBY’S IN JUNE

    Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

    Debbie Harry by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) (copyright Sotheby's). (Click on image to enlarge) UPDATE: IT MADE £3,737,250

    Andy Warhol’s 1980 acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas of Debbie Harry, lead singer with Blondie, heads Sotheby’s sale of Contemporary Art in London on June 29.  Debbie Harry became a friend of the artist after they met in Manhattan.  In an interview with Cheyenne Westphal, Sotheby’s Chairman of Contemporary Art Europe, she described what it was like to sit for Warhol: “He was the master of understatement. He’d say ‘Try looking over here’. He was very softly spoken and used a funny Polaroid portrait camera. It was an easy environment and not really a pressured situation. He made it very easy.”

    Selected as the cover image for the major survey of Warhol’s portraiture published by Phaidon in 2005, Debbie Harry, from 1980, is one of Warhol’s most accomplished portraits of celebrity. One of only four such portraits of the Blondie star in this rare 42 inches format – two of which are in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh – this pink version has become one of the best recognised images in Warhol’s oeuvre and the definitive portrait of the 1980s style icon.
    It is from a European private collection and is estimated at  £3.5-5.5 million.  The sale coincides with the release of Blondie’s new album Panic of Girls.
    Sotheby’s has also announced that it will offer a group of works by Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George and Angus Fairhurst from the collection of award winning musician, songwriter and record producer Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics.  He is a friend of Damien Hirst.  The seven artworks – estimated to bring in £1.3 million – will be included in the contemporary art evening and day auctions on June 29 and 30. The collection will be led by Dantrolene, an early Hirst pharmaceutical painting and one of the largest one inch spot paintings to appear at auction in latter years. It is estimated at  £600,000-800,000.
    UPDATE: IT MADE £3,737,250

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    AL CAPONE’S .38 REVOLVER AT CHRISTIE’S

    Monday, June 6th, 2011

    Al Capone's revolver. (click on image to enlarge)

    Al Capone’s .38 revolver leads Christie’s arms and armour sale at South Kensington, London on June 22.  The .38 (Special) ‘Police Positive” nickel plated six-shot double action revolver was manufactured by Colt.  It has chequered walnut grips and retains nearly all its original nickel-plated finish. The serial number is 384221.

    Al Capone  (1899 –1947) is one of the most famous American gangsters. The stereotypical mobster image – blue pinstripe suit, tilted fedora – is based upon photographs of Capone, and his personality has been used as a template for copious fictional criminal masterminds. He once observed that:   “You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone”.
    The revolver is accompanied by a copy of an affidavit sworn on March 25,1990 by Madeleine Capone Morichetti, widow of Ralph Capone. This states that: “Ralph Capone became the custodian and owner of a certain Colt Police Positive .38 Special Revolver, serial no. 384221, being nickel plates with a wood handle, which revolver was acquired from and was the property of his brother Al Capone”. The affidavit also states that, according to Ralph’s wishes, upon his death the revolver was to be passed to one Edmund Koeski which it was in 1976.
    Estimated at £50,000-70,000 it will be sold with a further 209 lots, dating from the 10th century to the 20th century with individual estimates from £300 to £85,000.
    UPDATE:  The revolver sold for £67,250.  It was the top lot in a sale which realised £634,825.

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    IRISH ART SEASON BRINGS IN 6 MILLION AND A TALE OF THREE HENRY’S

    Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
    The value of Irish art which has changed hands in the current season of sales amounts to around 6 million euro.  James Adam brought in around 1.1 million on June 1, Whyte’s and de Veres brought in 700,000 and 400,000 respectively in May, the Irish artists at Christie’s sale of British and Irish art on May 26 (including Sir John Lavery and William Scott) accounted for another 1.3 million euro and Sotheby’s annual Irish sale at the end of March brought in 2.1 million euro.  These bigger players achieved around 5.6 million.
    To this total must be added the achievements of smaller auction houses like Morgan O’Driscoll and Dolans which hold dedicated art sales and tend to deal in names that are less stellar.   In addition Irish art is a latter day mainstay of antique auctions around the country and features to a greater or lesser extent at most sales. All this increases the overall total. The six million euro figure is probably slightly conservative.

    Christie's

    Whyte's

    Adams

    These not dissimilar West of Ireland landscapes by Paul Henry boosted results at Christie’s, Whytes and Adams where they sold for £79,250, 106,000 euro and 110,000 euro respectively.
    Christie’s sold the single most expensive Irish artwork to change hands at auction thus far in 2011 when they achieved £657,250  for Sir John Lavery’s Played!!  Sotheby’s achieved the highest total for any Irish sale over the past two years.  Roderic O’Conor’s Landscape, Cassis was the top lot at Sotheby’s where it made £337,250.
    This website will make two comments on these results. The first is that these totals are highly respectable given that Ireland continues to be in deep recession.  The second is that the Irish art market urgently needs to find new ways of promoting in the salesrooms more contemporary Irish art. The best of Paul Henry, along with Yeats, Orpen, Lavery, O’Conor, Osborne , le Brocquy et all, is highly bankable, especially in recession.  But these are not the only Irish artists who deserve an outlet in the salesrooms. There is no shortage in Ireland of available quality work by contemporary artists. Many more are waiting in the wings for the recognition that is properly their due. The focus of the Irish art market is too narrow. This problem needs to be addressed by everyone involved in the art market in an effective way if stagnation is to be avoided in the salesrooms.

    See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for May 29, May 28, May 27, May 20, May 19 and March 29.

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    MICHELANGELO DRAWING AT CHRISTIE’S

    Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

    Michelangelo drawing. © Christie’s Images Limited 2011. (Click on image to enlarge) UPDATE: IT MADE £3,177,250

    A rarely seen drawing by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)  features at Christie’s Old Masters and British Paintings sale on July 5 in London.

    The preparatory study is one of only 24 sheets related to his lost commission of The Battle of Cascina – and the last to remain in private hands. Michelangelo was pitched directly alongside his elder rival Leonardo da Vinci who was commissioned to paint The Battle of Cascina on the opposite wall of the newly-built Sala del Gran Consiglio in Florence’s Palazzo della Signoria.

    The drawing has been seen in public only once before at the exhibition of the artist’s drawings at the Albertina, Vienna, in 2010.
    In the same collection for over 30 years it is being offered at auction for the first time. It is expected to realise £3 million to £5 million.
    UPDATE: IT MADE £3,177,250

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    THE STORY OF THE HUNT AT ADAMS AND ANOTHER STORY

    Sunday, May 29th, 2011

    The Story of the Hunt by Thomas Hovenden. (click on image to enlarge) UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR 47,000

    THE Story of the Hunt by Thomas Hovenden at the Adams Irish art sale in Dublin on June 1 is a rare example of work by the Cork born artist at auction.
    Thomas Hovenden was born in Dunmanway in December 1840, son of the town goaler. Orphaned in the Great Famine at the age of 6 he was placed in the Cork Orphanage. Later he was apprenticed to George Tolerton, a carver and gilder in Cork, who noted his skill at draughtsmanship.  Tolerton paid for him to attend the Cork School of Art which promoted ideas of aestheticism and the teachings of John Ruskin. Hovenden advanced his draughtsmanship by sketching the school’s collection of Antonio Canova’s plaster cast statuary and painting plein air watercolours.  A medal winning student he graduated in 1862.
    Hovenden arrived in America at the end of the Civil War and rose to fame painting patriotic scenes in sympathy with the American version of Victorian values, and later  for paintings of African Americans during the Abolitionist movement. Among his works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection are The Last Moments of John Brown. His work features in the collections of the Yale University Art Gallery, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
    He studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under Alexandre Cabanel.  He was sent there with funding from the art collector John McCoy and his business partner William Walters.  From there he went to Pont Aven where he met Irish artists and his future wife, Helen Corson.  He returned to America in 1881 and became  a member of the Society of American Artists (1881), the Philadelphia Society of Artists (1883) and an Associate member of the National Academy of Design (1881). He succeeded Thomas Eakins as Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1886-88) and his students included Alexander Calder and the leader of the Ashcan School, Robert Henri. Around the time of his untimely death in 1895  in an accident – he died saving a child on a railway track – academic painting went out of fashion and so he was soon to be forgotten.
    Painted in Brittany in 1880 The Story of the Hunt is estimated at 50,000-70,000.
    UPDATE:  THIS SOLD FOR A HAMMER PRICE OF 47,000.
    See posts on antiquesandartireland.com for May 20, 2011 and September 11, 2010.

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    KEATING SCENES FROM SYNGE’S PLAYBOY AT WHYTES

    Saturday, May 28th, 2011

    Sean Keating's illustration for The Playboy of the Western World at Whyte's. UPDATE: THIS MADE 41,000

    These illustrations from April 1922 are from five oils by Sean Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977) of  scenes from J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.  The images feature as lots 33 to 37 in Whyte’s sale of Irish Art in Dublin on May 30.  They feature models of contemporary Irish actors and actresses.
    The artist makes an appearance in the images as Christy Mahon’s father. Keating even posed nude in the image of lot number 37.

    This Sean Keating illustration is estimated at 15,000-20,000. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD.

    An important commission for the artist, they formed part of his own collection.  He exhibited in them in various venues in the late 1920’s.  They were published by George Allen and Unwin, London, in 1927.
    Lot 33 (illustrated on the left), estimated at 30,000-40,000,  featured on a commemorative stamp issued by An Post in 2009 to mark the centenary of the death of Synge.  The five works are variously estimated at between 15,000 and 40,000.
    UPDATE:  Only one of these five oils sold. The auction grossed over 700,000 with a sell rate of 73%.

    See post on antiquesandartireland.com for May 19.

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    LAVERY LEADS IRISH ART AT CHRISTIE’S SALE IN LONDON

    Friday, May 27th, 2011

    Paul Henry's West of Ireland Cottages made £79,250 at Christie's on May 26.

    Paul Henry's An Old Man from Connacht made £34,850 at Christies.

    THE leading Irish artwork at Christie’s sale in London was Sir John Lavery’s Played !! which made £657,250. Another Lavery, Mary in Black, sold for £61,250.

    Sir John Lavery’s Played!! made £657,250.
    (Click on image to enlarge)

    © Christie’s Images Limited 2011

    Paul Henry’s West of Ireland cottages  made £79,250 over an estimate of £30,000-50,000. Other works by Paul Henry, R.H.A. (1876-1958) sold were An Old Man from Connacht which made  £34,850 and An Old Woman which sold for  £34,850.

    Portrait of Dorelia by Augustus John made £15,000 .

    A Still Life by William Scott made £337,250 and Untitled 1961 by William Scott made £12,500.  Portraits of Miss Joanna Yorke and Miss Lisa Yorke by Louis le Brocquy made £16,500.

    The 20th Century British & Irish Art sale realised £17,877,500,  the highest total ever achieved for the category. (See antiquesandartireland.com post for May 26)

    CHRISTIE’S BIENNALE APP

    Christie’s has created the first ever complete app guide to the Venice Art Biennale and are happy to offer it for free to any art lover.  They say Christie’s Biennale App will revolutionise the way visitors experience the Venice Art Biennale this summer.  The 54th International Art Exhibition runs from June 4 to November 27 at the Giardini, the Arsenale  and venues around Venice.
    For your free download go to:
    www.christies.com/on-the-go/mobile/iphone.aspx#biennale

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    NEW WORLD RECORD FOR L.S. LOWRY AT CHRISTIE’S

    Thursday, May 26th, 2011

    The Football Match by Laurence Stephen Lowry (1949) made a new world record price for the artist at Christies. (Click on image to enlarge)

    There was a new world record for the artist L.S. Lowry at Christie’s in London on May 29. The Football Match, which dates from 1949, made  £5,641,250, against a pre-sale estimate of £3.5million to 4.5 million. This is the highest price ever paid in the 20th Century British Art category. It went to a European private buyer.

    The previous record for the artist was set at Christie’s in 2007 with Good Friday, Daisy Nook , 1946.  It made £3,772,000 and a then record for 20th century British art.
    At the same sale a tennis painting by Sir John Lavery, R.A., R.S.A., R.H.A. (1856-1941) entitled Played!! made £657,250 against an estimate of £600,000-800,000.  It was bought by a UK private bidder.  The painting was last sold at Christie’s Irish Sale in 2001, when it made £575,750.
    A 1951 work by William Scott (1913-1989) entitled Still Life made £337,250 against an estimate of  £300,000 – 500,000.

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