Jakob Van Der Goten (1659-1724) – Orpheus Playing a Lyre, by a Water Garden with Canals, Fountain and Classical Buildings UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
This c1720 Antwerp tapestry by Jakob Van Der Goten comes up as lot 1470 at Fonsie Mealy’s Chatsworth Summer Fine Art sale on June 14, 15 and 16. Measuring 8’7″ x 13’8″ it was purchased in 1991 from the Marble Hall, Powderham Castle, Devon. It is estimated at €8,000-€12,000. A total of 1,476 lots of fine furniture, antiques, silver, ceramics, objets d’Art, paintings, Old Masters, clocks, taxidermy, jewellery, fireplaces, musical instruments, carpets and light fittings will come under the hammer. Viewing gets underway in Castlecomer on June 9 and the catalogue is online.
Psyche or the Legend of Love by Mary Tighe. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £7,012.50
This is James Barry’s inscribed copy of Mary Tighe’s Psyche of the Legend of Love. The author’s presentation copy of the 1805 private edition is inscribed for the painter James Barry. Irish romantic poet Mary Tighe (1772-1810) never lived to experience the esteem she enjoys today. She wrote one work only, Psyche or the Legend of Love, which was released in 1805 in a private edition of fifty copies for family and friends. This copy comes up at Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts sale in London on June 22 with an estimate of £4,000-6,000.
Matthew Haley, Bonhams Head of Books and Manuscripts, said: “Mary Tighe was a seminal figure in Irish and indeed British Romanticism. She had many influential admirers during her short life including Thomas Moore, Joseph Cooper Walker and the Ladies of Llangollen but chronic ill health restricted her output to Psyche or the Legend of Love. Earlier this year Bonhams sold a notebook manuscript of her poems, so it is a particular pleasure to be offering this sumptuously-bound copy of the printed work.”
This Wisteria Transom window from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Long Island estate, Laurelton Hall, comes up at Christie’s in New York on June 10) with an estimate of $700,000-$1,000,000. Made around 1905 it is the only window from the iconic seven pane transom at the dining room of his home in private hands. The window will highlight a sale of masterworks from the Garden Museum. This single owner sale presents one of the greatest Tiffany collections in existence. It was amassed in the 1990’s by the Japanese businessman Takeo Horiuchi, who endeavoured to open a museum dedicated to Tiffany. Among the highlights are a peacock window and clematis skylights, a yellow rose floor lamp and a dragonfly and waterflowers table lamp formerly in the collection of Barbra Streisand.
UPDATE: THE SALE OF TIFFANY MASTERWORKS FROM THE GARDEN MUSEUM TOTALLED $6.6 MILLION
Diego Giacometti designed door knocker (€80,000-120,000). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR €151,200
The almost unbelievable style involved in owning a door knocker by Diego Giacometti speaks volumes about Hubert de Givenchy – a collector with a unique taste for mixing and matching modernity and classicism.
Deeply rooted in the culture of his country the world renowned couturier always considered furniture in dialogue with works of art. His magnificent homes – Hôtel d’Orrouer in Paris and Château du Jonchet in the Loire Valley – display the fruits of this hugely successful quest for an ideal of classical beauty. Starting this week the collection of Hubert de Givenchy comes up at four live auctions and two online sales at Christie’s in Paris. With 1,229 lots of extraordinary variety and richness put together with impeccable good taste the overall estimate is in the region of €50 million. There are nearly 200 paintings including works by Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Claudio Bravo, Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters: over 100 sculptures with examples by Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Francois Girardon, Francois-Xavier Lalanne and Janine Janet and more than 440 pieces of seat furniture by makers and designers from the 18th to the 20th century.
A late 18th century desk with mechanism by David Roentgen (Louis XVI and the Count of Provence each owned a version, there is one at Buckingham Palace and at the Palace of Versailles. (€500,000-800,000). UPDATE: THIS MADE €1,750,000 AT HAMMER
Online auctions – the art of living and the art of hospitality – get underway on June 8 and run to June 22 and June 23 respectively. There will be four live auctions on successive days beginning with masterpieces on June 14. With a remarkable gathering of nearly 800 pieces of French and European furniture Christie’s promise that these sales will be unmissable. Among masterpieces of classical furniture from the French Regency period to the Neoclassical and beyond is a Regence console from the collection of Coco Chanel who frequently invited him for dinner. A pot pourri vase is thought to have been acquired by the King of Naples around 1780 and a pair of monumental girandoles attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire were made for Tsar Paul I of Russia.
Louis XVI gilt-beechwood bergère stamped by N.-Quinibert Foliot, c1770 with fabric design by Georges Braque (€6,000 – 10,000). UPDATE: THIS MADE €157,500
A Louis XVI bergere with a textile designed by Georges Braque is one example of his taste for re-upholstering antique furniture with modern textiles. He loved the colour green for its calming and relaxing properties and a natural sponge painted in green by Charles Sevigny is a nod to another master of the art of mixing modern and classical works. There are masterpieces of modern art from his friend and collaborator Alberto Giacometti whose Woman Walking is estimated at €20-€30 million. This piece greeted visitors to the first drawing room in the home of Givenchy and Philippe Venet on Rue de Grenelle. A key painting by Joan Miro is titled Passage of the Migratory Bird and there are several works by Alberto’s brother Diego Giacometti (whose door knocker was at Château du Jonchet) and more contemporary pieces by Claudio Bravo and Francois-Xavier Lalanne. It promises to be a sale to remember, well worth exploring online.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for March 10, 2022)
THIS painting of three catholic priests murdered by British Crown Forces a century ago comes up at O’Donovan’s sale in Newcastlewest, Co. Limerick onJune 11. It emerged from the attic of an estate in Limerick along with ten editions of the South Western Command War News (August-October 1922) and four editions of the Limerick War News (July and August 2022). Enniskeane native Fr. James O’Callaghan, cc Clogheen, Cork was shot dead in May 1921 aged 36; Canon Thomas Magner (73), the parish priest in Dunmanway, was murdered in December 1920. Local man Tadgh Crowley was murdered on the same day. Fr. Michael Griffin (29) of Gurteen, Co. Galway was abducted from his house at Rahoon, Galway in November 1920. His body was. discovered six days later.
EARLY 19TH CENTUY IRISH MAHOGANY FOLD OVER TEA TABLE. UPDATE: THIS MADE 700 AT HAMMER
THIS c1820 tea table comes up at Hegarty’s online sale in Bandon, Co. Cork on June 7. Estimated at 800-1,200 it is from the Martello Tower at Cobh and the Haughton family collection. Benjamin Haughton of the well known Quaker family in Cork was an independent member of Seanad Éireann from 1922 – 1928. He was one of a small deputation of business people who went to London to meet with Prime Minister Lloyd George in 1920 in an attempt to seek peace in Ireland. His relative James Haughton was a prominent figure in the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society. The sale will include a selection of antique furniture, silver, jewellery and collectibles including a number of lots from the Haughton family.
Pair of Irish carved giltwood compartmental Console Mirrors, UPDATE: THESE MADE 11,000 AT HAMMER
This pair of Irish giltwood mirrors attributed to James Hicks of Dublin will feature at Fonsie Mealy’s Chatsworth summer fine art sale on June 14, 15 and 16. Each one is around eight feet high and crested with stylised shell and flowers. There is trellis work and interlaced ribbons and foliage on the outer panels and they are estimated at 7,000-9,000. The catalogue for this sale of 1,478 lots is online now.
THIS exceptional three tiered moulded stone French fountain is the top lot at the summer garden sale by Victor Mee on June 15. The surround is decorated with shells and lion’s masks and is estimated at 5,000-10,000. The online sale of 430 lots features benches, planters, animal models, statues, gazebos and various objects designed to enhance the garden. UPDATE: THIS MADE 6,000 AT HAMMER
The obstacles faced by James Joyce (1882-1941) in publishing his landmark modernist novel Ulysses would have tested the ingenuity of the hero of the Ancient World after whom the book is named. Judged too risqué to pass the draconian British obscenity laws, the novel was eventually published 100 years ago this year in Paris by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company, in an edition of 1,000. The original plan to publish on February 2 (Joyce’s 40th birthday) was thwarted by technical issues over the colour of the cover – the writer specified the blue of the Greek flag – and so only two copies were produced that day. To compound the problems, Beach seems to have forgotten to order the extra copies for the press. There should have been 40 press copies but in the event only 13 were produced – unbound and on very poor-quality paper. One of them with a fascinating history of its own is to be sold at Bonhams Fine Books and Manuscripts sale in London on June 22. It is estimated at £30,000-50,000.
Bonhams Head of Books and Manuscripts, Matthew Haley, said: “The history of this press copy is as dramatic as the publication of Ulysses itself. It had been sent for review to Jack Squire, editor of the London Mercury. No fan of the Modernists, (the feeling was mutual, Virginia Woolf calling him ‘more repulsive than words can express’), Squire took one look at the novel and ordered his secretary to burn it. But the book was bulky, the stove small and she soon gave up. Some years later this copy, by then incomplete, was found in a cupboard by Squire’s assistant editor, Alan Pryce-Jones, who, defying a further order to consign it to the flames, smuggled it to safety.”
This poetry book signed and inscribed by the Irish patriot Roger Casement on the eve of his execution is at €7,000-10,000 the most expensively estimated lot at Mullen’s Collector’s Cabinet live and online auction on May 28. Lot 104, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland published by Burns & Oates, London, c.1900 was gifted by Casement to his confessor in Pentonville Prison. Inscribed by Casement in English and Irish it reads: ” For Father Murnane”, above four stanzas of a poem by Casement, signed with initials ‘R.C.’ and “2 August 1916 – in Pentonville”. Roger Casement was hanged at Pentonville Prison at dawn on 3 August 1916.
There are 537 lots of history, militaria and collectibles including sporting memorabilia and toys in the auction. Lot 1 is the upper section of the skull of a Great Irish Elk on a custom made stand.
