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    • MINING ROMANCE FROM UNREDEEMED PLEDGES AT MATTHEWS

    February 10th, 2024
    A diamond set ruby mounted on a platinum ring at Matthews. UPDATE: THIS MADE €2,450 at hammer

    Can romance be mined from unredeemed pledges?  It might be just possible to come up with the answer to this teasing question in time for Valentine’s Day at Matthews jewellery, gold and silver auction on February 11  The sale will feature executor’s lots, pieces from private clients and unredeemed pawnbrokers pledges with plenty to choose from among 593 lots. A ruby diamond set cluster on a platinum ring or an 18 carat white gold diamond set sapphire and ruby brooch, each estimated at €2,500-€3,500, are laden with sparkling romantic potential.  Or if you are not superstitious how about a pear cut sapphire and 13 diamond set pendant (€2,000-€3,000).   There are bracelets, rings, diamond solitaires, necklaces, earrings, chokers, watches and objects of all sorts with which to express your love, so it is over to you.

    A pear cut sapphire and diamond set pendant at Matthews. UPDATE: THIS MADE €1,900 AT HAMMER

    Undoubtedly the best value to be had at auctions these days is in everyday antique furniture.  There is no shortage of choice at upcoming sales.   A classic and contemporary interiors timed online sale by Mullen’s of Laurel Park in Bray kicks off at  6 pm on February 11 with a 19th century cast iron hawthorn pattern garden seat with an estimate of just €200-€300.  A Georgian inlaid side table is estimated at just €600-€800, a pair of 19th century butlers trays on stands come with an estimate of €400-€600 and a vintage satin birch chest is estimated at just €80-€150.

    One of a pair of 19th century butler’s trays at Mullen’s. UPDATE: THIS LOT MADE 520 AT HAMMER

    There are lots of other examples of good value furniture here including  a Georgian demi lune side table (€100-€200), a brass bound secretaire chest (€200-€300), a 19th century three tier dumb waiter (€80-€120), a Georgian drop leaf table (€100-€200) and a Chippendale style mahogany desk (€200-€300). Meanwhile at Newcastlewest in Co. Limerick the sale by O’Donovan’s on February 18 will offer over 300 lots mostly to be sold without reserve.  Among them is an oriental dinner gong with brass hanging drum (€125-€150), a Victorian oak hall stand with bevelled mirror (€40-€60), a New York made mantle clock with pendulum (€40-€60), a Georgian sideboard (€175-€250) and a Georgian tea caddy (€200-€300).  The sale is led by a Peter Curling watercolour titled At the end of the Plough (€1,600-€1,900).

    Cottage in the Maam Valley by Mabel Young at Fonsie Mealy. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,200 AT HAMMER

    Art by Mabel Young (1889-1974), Paul Henry’s second wife, do not crop up very often and Fonsie Mealy’s Making Room sale in Castlecomer on February 21 features an oil on board of a cottage in the Maam Valley signed by her.  It is estimated at €800-€1,200. The top lot in the sale is a large Irish Georgian serving table in the Chinese Chippendale style estimated at €2,000-€3,000.  The catalogues for all these sales are online.

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    PAULINE BOTY’S CELEBRATION OF MARILYN MONROE AT CHRISTIE’S

    February 9th, 2024
    Pauline Boty – Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give (1962). UPDATE: THIS MADE £1,050,000 AT HAMMER

    Pauline Boty’s celebratory tribute to Marilyn Monroe, Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give (1962) is among the highlights of Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art evening sale in London on March 20. One of Pop Art’s founding members, Pauline Boty died prematurely at the age of 28 in 1966. Epitaph to Something’s Gotta Give is one of only around 25 Pop paintings that Boty created and was included in a rare lifetime exhibition at Arthur Jeffress Gallery in London in 1962. The painting was gifted to a close friend of Boty’s in 1964 and has remained in the same collection since.  It is estimated at £500,000-£800,000.

    Boty painted two further depictions of Monroe as tributes to the actress following her death, both of which are held in museum collections: Colour Her Gone, 1962 (Wolverhampton Art Gallery) and The Only Blond in the World, 1963 (Tate, London). Boty studied at the Royal College of Art, the seedbed of the Pop Art movement, where she met, befriended and went on to exhibit with Sir Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, David Hockney, Peter Phillips and Patrick Caulfield. In 1961, she exhibited along with Blake and two others at the A.I.A. Gallery in a group show seen as the very first Pop Art exhibition.

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    AN IRISHMAN’S VICTORIA CROSS AT NOONAN’S IN MAYFAIR

    February 9th, 2024
    A fine Indian Mutiny ‘Clause 13’ V.C. to Rough Rider Edmond Jennings, 1st Troop, 1st Brigade, Bengal Horse Artillery, for gallantry during the Relief of Lucknow in November 1857. UPDATE: THIS MADE £55,000 AT HAMMER

    An Indian Mutiny Victoria Cross awarded to Edmond Jennings of Ballinrobe  will come up at Noonan’s in London on February 14.  It is estimated at £20,000-£30,000 (€23,400-€35,100).  It was awarded for rescuing a wounded officer while under attack and taking him to safety on his own horse.  After the event 42 year old Jennings was nominated by his fellow non-commissioned officers. Jennings enlisted in the East India Company’s service in Tullamore in 1836.

    Two Victoria Crosses are known to this recipient, the one offered for sale here, and a second one which is held by the “F” (Sphinx) Battery, 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery (the successor unit to Jennings’ original unit), together with his campaign medals. Whilst the exact reason for two Victoria Crosses named to this man is a matter of some conjecture, the most likely reason is that the first-named V.C. was sent out to India for presentation to him there (as were the other Bengal Artillery Victoria Crosses), but that once it was known that he was returning home to the U.K. Queen Victoria herself expressed a wish to personally decorate him with the V.C. at an Investiture at Windsor on 9 October 1860, and a second Cross was consequently named up (in the event Jennings’ ship had been delayed in departing India, and he did not arrive in time, thereby missing the Windsor investiture).

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    MONET’S SUMMER MORNINGS ON THE SEINE TO HIGHLIGHT CHRISTIE’S SALE

    February 8th, 2024
    Claude Monet. – Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £14,397,500

    Claude Monet’s Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897) will be a highlight Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on March 7. At auction for the first time in 45 years the work which captures a tranquil moment on The Seine with morning light casting a glow is estimated at £12-£18 million. The series to which the painting belongs, titled ‘Matinées sur la Seine’, conveys the landscape during the summer mornings of 1896 and 1897 as the light transforms the atmosphere. Tracing the sun as it passes over the scene, from the first rays of light at dawn, to the full brilliance of the sun at mid-morning, this extraordinary sequence of works was conceived as a connected, interrelated sequence of canvases. These would become some of the last scenes the artist would create of the Seine, a frequent subject in his oeuvre and one of the defining images of the Impressionist movement.  

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    EXCEPTIONAL WINES FROM THE CELLAR OF LA GAVROCHE

    February 7th, 2024
    LA GAVROCHE CELLAR

    La Gavroche, an online auction with the exceptional wine collection from the two-Michelin starred French restaurant, together with works of art and selected objects, will run at Christie’s from April 10-24. More than 100 lots from the renowned London establishment will include wine, pictures, drawings, prints, decorative objects, porcelain and silver. The restaurant closed in January, 57 years after being founded in 1967 by the Roux Brothers,Albert and Michel. The restaurant proudly boasts a prestigious roster of internationally renowned chefs who were trained within its kitchens, including Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White, Marcus Wareing and Pierre Koffmann.

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    MAGRITTE MASTERWORK TO LEAD CHRISTIE’S SURREAL SALE

    February 5th, 2024
    René Magritte –  L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) (1958) (£30,000,000-50,000,000). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £33,660,000.

    René Magritte’s L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) will highlight Christie’s Art of the Surreal evening sale in London on March 7. Presented to coincide with the centenary of the Surrealist Manifesto, penned by André Breton in October 1924, the painting comes to auction for the first time since 1980. Depicting the enigmatic bowler-hatted man, Magritte’s ‘everyman’, L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) is property from the Gilbert and Lena Kaplan Collection and was last exhibited in Brussels at the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in 1998. The estimate is £30-£50 million.

    Gilbert Kaplan was a pioneering entrepreneur who founded Institutional Investor in 1967 at the age of 25. He was also a renowned cultural connoisseur. Having established and built a commercially successful company, he celebrated its 15th anniversary, together with his own 40th birthday, by conducting Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, the Resurrection Symphony, at the Lincoln Center in New York. The debut was well received and following the sale of Institutional Investor, he went on to conduct the symphony around the world, lecturing and teaching at Juilliard. Reflecting his lifelong passion, he had a radio show on WQXR called ‘Mad About Music’. Two of the men close to Gilbert Kaplan’s heart were Gustav Mahler and René Magritte. Kaplan served on the Board of Carnegie Hall for more than 30 years and set up a fellowship programme at Harvard’s Music Department, which continues to support students today.

    The figure of a man in a bowler-hat made his first appearance in Magritte’s work in the 1926 painting Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (The Musings of a Solitary Wanderer). The figure came to function within Magritte’s oeuvre as a symbol of the bourgeois, of the anonymous, faceless masses, the everyday working man and that of the lone wanderer. In L’ami intime (The Intimate Friend) the distinctly ordinary, yet also mysteriously anonymous bowler-hatted man is seen, almost like a silhouette, from behind. Gazing out the window onto a serene, mountainous landscape and a cloud-filled sky, he appears oblivious to the strange sight of a baguette and wine glass floating in mid-air behind him.  

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    POWER OF STREET ART AT JULIEN’S

    February 5th, 2024
    Gangsta Rat Live by Banksy. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $190,500

    Gangsta Rat Live by Banksy, an aerosol on a metal door mounted in an acrylic shadow box frame, will lead Julien’s Power of Street Art auction in Los Angeles on February 15.  It was originally executed on a British Telecom street box in Liverpool in 2004 during the Biennial contemporary art festival and documented by Banksy.  It comes to market with an estimate of $80,000-$100,000 (€73,640-€92,050).The sale is a curated collection of some of the most revolutionary street art created in the shadows, streets and walls of urban spaces.  Among the artists featured are Banksy, Invader, RETNA, Jamie Reid, Billy Morrison, Louis Waldon, Jeff Hamilton and Jorge Jimenez-Deredia.  Turf Wars, Police Van Chimp and Crazy Horse, both by Banksy, are each estimated at $100,000-$200,000 (€92,050-€184,100).  There are five works by famed French street artist Invader including PA _595 attached to a wall in Paris in 2005 $8,000-$12,000 (€7,360-€11,050).  A Jamie Reid signed Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK limited edition print is estimated at $1,000-$2,000 (€920-€1,840).

    UPDATE: Iconic masterpieces from two of the art world’s revolutionary enfants terribles and superstars, Banksy and Invader, were the top sellers at an auction netting a total of nearly $900,000.

    Jamie Reid signed Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK print. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

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    OVERWINTERING ON THE MOON AT TAYLOR GALLERIES

    February 4th, 2024
    Beatrice O’Connell  –  Large Colony Collapses, screenprint, acrylic ink and oil on canvas

    Overwintering on the Moon is the title of an exhibition by Beatrice O’Connell at Taylor Galleries in Dublin until February 17.  These new mixed media works examine bionomic behaviour and interconnectivity in the face of the climate crisis and includes monochrome images of bees.

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    WHISKEY MEMORABILIA AND LITERARY LINK AT VICTOR MEE

    February 3rd, 2024
     A rare Sir John Power and Sons Dublin Whiskey mirror  UPDATE: THIS MADE 12,000 AT HAMMER

    The market for collectibles is strong so there are high expectations around an etched framed Sir John Power and Son Dublin Whiskey advertising mirror at Victor Mee’s sale in Belturbet, Co. Cavan and online. This is a rarity in a sale on February 6 and 7 which will include the pub memorabilia collection of Cannons of Castlebar.  The  gilded lettering is by William Cleland of Belfast and there is an original paper label attached.  Such is the demand  for lots of this calibre that the estimate is a cool €8,000-€12,000.  The mirror is lot 100 in an auction with over 1200 lots due to get underway each day at 5.30 pm.

    An Allman’s of Bandon reverse painted glass advertising sign. UPDATE: THIS MADE 500 AT HAMMER

    Not everything is as expensive as this.  But there should be local interest down south in lot 164, an Allman’s of Bandon Fine Old Irish Whisky reverse painted glass advertising sign with an estimate of just €200-€300.  Allman’s produced whisky, Powers adds an “e” to make it whiskey, which is more generally the spelling used in Ireland.  Either way it is good stuff. Lot 625 is a framed political print of the capture of Thomas Kent in Fermoy and it is estimated at just €50-€80.  He was the only person outside of Dublin apart from Roger Casement to be executed for his role in the Easter Rising and the railway station in Cork, formerly Glanmire Road Station, was renamed Kent Station in his honour in 1966 on the 50th anniversary of the Rising.

    A framed politial print of the capture of Thomas Kent in Fermoy  UPDATE: THIS MADE 60 AT HAMMER

    A sale of memorabilia like this underlines the fast pace of change in the world we live in.  Take pub ashtrays.  Once ubiquitous they seemed to be doled out by sales reps for breweries and distilleries and cigarette manufacturers like snuff at a wake.  They  could be found on every bar counter and table until the smoking ban came into effect in Ireland 20 years ago.  Now they turn up at auctions like this and if you are so inclined you can pick one up for €20 to €40. Lot 295 is a 1930’s sign for Hoey’s Court, Dublin the birthplace of Jonathan Swift, which has since been demolished. The estimate is €150-€250.  The catalogue is online.

    A 1930’s sign for Hoey’s Court, birthplace of Jonathan Swift, which has since been demolished. UPDATE: THIS MADE 340 AT HAMMER

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    ARTWORK SIGNED BY ALL FOUR BEATLES MAKES $1.7 MILLION

    February 2nd, 2024
    THE BEATLES, 1966 – Images of a Woman. Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd.

    This painting – made and signed by all four Beatles – sold for $1,744,000 at Christie’s Exceptional Sale in New York. This is one of the highest sums ever paid for a piece of Beatles memorabilia. The sale of the best in decorative and applied arts, works of historic importance and iconic objects of pop culture brought in $6.7 million with bidding from around the globe. A 1965 Gretsch Chet Atkins country gentleman hollow body electric guitar once owned by Elvis Presley sold for $302,400.

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