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An exhibition of richly coloured and textured new abstract work by Bridget Flannery entitled Terra Incognita runs at the Solomon Gallery in Dublin until February 4. The Cork born artist, who graduated from the Crawford in 1981, has held numerous exhibitions throughout Ireland and Europe and has work in private and public collections including the OPW, The Crawford, UCC, Bank of Ireland, The Four Seasons Hotel Group and the Museum of Fine Art in Latvia.
This three seater Chesterfield comes up as lot 210 at Aidan Foley’s two day online auction of contents from a number of five star hotels on January 17 and 18. A total of 1115 lots of furniture, artwork and collectibles will come under the hammer. The most expensively estimated lot, at 5,000-7,000, is an artwork by Graham Knuttel titled Cocktail Girl. The chesterfield comes with an estimate of 600-1,000. There are lots from Dublin’s Four Seasons (now Intercontinental), Westin and Trinity City Hotels, Glenlo Abbey in Galway and Powerscourt Resort and Spa in Wicklow along with memorabilia from Buck Whaley’s nightclub and Larry Murphy’s pub. The sale is on view today, tomorrow, Sunday and Monday at 67 Prussia St. in Dublin and the catalogue is online.
UPDATE: The auction was 97% sold and realised more than €200,000.
A 1977 oil on canvas by William Scott – Two Pears – is among a very strong offering of art at Morgan O’Driscoll’s online art auction which runs until January 30. There will be no less than five watercolour works by Jack B. Yeats, three of them featured in The Turf Cutter’s Donkey by Patricia Lynch with illustrations by Yeats. Lot 15, The Turf Cutter’s Donkey, has never been on the auction market before. Estimates for these range from 5,000-25,000. Among other artists featured are Donald Teskey, John Shinnors, Hughie O’Donoghue, Mainie Jellett and James Arthur O’Connor. The William Scott is estimated at 50,000-70,000. The catalogue will go live on January 18.
A portrait by Mary Palmer (1750-1820), wife of Murrough O’Brien, Marchioness of Thomond and niece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, comes up at Sotheby’s annual Royal and Noble auction online until January 18. Her portrait of the activist, abolitionist and reformer Edward James Eliot, 1st Lord Eliot, MP and Treasury minister during the government of Pitt the Younger, is an almost direct copy of Reynold’s original from 1781. No signed work by Mary Palmer is known but Sotheby’s say the inscription on the back would appear to securely identify this one as by her hand. Mary married the fifth Earl of Inchiquin in 1792. They were created Marquis and Marchioness of Thomond in 1800 as a result of their support for the Act of Union. Mary was chief beneficiary of Sir Joshua’s will, receiving nearly £100,000 and his art collection. The portrait is estimated at £7,000-£10,000 (€7,914-€11,305).
The enduring appeal of Markey Robinson will face its first test at auction in 2023 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current off the wall online art sale. A gouache on board entitled By a Silver Lake comes up as lot 43 in the sale, which begins to close from 6.30 pm on January 9. A total of 455 lots will come under the hammer and the catalogue is online.
This is the year for Vermeer. Excitement is building in advance of the opening on February 10 of the Rijksmuseum exhibition in Amsterdam which has been bolstered by loans from the US, Europe and Japan to become the largest Vermeer show ever. At least 27 out of his very small oeuvre of around three dozen paintings loaned from the most prestigious museums in the world will be on display. Among the highlights is Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid c1670 from the collection of Ireland’s National Gallery. In an extraordinary gesture the Frick Collection in New York has lent all three of its Vermeer masterpieces, The Girl Interrupted at Her Music, Officer and Laughing Girl and Mistress and Maid.
Highlights include The Girl with a Pearl Earring from the Mauritshuis in The Hague, The Geographer from the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt and Woman Holding a Balance from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Another Vermeer from the Washington museum, Girl with a Flute, is the source of the sort of gleeful controversy that always dogs the art world. The National Gallery of Art in Washington announced recently that after long and careful scientific study it had decided that this painting was not by Vermeer and most likely by a pupil or apprentice.The director of the Rijksmuseum Taco Dibbits said that their view is more inclusive and they had decided the work should be in the show. Dibbits said there were questions about the authenticity of other works too and that their analysis showed that Vermeer was an artist who experimented and took different artistic routes.
Last year the Rijksmuseum announced that advanced scientific studies into one of its own Vermeers, The Milkmaid, yielded several startling discoveries. Two objects in the world famous canvas, a jug holder and a fire basket, had been painted over by the artist. Analysis revealed an underpainting and offered insights into the processes of Johannes Vermeer as he sought to capture the tranquility for which his work is famous. This is the first time that the Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of The Netherlands, has dedicated a retrospective to the 17th century master. It will run until June 4.
CAN 2023 keep up with 2022. That is the burning question facing the market as Christmas has drawn to a close. If 2023 can live up to 2022 in the world of art, antiques and collectibles everyone in the business will be more than happy. In Ireland art and collectibles made strong and steady gains, exactly the sort of progress minus the madness that market insiders like to see. Rare antique furniture was sought after, day to day antique furniture, though attractive, continued to languish in the doldrums.
On the international scene art was hot, hot, hot. Records tumbled all over the place in what turned out to be a year for superlatives. In November the collection of Microsoft founder Paul G Allen at Christie’s broke all records and made more than $1.6 billion, turning into the most valuable private collection of all time. In May Christie’s sold Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn for ¢195 million, the most expensive 20th century artwork ever sold. These auctions lead a long list of sales where many new artists records were established and diminished expectations fuelled by war and financial uncertainty were ridiculously confounded.Another plus was the growing post covid normalisation.
Events like major international and local fairs, shut down in 2020 and 2021, gradually got going again. One significant pandemic plus noted across the board is a whole new wave of tech savvy buyers unafraid of the internet and happy to buy unseen. Many major international sales reported waves of new and young buyers previously unknown to the auction houses.
A rare example of Irish recusant silver, a silver and partially gilt chalice dating to 1636, made £10,080 (€11,670) over a top estimate of £3,000 (€3,473) at Sotheby’s in London last month. Recusancy was the state of loyal catholics who refused to attend Protestant church services after the Reformation. Measuring just eight inches in height it is inscribed in latin with the words: Orate anima moriarti heverin sacerdotis qui me fieri fecit anno domini 1636 (Pray for the soul of Moriarty Heverin, priest, who had me made, year of Our Lord, 1636). It was originally at the chapel of the now destroyed Ballynastragh House, Gorey, Co. Wexford.
This prehistoric pair of fossilised Irish elk antlers comes up at Sotheby’s online sale Emma Hawkins: A Natural World which runs from January 9-19. A pioneering collector and dealer, Emma’s interests range from the extinct to the newly formed, with the natural world an ever-present muse. The auction is drawn from the interiors of townhouses in Edinburgh and London.
‘Irish Elk’ or Giant Deer (Megaloceras Giganteus) originated during the Pleistocene Period of the Great Ice Age and is thought to have initially colonised Siberia before migrating towards the west in response to the deteriorating climate, becoming extinct approximately 11,000 years ago. Although the Elk inhabited a vast expanse of central Europe and Asia, the largest concentration of its remains have been found mainly in the marl underlying bogland of Ireland. The estimate is £20,000-£30,000.
This west Cork watercolour by William Crozier kicks off Morgan O’Driscoll’s current Off the Wall online art auction which runs until January 9. Signed and dated 1990 it is estimated at 1,500-2,500. The catalogue is online and the auction will be on view in Skibbereen on January 5, 6 and 9.
