An AA Crosshaven road sign at Aidan Foley’s sale (€100-€200). UPDATE: THIS MADE 700 AT HAMMER
From antique wooden butter churns,Tilley lamps and antique weights to vintage tools, old road signs, petrol pump tops and tractor seats the Aidan Foley online sale of the John Smith Collection at noon on August 30 will be a memory jogging exercise for many. The auction, in conjunction with Niall Mullen antiques, features 672 lots of hardware and collectible kit. There is a vintage Ford tractor (€4,000-€6,000) and some cast iron ploughs (€200-€400) along with a fully restored horse trap, some cartwheels and a selection of milk churns.
A mahogany table in the Irish 18th century manner at Adams (€3,000-€5,000). UPDATE: THIS MADE 2,800 AT HAMMER
Silver, antique furniture, jewellery, artworks, porcelain, rugs, chandeliers, mirrors, lamps and even an elmwood shovel feature at the James Adam At Home sale Dublin on September 4. The selection from 518 lots is wide ranging and appetising. If your mind is turning towards autumn home renovations and style changes, or if you are seeking singular inspiration, then this sale is an ideal place to start.The most expensively estimated lot, at €7,000-€8,000 is a sapphire torque necklace. Furniture, like a 19th century tilt top circular mahogany tea table €200-€300) or a lady’s rosewood writing desk (€300-€500), offers good value. There is Oriental porcelain, Meissen, Dresden, Worcester and Sevres pieces and a Satsuma tea set and silver wine jugs in Italian contemporary or George IV London 1788 style. The catalogue is online.
Masterpieces by Botticelli, Renoir, Cezanne, Hockney and Lichtenstein from the collection of the late Paul Allen, co founder of Microsoft, will be sold by Christie’s in November. What promises to be the largest art auction in history is expected to realise around $1 billion. Proceeds will go to charity, as Seattle born Allen, who died aged 65 in 2018, had wished. Among many highlights of a collection that ranges from Old Masters to giants of Contemporary art is a large Cezanne painting of Mont Saint Victoire, a recurring subject of the artist. It is expected to make more than $100 million. The sale of 150 lots is expected to surpass the sale of the Macklowe Collection ($922 million) which concluded at Sotheby’s earlier this year and David Rockefeller’s Collection ($835 million) at Christie’s in 2018. Final details of exactly which works are to be offered are not yet available.
PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906) La montagne Sainte-Victoire Painted in 1888-1890 Estimate in excess of $100 million. Courtesy of the Paul G. Allen Estate. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR A RECORD $137,790,000
18th century Beauvais Tapestry The Emperor’s Voyage
Some contents of the legendary Four Seasons George V Hotel in Paris will be auctioned by Artcurial on September 7 and 8 next. It is part of an ongoing drive to embellish the interiors of this iconic palace. More than 800 lots of art, furniture and objects are to be sold including items from the Imperial and Royal suites and Le Cinq, the three star restaurant. One of the most important lots is this tapestry depicting the Chinese Emperor Kangxi. Lot 733 is estimated at €40,000-€60,000. The majority of the lots on offer, including headboards, chairs, lamps, curtains, porcelain and tables are estimated at under €1,000.
The largest single owner collection dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora will be held at Christie’s in London on October 13. The sale of Robert Devereux’s Sina Jina Collection, which will include around 70 pieces, will raise funds to support environmental and arts charities. Sina Jina is Swahili for a place with no name and the founding principle of the collection is supporting artists to continue to create pioneering art. The sale will offer works by El Anatsui, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Nicholas Hlobo, William Kentridge, Marcia Kure, Elias Sime, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and others and is expected to realise around £2 million. The selection ranges from installations, sculpture and painting to photography. The auction will be held alongside the 20th/21st Century evening sale and will be part of Christie’s Frieze Week programme.
Robert Devereus began acquiring works for the Sina Jina Collection in the early 2000’s. This coincided with a seminal show, Africa Remix curated by Simon Niami, which toured to the Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Hayward Gallery, London.
This blue and white tureen and cover in the Chinese taste is lot 72 at Adams timed online warehouse clearance sale and is estimated at €50-€80. There is a wide selection of lots at affordable estimates on offer and the catalogue is online. The sale begins to close at 11 am on August 24. UPDATE: THIS MADE 110 AT HAMMER
A magnificent set of 10 chairs, described by Christie’s as the apogee of Kentian design and the ultimate flowering of the Palladian aesthetic, will come to auction in New York on October 20. They are by no means the most expensive lot from the Ann and Gordon Getty Collection to be sold over four evening and day auctions in New York from October 20 but there is an Irish connection. The c1754-56 chairs attributed to Benjamin Goodison are thought to be after a design by the architect designer William Kent. The delicately pierced backs and Vitruvian scroll aprons refine the Palladian style promoted by the foremost classical furniture designer of the day.
It was his friendship with Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (1694-1753) that promoted Kent as a painter, architect and designer. Known as the architect earl Boyle is credited with bringing Palladian architecture to Ireland and Britain. Major projects include Burlington House, Piccadilly, London (now home to the Royal Academy), Westminster School, Chiswick House and Northwick Park. Boyle’s professional skill as an architect was extraordinary as an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. Andrea Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture accompanied him on a tour of the Veneto in 1719. Back in London he employed the Scottish architect Colen Campbell for Burlington House and William Kent was assigned the interiors. The courtyard prominently sited in Piccadilly was the first major executed statement of Neo-Palladianism. Thanks to the Earl of Cork Palladian architecture with its Roman and Greek influences had arrived in this part of the world. Meantime Kent’s Palladian residences with their fully designed interiors became a template for his contemporaries and subsequent generations. The chairs are estimated at €490,000-€780,000.
The Ann and Gordon Getty Collection sale will offer almost 1,500 lots from their San Francisco residence, considered one of the finest interiors in the world. There are decorative and fine art masterpieces of unrivalled quality and provenance. The New York sales will be complemented by six online auctions of textiles, handbags and jewellery between October 10-25.Leading lots include American painting, English and European furniture and Asian works of art. There are Impressionist pictures by Claude Monet and Edgar Degas and Old Master paintings and drawings by Bernardo Bellotto and Jean-Antoine Watteau.Beginning in September highlights will be exhibited in Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, Paris and New York. Twelve jewels by JAR from the estate of Ann Getty (who died in 2020) made $5.9 million at a sale of Magnificent Jewels by Christie’s in New York in June.Proceeds will benefit the couples foundation for the arts, which is dedicated to supporting arts and science organisations. Beneficiaries will include the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, University of San Francisco, Berkeley Geochronology Centre and the Leakey Foundation.
Sir John Lavery – Sketch for ‘Pro-Cathedral, Dublin 1922’ (The Requiem Mass for Michael Collins)
Sir John Lavery’s oil on canvas sketch for the funeral of Michael Collins is a highlight of the Mary and Ben Dunne Collection to be sold later this year. Singing My Dark Rosaleen by Yeat’s is another highlight. The former supermarket tycoon and his wife are downsizing and selling part of their personal collection which includes works by some of Ireland’s most celebrated painters. Works by Frank McKelvey, Dan O’Neill, Gerard Dillon, James Arthur O’Connor, Jack B. Yeats, Mary Swanzy, Roderic O’Conor, Walter Osborne, William John Leech and Sir Wiliam Orpen are among the 39 paintings to be sold. A selling exhibition of these paintings will be held at Gormley’s Dublin galleries from September 8-24 before moving to Belfast for two weeks.
This Art Deco diamond and ruby target cluster ring is lot 193 at a timed auction by O’Reilly’s of Francis St., Dublin. It is centred by an old cut diamond of 0.45 carats and estimated at €2,000-€2,500. The sale of fine jewellery, watches and silver gets underway on Wednesday August 24 and runs until next Friday. There will be an online auction of jewellery and collectibles by John Weldon of Temple Bar, Dublin next August 23.
The Path to Freedom by Michael Collins published by The Talbot Press comes up at R.J. Keighery’s sale in Waterford next Monday, the 100th anniversary of the murder of Collins at Beal na Blath in Co. Cork on August 22, 1921. The 1922 book has chapters including “Advance and Use of our Liberties”, “Alternative to the Treaty”, “The Proof of Success”, “Four Historic Years”, “Collapse of the Terror”, “Partition Act’s Failure”, “Why Britain Sought Irish Peace” and “Freedom within Grasp”. Lot 306 is estimated at €80-€120. More than 600 lots of furniture, Irish art, chandeliers, jewellery, silver and collectibles will come under the hammer. The catalogue is online.
