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  • AUTUMN ANTIQUES SEASON ON ITS MERRY WAY IN IRELAND

    September 16th, 2023
    A 19th gold charm featuring Napoleon, courtesy of Dublin jeweller JW Weldon, will be spotlighted at Ireland’s collection of statement pieces, Timeless, the Irish Antique Dealers Fair, which takes place in Dublin’s RDS from September 15-17. Details from timelessfair.ie.

    With Timeless in full swing at the RDS in Dublin today and tomorrow and a number of upcoming sales of Important Irish art in prospect the busy autumn season continues on its merry way in Ireland. The annual Irish Antique Dealers’ Fair running for the 56th time offers an eclectic blend of contemporary and antique focused exhibitors and is designed to appeal to both young contemporaries and seasoned collectors.  With its eye watering results the Freddie Mercury sales at Sotheby’s this month (his Yamaha grand piano made just over €2 million) demonstrated once again the importance of celebrity and in this respect Timeless does not disappoint.  Statement pieces on offer include a rare bookcase favoured both by David Bowie and Karl Lagerfeld and a 400 year old diamond ring that would once have travelled to the UK along the old Silk Road.

    The Memphis Milano Carlton bookcase offered by Acquired was designed by Ettore Sottsass and once graced a Florence palazzo.  Its ground breaking form challenged existing rules, something immediately recognised by fashion and rock icons Lagerfeld and Bowie, both of whom had one.  It is priced at €17,000.  J.W. Weldon will offer a 17th century diamond ring crafted in England, the oldest ring they have ever handled. It is priced at €3,950.  Among other rarities is a 9th century French charm from a bracelet which features a cannon and a statue of Napoleon and a folding travelling silver chess set designed in 1972 to commemorate the Fischer-Spassky world championship. “The best of the past is also best for the future”, Garret Weldon, president of the IADA remarked. “Our trade is the original sustainable industry and helps the planet through a reduction in manufacturing and waste”.

    On a Western Quay by Jack B Yeats at Adams.

    Important Irish art sales are in the offing at James Adam on September 27 and at Whytes on October 2.  A 1923 oil on panel by Yeats – On a Western Quay – is a highlight at Adams and estimated at €100,000-€150,000. It depicts pilot Michael Gillen, who guided ships along the Garavogue River to the Sligo quayside, and who appears in several paintings and drawings by Yeats.  Another top lot with a similar estimate in this auction of 158 lots is Evening by Paul Henry c1924-25.  It comes from a private collection in Cork.  The sale offers highly collectible  art by artists like Louis le Brocquy, Gerard Dillon, William Conor and Rowan Gillespie.  Viewing gets underway on September 22 and the catalogue is online.

    The Currach, Kilronan by Gerard Dillon at Whyte’s

    Still Waters by Sean Keating and The Currach, Kilronan by Gerard Dillon, each estimated at €60,000-€80,000 are highlights at Whyte’s sale of Irish and International art on October 2.  Lord George Hell by Sir William Orpen is based on a Regency reprobate, the principal character in Max Beerbohm’s 1896 story The Happy Hypocrite. Hell sets out to woo dancer Jenny Mere with whom he has fallen in love wearing a mask to cover his pock marked face.  When he succeeds and removes the mask his face has miraculously healed and become “saintly”, such is the power of love.  The story was dramatised into a one act play and in his oil on canvas Orpen set out to create the impression of a late 18th/early 19th century print (€10,000-€15,000).   Viewing at Whyte’s gets underway on September 25 and the catalogue is online.

    A MUSEUM QUALITY MIRO WITH FOODIE PROVENANCE

    September 15th, 2023

    Peinture (Femmes, lune, etoiles), a museum quality Miro, will headline Christie’s Avant Garde sale in Paris on October 20. Painted in 1949 it has been displayed in the La Colombe d’Or at St. Paul de Vence since its acquisition from the nearby Galerie Maeght in 1950.  Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Braque and Calder were among the artists invited to leave work in lieu of payment at this inn where the food is as legendary as the art. Peinture (Femmes, lune, etoiles) has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the Fondation Maeght, The Fundacio Miro, the Grand Palais in Paris and the Fondation Pierre Gianadda.  Founded in 1920 La Colombe d’Or is now run by the third generation of the Roux family. Paul Roux’s passion for painting was the starting point for what is one of the most prestigious 20th century art collections in the world.  The sale of this work will help the family expand the collection further.

    A PAULA REGO MASTERWORK AT CHRISTIE’S

    September 14th, 2023
    Paula Rego, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’
    (1995, estimate: £2,200,000-3,200,000)

    Paula Rego’s 1995 work Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ (1940) will come to auction for the first time at Christie’s 20th / 21st Century evening sale in London on October 13. With an estimate of £2.2-3.2 million it is expected to set a new auction record for the artist. Executed upon two monumental panels this is the finest and most complex in this extraordinary series. Formerly part of the Saatchi Collection, Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ was created for the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition ‘Spellbound: Art and Film’ in 1996 and has been prominently exhibited over the past three decades including at Tate Liverpool (1997); The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2007-08); Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (2018-19) and Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover (2022-23).

    ANYONE FOR A HOT LILY POND (WITH IRISES TOO)

    September 14th, 2023
    ANNEMARIE BOURKE (B.1957) – Lily Pond. UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,100 AT HAMMER

    Lily Pond by Annemarie Bourke is lot nine at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current off the wall online art auction. The oil on canvas is estimated at £800-£1,200. The catalogue for the sale, which runs September 18, is online and viewing gets underway today in Skibbereen.

    A LITTLE COMB PACKED A BIG PUNCH

    September 14th, 2023
    Freddie Mercury’s silver moustache comb, Tiffany & Co., late 20th century. 

    THE top estimate was £600 but Freddie Mercury’s silver moustache comb sold for a whopping £152,400 at the final day of the Queen frontman’s series of online sales at Sotheby’s in London yesterday. The little comb by Tiffany and Co. ignited the public interest at the month long exhibition at Sotheby’s before the series of Freddie Mercury sales.

    $120M+ PICASSO TO LEAD EMILY FISHER LANDAU COLLECTION AT SOTHEBY’S

    September 13th, 2023
    Pablo Picasso, Femme à la montre, 1932, oil on canvas, 51 1?4 x 38 inches. Estimate in excess of $120 million

    An Era Defined is the title of the sales of the Emily Fisher Landau Collection at Sotheby’s in New York on November 8 and 9 next. The collection is synonymous with connoisseurship and quality, and also speaks to Mrs. Fisher Landau’s voracious and instinctive approach to collecting. From Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Fernand Léger, through to Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns, alongside Mark Tansey and Glenn Ligon, the collection traces the greatest achievements of 20th-century art, in each case through key masterpiece examples. Following a series of international exhibition some 120 exceptional works from the collection, estimated to bring well over $400 million, will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s.

    MARK TANSEY – Triumph Over Mastery II

    Mrs. Fisher Landau’s collecting journey began in the late 1960s with the purchase of a striking Alexander Calder mobile and with a chance encounter with a poster advertising a forthcoming Josef Albers show at Pace Gallery, from which three major acquisitions followed. Mrs. Fisher Landau began to put together a major ensemble of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Paul Klee and Louise Nevelson among others. All were complemented, in later years, by the work of artists she came to know and patronize directly, many of whom she collected in depth. Few collectors have been as committed to building relationships with artists as she: from post-war titans such as Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns to artists at the vanguard in the 21st century, such as Glenn Ligon and Mark Tansey.

    Beginning in the mid-1980s, and over the course of the next four decades, Mrs. Fisher Landau was deeply involved with the Whitney Museum in so many ways: a member of the acquisition committees, she also endowed the Museum’s famous Whitney Biennial exhibitions and in 2010 made a landmark donation of nearly 400 works, which was subsequently exhibited under the title “Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection”. The fourth floor of the Breuer building remains named in her honour.

    JASPER JOHNS – Flags

    TIMELESS AT THE RDS THIS WEEKEND

    September 13th, 2023
    A folding travelling silver chess set

    Made to commemorate the Spassky-Fischer world championship this folding travelling silver chess set will feature at Timeless, the Irish Antique Dealers Fair, which takes place in Dublin’s RDS from September 15-17. Vintage Hub will feature the set, with white pieces made of solid silver and black pieces of silver gilt. All connect into a compact tube to stow away.

    With a mix of antique and contemporary pieces Timeless is an opportunity for collectors of all tastes to explore and discover. This is the 56th holding of the annual Irish Antique Dealers Fair.

    The set when folded

    STOLEN VAN GOGH RECOVERED

    September 12th, 2023
    Vincent Van Gogh – The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring.

    A Van Gogh painting stolen in 2020 from a museum in The Netherlands which had been closed due to the Covid 19 pandemic has been recovered. The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring had been in the collection of The Groninger Museum in Groningen from 1962. In 2020 was on loan to the Singer Laren Museum in Laren, south east of Amsterdam.

    Dutch art detective Arthur Brand was handed the 139-year-old painting in a pillow and an Ikea bag by a man who came to his front door. “I did this in complete co-ordination with Dutch police and we knew this guy wasn’t involved in the theft,” he said. in 2021 a career art thief was jailed for eight years over the incident. The painting had already changed hands at that stage.

    The French-born thief, 59-year-old Nils M, who lived a short distance away from Laren, was convicted of stealing the work as well as a Frans Hals painting a few months later from a museum in Leerdam, near Utrecht. His DNA was found at both crime scenes. Dutch police say the painting was acquired by a crime group intending to use it in exchange for shorter jail terms.

    Van Gogh lived with his parents in the parsonage of the Dutch Reformed Church at Nuenen near Eindhoven in December 1883 where his father was pastor. He was there for nearly two years.

    A CLOTHES RACK FOR HALF A MILLION DOLLARS, EUROS OR POUNDS

    September 12th, 2023
    HUANGHUALI CLOTHES RACK – 17TH CENTURY. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $919,800

    Fancy a clothes rack for around half a million? Christie’s has just the one – a 17th-century magnificent and extremely rare huanghuali version – at its important Chinese ceramics and works of art sale in New York on September 21-22. The estimate on this stupendous piece from an American private collection is $400,000-$600,000. The sale features outstanding works from a number of important private collections of ceramics, cloisonné, lacquer, jade, scholar’s objects, textiles, and important classical Chinese furniture.

    In New York Christie’s will mark Asian Art Week with nine auctions, six live; three online. Live sales begin September 19 with Japanese and Korean Art. There will be sales of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art, The LJZ Collection of Chinese Jades; Mineo Hata: An Instinctive Eye spanning the geography of Asia; Marchant: Eight Treasures for the Wanli Emperor and Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art. The online sales are The Moke Mokotoff Collection, Arts of India and Arts of Asia.

    FINE JEWELLERY AND WATCHES AT ADAMS

    September 10th, 2023
    This diamond ring is at Adams next Tuesday with an estimate of €10,000-€15,000. UPDATE: THIS MADE 15,000 AT HAMMER

    The James Adam catalogue contains an eye watering selection of  jewellery and watches from an Art Deco diamond bracelet designed by Austrian Imperial jewellers Kochert in 1929, later re-designed as a tiara by Bulgari in Rome in the 1950’s, to necklaces, bracelets, rings, dress rings, pendants, brooches and watches by makers from Rolex to Breitling.  The fine jewellery and watches sale takes place on September 12 and is now on view in Dublin. The catalogue is online.

    UPDATE: The top lot of the sale was an Art Deco diamond bracelet designed by Erwin Lang. It made €95,000 at hammer.