A window on printmaking over the past 500 years is open at the City Assembly House at South William St. in Dublin, headquarters of the Irish Georgian Society. Art by Rembrandt, Durer, Turner, Tissot, Pisarro, Cezanne, Whistler and Samuel Palmer is featured in a touring exhibition entitled “Print REbels” which runs until August 27. This is a show of works collected over the past two and a half decades by Corkman Edward Twohig, currently Head of Art at Marlborough College in Wiltshire with 140 historical and contemporary original prints. They were first brought together at the Bankside Gallery in London to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Francis Seymour Haden, first president of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. Haden created his finest work in Ireland the exhibition includes some of his prints.
The first published edition of James Joyce’s Dubliners comes up at an online sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s in New York until July 16. One of a number of works by Joyce in the auction it is estimated at $80,000-$120,000. It is one of approximately 746 copies bound in the publisher’s maroon cloth, with the very rare dust-jacket. A ticket pasted to the rear states that it was de-acidified in 1989. Only six copies in jacket have appeared at auction in the past forty-five years. Sotheby’s say that despite the restorations noted, this is an attractive, near-fine copy.
The sale offers first editions of A Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses by Joyce as well as a letter from Oscar Wilde to Aimee Daniell Beringer and a copy of Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance. The catalogue is online.
Paul Henry, R.H.A. (1876-1958) Mountains and Lake, Connemara, painted in 1934,
There was a new auction record for Paul Henry at Christie’s sale of the B.J. Eastwood Collection of Important Sporting and Irish pictures in London on July 9. Mountains and Lake, Connemara is a classical Henry work. Estimated at £120,000-£180,000 it sold for £622,500. The collection of 30 pictures achieved £14,187,750, more than double the pre-sale low estimate. Over 70% of works sold for over the high sale estimate.
Kaminarimon Gate at Kannon Temple Asakusa by Tamagawa Schucho
With the Olympics less than two weeks away there is right now a rare chance to brush up on matters Japanese – specifically the floating world known as ukiyo-e that expressed the ambitions of the common townspeople of the Edo period – at the marvellous Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle. Edo in Colour: Prints from Japan’s Metropolis explores how woodblock prints shaped fashion, fame and identity in Edo, the city now known as Tokyo.
During the Edo period (c1603-1868) Japan and its arts flourished in isolation from the rest of the world. By the late 1630’s foreigners were officially prohibited as traditions of the past were revived, refined, parodied and transformed by expanding societies during the relatively peaceful 250 years when the Tokugawa shoguns ruled. In urban Edo a witty and irreverent expression surfaced in the visual and literary arts which gave rise to Kabuki Theatre and the woodblock prints of ukiyo-e. Chester Beatty offers pictures of actors and beauties with masterpieces by Hokusai and Hiroshige and many more from the library’s renowned collection. The exhibition features more than 100 prints and printed books from Edo. Shown in two parts between now and December the exhibition will close for a week on August 30 to allow for a changeover. There are various opportunities to explore this fascinating world online and through the accompanying catalogue. Don’t miss it.
BERNARDO BELLOTTO (VENICE 1721-1780 WARSAW)View of Verona with the Ponte delle Navi
Bernardo Bellotto’s View of Verona and Leonardo da Vinci’s Head of a Bear were the top lots at Christie’s Classic Week evening sales in London. Last night there were artists records for for Bernardo Bellotto, Adriaen van de Velde, Francesco Tironi, Gregorio di Cecco da Lucca, the Master of Sterbini Diptych, Georges de La Tour and Marco Ricci. The Exceptional Sale and the realised a combined total of £64,620,750 with registered bidders from 102 countries across 4 continents. The combined total of Classic Week sales to date is over £70 million.
This work by Jack B. Yeats – Bachelor’s Walk, In Memory – has just become part of the national collection at the National Gallery of Ireland purchased with special support of the Government of Ireland and key contributions from several donors. The painting depicts an incident in Dublin city centre in 1914 in which a detachment of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators. Three people were killed (a fourth later died) and over 35 were injured. Earlier that day soldiers and officers of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and Royal Irish Constabulary had intercepted Volunteers and members of Na Fianna transporting a consignment of rifles and ammunition that had arrived at Howth earlier on board the yacht The Asgard. The artist did not witness the event but visited the following day and based the painting on a sketch he produced on the spot. He noted ‘a bullet hole in shop window’ and recorded that ‘a few paces further towards O’Connell bridge flower girls had thrown flowers’. The painting was not seen publicly until 1922, when it featured alongside other works by Yeats at the ‘Exposition d’Art Irlandais’ in Paris. It has been on long-term loan to the Gallery for the past twelve years.
This small drawing of a bear’s head by Leonardo da Vinci at Christie’s Exceptional Sale in London today is estimated at £8-12 million. It measures just 7x7cm and is among just a few drawings by the Italian Renaissance master which are still privately owned. The sketch previously belonged to British painter and collector Sir Thomas Lawrence, before being sold at Christie’s in 1860 for £2.50. It is one of fewer than eight surviving drawings by the artist still in private hands outside the Royal Collection and the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £8,857,500, A NEW WORLD RECORD FOR A DRAWING BY THE ARTIST.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for May 8, 2021)
Among Horses by Jack B. Yeats comes up at Christie’s live online sale of the B.J. Eastwood Collection in London on July 9 with an estimate of £400,000-600,000. Painted in 1947 it was acquired in 1994 by Barney Eastwood. The 30 lots in the sale represent B.J. Eastwood’s deep interest in Irish painting and equestrian art. B.J. Eastwood started his collection in the mid 1970s, at a time when he was particularly drawn to collection and house sales. However, it was his abiding love of sport and his eye for quality and detail which translated into an intrigue and fascination specifically with Sporting and Irish artists. He followed the great sales of the 1970s and 1980s, and over time built an outstanding collection of the genres’ greatest examples. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD. THE EASTWOOD SALE BROUGHT IN £14,187,750
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for June 18, 2021)
One of only two known surviving copies of the earliest football rules printed by the world’s first football club, Sheffield Football Club, in 1859 comes up at Sotheby’s in July. The sixteen-page pamphlet, recently discovered bound in a Victorian scrapbook, is estimated to make £50,000-70,000 in London on July 20, with bidding open online from July 12-20. Established in 1857, Sheffield Football Club predated the founding of the Football Association by six years, and is acknowledged by both the FA and FIFA as the world’s oldest football club. The formal rule-based game of football was a Victorian innovation, incubated at public schools and universities. However, it was the foundation of Sheffield Football Club that brought the game into the community.
This pamphlet is also uniquely revised to keep it up to date with developments in the laws of the game. The most significant is the hardening of the rules against handling the ball. The 1858 rules allowed the ball to be “pushed or hit with the hand” but not held (law 8), but in this copy a printed slip disallows “knocking or pushing [the ball] on”. A handwritten note finesses the throw-in, specifying that the ball must “touch the Ground before coming in Contact with any player” (law 10). A new law (law 12) is also added by hand, requiring that flags be placed four yards from each goal post (this was to allow a short-lived secondary scoring system called a rouge). These revisions must have been made before 1862, when the club issued a new rulebook that included these and other changes.
This copy of the Sheffield FC rules was preserved in a scrapbook compiled by a local clergyman, the Rev. Greville John Chester (1830-92). The club’s historic archive was sold at Sotheby’s in 2011 for £881,000.
