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    • WIDE VARIETY AT FONSIE MEALY RARE BOOKS AND COLLECTIBLES SALE

    April 26th, 2018

    THE 1888 MEDAL FROM THE FIRST HURLING MATCH IN THE US  UPDATE: THIS MADE 1,900 AT HAMMER

    The wide variety of books and collectibles at Fonsie Mealy’s sale in Kilkenny on May 2 includes a souvenir of the first hurling match in America in 1888. This is in the form of a silver medal by E. Johnson of Dublin inscribed GAA 1888.  The medal, inscribed “First Prize, Peter Kennedy” is estimated at 2,000/3,000. A first edition of a 1597 English Herbal by John Gerarde is estimated at 700-1,000 and Col. Robertsons Observati0ns on The Attack and Military Defence of Ireland with hand coloured folding maps has an estimate of 800-1,200. An Irish Parliamentary Party banner inscribed Ballybricken for Redmond is estimated at 500-700 and the official programme of the Cork V. Dublin hurling final of 1927 known as the Thunder and Lightning final which Dublin won is estimated at 600-800.  The catalogue is online. Here is a small selection:

    (See post on antiquesandartireland.com for April 16, 2018)

    The programme for the Thunder and Lightning final of 1927  UPDATE: THIS MADE 700 AT HAMMER

    AN EARLY ENGLISH HERBAL. UPDATE: THIS MADE 900 AT HAMMER

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    HIGHEST ESTIMATE EVER PLACED ON WORK OF ART AT AUCTION

    April 24th, 2018

    Amedeo Modigliani Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) Signed Modigliani (lower left)

    Modigliani’s largest painting – Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) – is estimated to sell for more than $150 million at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale in New York on May 14.  This is the highest estimate ever placed on a work of art at auction.  Nu couché was acquired by the present owner at auction in 2003 for $26.9 million.  The seller is believed to be Irish bloodstock billionaire John Magnier  who owns Coolmore Stud, the world’s biggest breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. His wife Susan co-owns a promising three-year-old colt  named Amedeo Modigliani.  It was previously owned by casino mogul Steve Wynn.

    In 2015, another reclining nude from the series sold at auction for $170.4 million, at the time marking the second-highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction.

    Painted a century ago, Nu couché is the greatest work from the iconic series in which Modigliani reinvented the nude for the Modern era. Upon their debut exhibition in 1917, these striking and sensual images stopped traffic – quite literally – and prompted the police to close the show. Today, the series is recognized as one of the seminal achievements in Modern painting. The shock and awe that Modigliani’s nudes continue to elicit was evident most recently during Tate Modern’s celebrated retrospective of the artist’s work that included Nu couché.   The work is the largest painting of Modigliani’s entire oeuvre – measuring nearly 58 inches / 147 centimeters across – and the only one of his horizontal nudes to contain the entire figure within the canvas.

    Most of the 22 reclining nudes from the series are found in museums, with particular depth in the United States: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York each hold three examples. Outside of the United States, institutions with reclining nudes include the Long Museum in Shanghai and The Courtauld Gallery in London.

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    LONG IRISH WAKE TABLE AT SOTHEBY’S IN LONDON

    April 24th, 2018
    An unusually long Irish wake table comes up at Sotheby’s Collectors Sale in London on May 3. The late 18th century table is ten feet long with double gateleg action and is estimated at £20,000-30,000.
    Wake or hunt tables are versatile and mobile.  The narrow shape when the flaps are down is ideal for holding a coffin.  When it came to the hunt they were carried outside to hold drink.
    Sotheby’s say that many examples are still in situ in houses in Ireland such as Leixlip Castle, Bellamont Forest, Co. Cavan, Mount Stewart, Co. Down and Luggala Co. Wicklow.
    Sotheby’s bi-annual Collections sale offers clients aN opportunity to acquire a wealth of fine and decorative art. With a focus on property sourced from private collections throughout Europe – often with an aristocratic or distinguished provenance – the sale will appeal to collectors and connoisseurs alike.
    UPDATE: THIS MADE £23,750

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    AN HISTORIC DAILY MIRROR FRONT PAGE AT JAMES ADAM

    April 22nd, 2018

    ‘SINN FEINER’S EXECUTION – CORK HONOURS THE DEAD’  was the headline on The Daily Mirror on November 1, 1920.  The Sinn

    An historic copy of the Daily Mirror  UPDATE:THIS MADE 200 AT HAMMER

    Feiner referred to was Kevin Barry, scheduled to be executed at 8 am on that morning, as Cork honoured its Lord Mayor Terence McSwiney, who had died in Brixton Prison on October 25 after 74 days on hunger strike.

    As a newspaper man it strikes me as an impressive and startling front page, dealing simultaneously with two major stories, composed almost entirely of photographs and captions and full of visual impact. We know the sorry history of these tragic deaths and their historical importance, here they are being played out in real time. A copy of the newspaper is lot 147 at the annual James Adam History Sale in Dublin on April 24 at 6 pm, estimated at just 80-120.
    There is a photo of 18 year old Dublin Medical student Kevin Barry on the top left of the page and a larger image of the coffin of Terence McSwiney at Cork City Hall on the top right.
    The picture on the lower left shows the Lord Mayor’s flower decked coffin on a tug guarded by the military.  The caption details how thousands paid their respects at Cork City Hall.  There are further photographs of an ambulance covered in flowers arriving at City Hall and Sinn Fein volunteers regulating queues of mourners.
    There are 287 lots in the auction including books, drawings, memorial cards, medals, photographs, letters, carvings, postcards, maps and militaria.  The catalogue is online.

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    A LE BROCQUY HEAD AT MORGAN O’DRISCOLL’S RDS AUCTION

    April 22nd, 2018

    Louis le Brocquy – Reconstructed Head of a Child  UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    This artwork by Louis le Brocquy is entitled Reconstructed Head of a Child. It comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International art auction at the RDS in Dublin on April 30. The catalogue note explains how an isolated human presence emerged from le Brocquy’s paintings in the 1950’s, until he felt he had exhausted the idea.  This feeling led to the destruction of a year’s worth of work.

    Then, inspired by a display of decorated Polynesian heads at the Musee de l’Homme in Paris, he found a new way of painting the human head, which is viewed by both Celts and Polynesians as a box that held the spirit prisoner. So he set out to paint the head in a new way, to paint it in pursuit of an archaeology of the spirit. Louis le Brocquy (1916-2012) was one of Ireland’s  leading artists. He produced a celebrated series of heads including literary figures like Yeats, Joyce and Beckett.  This one is estimated at 80,000-120,000.
    The catalogue lists 147 lots.  Viewing at the RDS gets underway next Friday.

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    TITANIC MENU MAKE £100,000 AT WILTSHIRE AUCTION

    April 22nd, 2018

    A menu of the first meal ever served aboard the Titanic made £100,000 at auction in Wiltshire on April 21. It went to a British collector at the auction at Henry Aldridge and Son in Devizes. On April 2, on Titanic’s first day of sea trials, officers and crew enjoyed their first meal served in the main dining saloon before being joined by the passengers.  The lunch included consommé mirrette, sweetbreads and spring lamb. The menu belonged to Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the most senior crew member to survive, who gave it to his wife as he left Southampton on 10 April 1912.

    There was global interest in the sale.  A key to the vessel’s chart room sold to a collector from Texas for £78,000.  The badge belonging to drowned steward Thomas Mullen, which was found with his body, sold for £57,000. Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: “We are delighted with the results of the auction and think the rarity of the objects is reflected in the prices which illustrates the ongoing fascination with the story of the Titanic.”

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    A 1911 MALEVICH LANDSCAPE AT CHRISTIE’S IN JUNE

    April 18th, 2018

    Kazimir Malevich, Landscape, 1911

    Kazimir Malevich’s Landscape (1911) will be a highlight of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale in London on June 20.  This will be part of a series of auctions taking place from June 15 to 21 under the umbrella of ‘20th Century at Christie’s’.

    The monumental, square-format landscape is from ‘The Red Series’, a group of works characterised by gestural brush strokes and an expressive use of colour, referencing both Fauvism and Cubism, and anticipating Malevich’s move towards Suprematism. The red-hot gleam on the horizon is a direct depiction of the sun, one of the unique features of the painting that foretells the primacy of colour that would define Suprematism.

    Landscape was first exhibited in the ‘Moscow Salon’ in February / March 1911. It was shown the following year in St. Petersburg as part of ‘The Union of Youth’, where Malevich represented a radical collective known as ‘Donkey’s Tail’.  In 1927, he was invited to Germany to show his work for the first time outside Russia and brought with him the best works of his career to date. Landscape was one such work and remained in Berlin after Malevich returned to Russia. Due to the rise of totalitarianism in Germany and in his home country, the artist lost control of his works abroad before he died in 1935. Landscape resurfaced after the war and was acquired by the Kunstmuseum Basel, where it hung for over 50 years, before being restituted to the heirs of the artist.  It is estimated at £7-10 million.

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    POSTER OF THE FIRST DAIL AT WHYTE’S ECLECTIC COLLECTOR SALE

    April 17th, 2018

    A poster of the sitting of the First Dail in 1919.  UPDATE: THIS MADE 460 AT HAMMER

    A poster of the sitting of the First Dail in the Mansion House, Dublin in 1919 is among the lots at Whyte’s Eclectic Collector sale in Dublin on May 5.  Centred with a photograph of the sitting the poster is surrounded by oval photograph portraits of the elected members. In an oak frame it is estimated at 300-500.

    The auction will offer historical documents and artefacts, sporting memorabilia, film posters, rock and pop collectibles, medals and militaria, coins and a collection of James II “Gunmoney”, banknotes, rare books, early printed maps of Ireland and elsewhere, antique silverware and curios including antique tribal masks from the Congo.  More than 500 lots will come under the hammer.

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    AN IRISH SILVER GIFT FROM HENRY FORD TO THE ROCKEFELLERS

    April 16th, 2018

    This two handled Irish silver cup was a 1940 wedding gift to David and Peggy Rockefeller from Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford of Dearborn, Michigan.  It will come up at Christie’s in New York on May 10 as part of Christie’s auction of the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller. The sales of approximately 1,550 auction lots includes one of the largest and most important collections of decorative arts to come to market in decades. Around 900 lots will come up at the New York saleroom on May 8, 9 and 10 and there will be a companion online sale of 650 lots to open worldwide on May 1. A number of philanthropic causes are to benefit from the auction.

    The silver cup, with the mark of Robert Calderwood, Dublin c , is estimated at $2,000-3,000 dollars.  Banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller, who died last year aged 101, was chairman of Chase Manhattan Corporation.  His wife, the former Peggy McGrath, died in 1996.  They had six children.

    UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $3,250

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    BASEBALL BAT GIFT FROM BABE RUTH TO THE GAA AT FONSIE MEALY

    April 16th, 2018

    A baseball bat given by Babe Ruth to the GAA comes up at Fonsie Mealy’s Rare Book and Collectors sale at the Ormonde Hotel in Kilkenny on May 2.  The most famous of all players Babe Ruth’s career in major league baseball spanned 22 seasons from 1914 to 1935.  He gave this original Spalding B12 baseball bat to Frank McGrath, manager of the Tipperary team, on their visit to the US in 1926.

    The handle grip is stamped 35″.  Lot 812 also includes a gold shield shape stamped on an enamel inset medal to commorate Ireland v. America, Polo Grounds, May 30th, 1926. The lot comes complete with a manuscript provenance letter from the family and is estimated at 4,000-6,000.

    UPDATE: THIS MADE 4,200 AT HAMMER

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