antiquesandartireland.com

Sir William Orpen, Portrait of Lady Idina Wallace (click on image to enlarge).  UPDATE: IT MADE £962,500

William Orpen’s portrait of Lady Idina Wallace – characterised as “the Bolter” in three novels by Nancy Mitford – is at Sotheby’s sale of British and Irish Art in London on November 19.  It is the most important full length portrait by the Irish artist to come on the market in ten years. Beautiful, wealthy, well connected and sexually liberated Lady Idina’s third husband was Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll.  Together they became part of the hedonistic elite of British East Africa known as the Happy Valley Set.

Painted in 1915 the portrait was commissioned not by Lady Idina’s husband at the time, but Sir James Harriet Dunn, a married millionaire and industrialist smitten with Idina.  He paid the then exorbitant sum of £750. The resulting picture demonstrates Orpen’s virtuosity at the height of his career. Central to his oeuvre was Orpen’s love of women and this portrait is a celebration of womanhood – Idina’s beauty, intelligence, spirit and individuality has been captured on canvas by an artist who resembled a modern-day Van Dyck.

The painting is one of a series of large portraits of female sitters, a compositional device set in motion by Orpen’s over life size portrait of his lover Mrs. St. George the previous year.  The verticality of these pictures suited the artist’s lithe, slender women in flowing gowns and dark backgrounds.  The painting is estimated at £800,000-1.2 million.  The record for Orpen was established in 2001 when Portrait of Gardenia St. George  with Riding Crop sold for £1,983,000.

UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £962,500

A strong offering of fresh to market Impressionist and Modern Art works on paper sale comes up at Christie’s in New York on November 6.  There are paintings, drawings and sculpture from leading masters. Work on offer ranges widely in style, medium and estimate.  Christie’s will offer more than 250 works between two sales. Included is work by Picasso, Pissaro, Matisse, Dali and Henry Moore.  The combined estimate is more than $31 million. (Click on either image to enlarge it).

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Mousquetaire, buste ($600,000-800,000). Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2013 UPDATE: THIS MADE $1,805,000

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) March of Time Committee: Papillon ($400,000-600,000). Courtesy, Christie’s Images Ltd., 2013

The complete prints of Francis Bacon are available on Christie’s online only auction from October 22 to November 5.  This is the first time the complete collection of Bacon’s entire graphic oeuvre has been offered at auction.

It includes variations on some of his most famous subjects and themes. Study for a Bullfight is estimated at £40,000-60,000; Three Studies for a Self-Portrait is estimated at £18,000-25,000 and Study for a Portrait of Pope Innocent X after Velasquez has an estimate of £15,000-25,000.  There are 36 lots, with estimates from £2,000 to £60,000.

The collection was formed in the 1970s and 1980s by a private collector, who had personal access to Bacon’s publishers and usually purchased the prints directly from them at the time of issue. In  his printed works, Francis Bacon further explored and developed the subjects of his paintings, thereby creating a second body of work which reflects his life-long obsessions and themes. Images Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2013.  (Click on either image to enlarge).

Study for a bullfight no, 1 (S. 10) Lithograph in colours, 1971 (£40,000-60,000)

Metropolitan triptych (large version) Set of 3 etchings and aquatint in colours, 1981 (£15,000-25,000)

Ivan Nikolaevich Aristov (1917-1993) The Hiding of the Revolutionary Flag

The Hiding of the Revolutionary Flag by Ivan Nikolaevich Aristov (1917-1993) was the top lot at the Morgan O’Driscoll online auction of Russian and Czech art which ended last night.  It sold for 2,800 over an estimate of 2,000-3,000.

Lenin on the March with Comrades by Andrei Andreyevich Serbutovskiy (b.1923) sold for 1,800.  The Advance Party by (Konstantin) Alekseevich Shurupov (1910-1985) was the third most expensive lot sold. It made 800.

No less than 52 of the 64 lots were sold.  Auctioneer Morgan O’Driscoll said there were very few Irish buyers.  Online bidders came from the UK, Denmark, the US and as far afield as Sri Lanka. The Russian art came from a collector in Dublin, the Czech art was collected in the 1950’s by the mother of a man now living in Cork.  Nearly all the Russian art sold and one of the Czech pieces went to a collector in Sri Lanka.

WILLEM DE KOONING (1904 – 1997) UNTITLED V signed on the reverse   UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR $24,805,000

A 1975 work by Willem de Kooning is among the highlights at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale in New York on November 13.  Untitled V demonstrates his mastery as a colourist.  It is from a time when the artist returned to painting after a focus on sculpture.

In 1975 de Kooning produced a renowned series of  canvases of explosive colour.  They made up an exhibition at the Fourcade, Droll Gallery in New York. Untitled V, notable for its variety of luscious brush strokes, emphatic mark making and violent flecks, is from that exhibition. It is estimated at $25-35 million.

UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR $24,805,000

View of Dawson’s Grove, Co. Monaghan by William Ashford, (1746-1824) painted about 1774.

THE highlight of Irish 18th century paintings at the James Adam auction at Slane Castle was William Ashford’s View of Dawson’s Grove, Co. Monaghan painted in 1774.  The painting, which was estimated at 70,000-100,000 failed to find a buyer at the auction. Interest remained strong afterwards.  The large and rare oil on canvas, which depicts the brick house built c1770 and seat of Thomas Dawson MP, has since been sold to an Irish collector for a hammer price of 60,000. Dawson was created Baron Dartrey (1770), Viscount Cremorne (1785) and later Baron Cremorne (1797).

The work is typical of the Claudean style topographical views of estates or demesne paintings produced by Irish landscape painters of the eighteenth century.  In 1823, the year before he died, William Ashford was elected first President of the Royal Hibernian Academy.

Destroyed by fire, Dawson Grove was replaced in 1846 by Dartrey, an Elizabethan Revival mansion which was demolished  around 1950.