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Viewing gets underway in Dublin today and continues over the weekend for the James Adam At Home sale next Tuesday (February 27). The timed online sale is open for bidding and will draw to a close from 11 am on Tuesday. This North European inlaid fruitwood serpentine fronted commode is, at €4,000-€6,000, one of the more expensively estimated lots. The top is inlaid with scrolls and putto and centred by a flower filled urn, musical instruments, horns and birds of paradise.
L.S. Lowry’s Sunday Afternoon (1957) will be a highlight at Christie’s Modern British and Irish Art evening sale in London on March 20. The epic and highly populated industrial landscape exemplifies some of the most widely celebrated themes, landmarks and motifs from Lowry’s oeuvre and is raree in a single composition. It is thought to be one of around 12 works created on this, his largest scale. Almost all similar paintings of this size held in museums including The Lowry, Salford; Tate, London; and National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. It has not been exhibited publicly in 57 years and is estimated at £4,000,000-6,000,000. The work is from the collection of Sir Keith and Lady Showering.
Keith Showering’s career was founded on a 300-year-old Somerset family cider making business and the meteoric success of Babycham. By 1975 at the age of 45 Showering was Chairman and CEO of Allied Breweries, Europe’s biggest drinks business, becoming the youngest ever chairman and CEO of a FTSE 100 company. In 1981 he was knighted for services to industry and that same year he took over as Master of the Worshipful Company of Brewers. By the time of his sudden death in 1982 he was on the board of a wide variety of companies and arts organisations.
The programming schedule for TEFAF Maastricht includes Conversations on Conservation on March 9 at 3 pm. This will focus on the conservation of Ludovico Mazzolino’s (c. 1480–c. 1530) masterpiece, The Crossing of the Red Sea (1521). The National Gallery of Ireland has received funding from TEFAF to restore the work, which has been part of its collection for over a century. The painting, in its current fragile state, cannot be safely displayed. The Crossing of the Red Sea requires extensive conservation efforts. The National Gallery of Ireland will collaborate with experts in Mazzolino’s work to better understand his artistic practice so that this rare large-scale painting can be sensitively restored and made accessible to the visiting public.
TEFAF will run from March 9-14 at the MECC Maastricht. It will be preceeded by invitation only days on March 7 and 8.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 16, 2024).
Jug and Pear, an oil on canvas by William Scott, is among the highlights at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art on March 11. Signed and dated, and with exhibition labels on the reverse, it is estimated at €120,000-€180,000. The catalogue for the sale is online and it includes work by Paul Henry, Jack Butler Yeats, Lilian Lucy Davidson, Frank McKelvey, Grace Henry, Harry Kernoff, Nano Reid, Norah McGuinness, George Campbell, Daniel O’Neill, Barbara Warren, Patrick Collins, William Scott, Louis le Brocquy, Donald Teskey, Linda Brunker and many more well known artists.
Limerick silver is rare and not always easy to come by so there should be much interest in a private collection of Limerick silver spoons at the timed online James Adam At Home sale which runs until February 27. They are from the workshops of makers William Fitzgerald, George Halloran, Robert O’Shaughnessy, Joseph Johns, Patrick Connell, Samuel John, Maurice Fitzgerald and William Ward. It is downright unusual to find such a gathering of known makers names from Limerick in one sale. Lots 72 to 84 carry estimates ranging from €400 to €3,000. There is also a mid 18th century silver bowl by George Hodder of Cork and a George III silver bowl by James le Bas of Dublin. The catalogue is online and timed bidding is already underway.
With everything from an Edwardian hobby horse and a three piece Art Nouveau mantle clock garniture in red marble to a carved Qing Dynasty hardwood cabinet and a Dublin longcase clock the Making Room sale by Fonsie Mealy at Castlecomer on February 21 is brimful of interest. More than 400 lots will come under the hammer in this annual spring clear out and estimates are reasonable. There are affordable antiques, decorative furniture, overmantles, mirrors, art, a selection of Nicholas Mosse ware, prints, silver and plate and all sorts of collectibles.
Among the more expensively estimated works, at €1,500-€2,000, is an oil on canvas attributed to Andrea Locatelli (1695-1741) of Figures resting by a Capriccio in a Romantic Landscape. With professional cleaning this would add a stylish touch to many interiors. A George III inlaid mahogany and satinwood secretaire is also estimated at just €1,500-€2,000.
If you want to make the most of the strength, power and success associated with dragons in this Year of the Dragon then this sale jast just the thing. An early Chinese Imperial yellow porcelain dish with raised enamel features depicting five dragons with four and five claws comes with an estimate of €800-€1,200. The estimate on a pair of Irish Georgian slope front knife boxes with fitted interiors is just €700-€900 – a steal in old God’s time – and a small 19th century walnut pedestal desk is estimated at just €300-€500. The Qing hardwood cabinet and the Dublin clock are each estimated at €800-€1,200, the Edwardian hobby horse at €700-€900 and the clock garniture at €500-€700. Collectors of Irish country furniture will be interested in an unusual set of four provincial hand painted ladder back chairs with straw seats (€150-€200) or a 19th century yew and elm stick kitchen armchair (€250-€350). A good Victorian figured walnut writing table is estimated at just €300-€400. The catalogue is online, there is viewing in Castlecomer Business Park next Monday and Tuesday and the sale will take place at the Avalon House Hotel at noon on Wednesday.
Francis Bacon’s Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963), a painting that stands as a powerful and passionate memorial to his great love Peter Lacy, will be a highlight at Christie’s 20th/21st Century evening sale in London on March 7. Created in London the year after Lacy’s tragic death in Tangier, the painting depicts the landscape where he was laid to rest. Here, the artist pays tribute to their relationship in a unique image of grief, desire, and longing. Having remained in the same collection for more than 20years, this marks the first time the painting has been offered at auction since 1985 when it set a then world auction record for Francis Bacon. The estimate now is £15 – £20 million. Often exhibited internationally it was included in the landmark 1971-72 lifetime retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris, and was most recently exhibited in the Royal Academy’s ‘Francis Bacon: Man and Beast’, in 2022. Francis Bacon met Peter Lacy at the Colony Room in Soho in 1952. Lacy, a former fighter pilot, was a deeply troubled man whose mercurial personality wrote its way into Bacon’s life and art. The two shared deep, complex feelings towards one another.
This French Art Nouveau mantle clock garniture in red Griotte marble comes up as lot 223 at Fonsie Mealy’s Making Room sale in Castlecomer on February 21. The clock has typical Art Nouveau gilt brass mounts around a painted enamel dial with Arabic numerals and striking on a gong and the estimate is €500-€700. A total of 432 lots will come under the hammer, the catalogue is online and viewing gets underway in Castlecomer on February 19.
A never been seen publicly before on-the-spot sketch by Sir John Lavery of The Hearing of the Appeal of Sir Roger Casement in 1916 comes up at Dreweatts Modern and Contemporary art sale in March 13 with an estimate of £15,000-£25,000. It is a study for Lavery’s grand painting of The Court of Criminal Appeal London, 1916 (Government Art Collection), which is an encapsulation of the high drama surrounding the controversial trial of Roger Casement CMG (1864-1916), hung for his participation in the Irish Nationalist revolt in Dublin in 1916. Casement was an Irish-born high-profile diplomat, working for the British Foreign Office, who became well-known for his humanitarian interests (he was nicknamed the ‘father of twentieth-century human rights investigations’.
There was huge interest in the case, with many high-profile individuals petitioning to save him from the death penalty. It was partly the discovery of what was known as ‘the black diaries’, detailing Casement’s participation in homosexual activities, that are said to have swayed public opinion. It has never been confirmed if the diaries were fabricated by the British government to diffuse the campaign for a reprieve, or whether they were in fact genuine, but they were circulated widely. As homosexuality was against the law at the time these diary entries had an inevitable effect on public opinion.
The full-scale painted version of The Hearing of the Appeal of Sir Roger Casement was proposed by the presiding judge, Sir Charles Darling 1st Baron Darling, PC (1849-1936). Having commissioned the artist to paint other portraits of his family and having seen the artist’s other publicly exhibited works, he invited him to capture the court proceedings. The finished final painting of the work was produced in Lavery’s studio and completed in 1931. It remained there until the artist’s death in 1941, when he left it to the nation. It hung firstly in the Royal Courts of Justice and in 1950 at the request of Sergeant Sullivan, who had been part of Casement’s defence team, it was lent to King’s Inn, Dublin.
Lavery created the study for the painting in situ in court, with Casement looking straight out towards the jury box. Art historian Kenneth McConkey said: “For those two days Lavery, accompanied by his wife Hazel, sat in the witness box recording the scene in the present sketch. During the painful excursion into a legal precedent deriving from a fourteenth century statute on treason, Lavery’s concentration on the scene before him was intense. Although he made efforts to conceal his industry, the production of the present 10 x 14-inch canvas-board in an awkward space was detected by the press, as well as by the prisoner in the dock facing him.”
It is accompanied by two portraits by Lavery from the family of Sir Charles Darling, as well as two other works from private sources, The Lieutenant John Clive Darling and a portrait of his mother, Lady Darling. Two other paintings are an atmospheric view from Lavery’s house at Tangier and a vivid oil sketch for his celebrated portrait of Mrs Roger Plowden and Humphrey of 1897.
In our digital age portrait miniatures – once love tokens held close to the heart – have been supplanted by technology. Yet they offer a unique type of intimate viewing that differs from other more public art forms, and were intended to be handled, held, and worn. So if your thoughts have turned to romance on this St. Valentine’s Day you might consider an upcoming sale at Roseberys in London. Their Old Master, British and European picture sale on February 27 will offer a selection of portrait miniatures. This portrait of Dorothy Wheler in the sale dates to 1648 – the year the sitter got married – and is estimated at £3,000-£5,000.
