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Wild Cherry by Norah McGuinnes will feature at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on March 11. Already consigned are notable works by Jack Yeats, Daniel O’Neill, Harry Kernoff, Grace Henry, George Campbell, Lilian Davidson and others. The auction house is still seeking consignments for this sale.
This pair of Anglo-Indian giltwood chaises longues is one of five lots originally at Castletown House at Sotheby’s Royal and Noble sale in London on January 17. The estimate is £5,000-£8,000. Lots 46 to 51 in the sale from Castletown comprise of five lots of a suite of 19th century Anglo-Indian furniture from Bombay. A giltwood cabinet is estimated at £4,000-£6,000, a three fold screen is estimated at £2,500-£3,500, a piano stool is estimated at £1,000-£2,000 and a giltwood bergere has an estimate of £2,000-£3,000. UPDATE: ALL FIVE LOTS WERE SOLD PRIOR TO THE AUCTION.
The Guttmann Mouse Helmet, an important Roman iron, brass and copper helmet with a punched inscription for the helmet’s original owner, Julius Mansuetus, is the top lot at Christie’s Arms and Armour from the Mougins Museum of Classical Art Part I sale in New York on January 30. It is estimated at $1,000,000-1,500,000. Additional top lots include a Greek bronze Corinthian helmet ($300,000-500,000), a Roman iron and tinned bronze cavalry helmet ($300,000-500,000), a Roman sheet brass helmet of Weisenau type ($250,000-350,000), and the Thétis Fragment, a fragmentary Greek bronze inscribed back-plate from an anatomical cuirass ($150,000-250,000).
The sale will offer around 40 lots from the museum’s unparalleled collection of ancient arms and armour from across the Mediterranean world — the largest private collection of its kind. It is the second chapter of a collecting odyssey offered across six sales from December 2023 to December 2024. The works of art, spanning antiquities to contemporary sculptures, have been the nucleus of the South of France museum since its foundation by Christian Levett in 2011. The Mougins Museum of Classical Art closed its doors to the public last August and will reopen in June 2024 as Female Artists Mougins Museum, dedicated solely to works by female artists from The Levett Collection.
Nearly every year in Ireland the low light of January is offset by the shining collection of Turner watercolours at the National Gallery. In 2024 the annual Vaughan Bequest display of Turners is displayed alongside a collection of 18th and 19th century coastal scenes by Irish and British artists who drew inspiration from the rugged coastlines and busy fishing communities they encountered. Turner and Coastal Scenes – on view until January 31 – reveals not only his passion for the sea and shipping, but an extraordinary understanding of the ever changing pattern including both violence and serenity of the sea. No less than 15 watercolours from the gallery’s collection – some not seen in public for years – are included. Work by artists John Thomas Serres, Thomas Walmsley, Edward Dayes, John Callow, David Cox the Elder, James Howard Burgess, Andrew Nicholl, Henry Newton, George Petrie and Frederic William Burton is being shown together for the first time. Well known locations like the Baily Lighthouse in Howth, Dun Aonghasa on the Aran Island and the Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim are featured. A highlight of the yearly cultural calendar the Turner watercolours have been shown annually in January since 1901, except for 2021. They were bequeathed by the wealthy English collector Henry Vaughan in 1900. He stipulated that the delicate works be shown only in January when the natural light is at its lowest.
There will be something spectacular to look forward to at the Gallery when the days start to lengthen as well. Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington will be a highlight of the upcoming show titled Turning Heads: Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer at the gallery from February 24 to May 24.It features work from Dutch and Flemish artists of the 16th and 17th centuries who were exponents of the tronie – an intriguing painting of a head that depicts an exaggerated facial expression. Among the works to be shown are Study of an Old Woman by Rubens, The Laughing Man by Rembrandt and The Man with the Golden Helment c1650 from the circle of Rembrandt.The groundbreaking show will present an opportunity for a powerful face to face encounter with people from 300-400 years ago through an extraordinary collection of Old Master paintings. Each work unfolds its own story. The exhibition is a collaboration between The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp and the National Gallery.An unprecedented opportunity to see Mistress and Maid by Vermeer from the Frick arises at the gallery later in the year. This painting has rarely travelled outside New York, where the period home of the Frick Collection is under renovation. It will be displayed alongside the National Gallery’s Woman Writing a Letter with her Maid. Vermeer Visits runs from May 11 to August 18.
The premier antique fair in the United States, New York’s Winter Show, will offer an extraordinary variety of vetted antiques from around the world spanning 5,000 years from antiquity to today. The annual extravaganza at the Park Avenue Armory will bring together 65 renowned international dealers in fine and decorative arts from January 19-28. Established in 1954 it has consistently addressed the shifting role and value of art, antiques and design. New European exhibitors this year include Galerie Nathalie Motte Masselink (Paris) with Old Master drawings, Galerie Léage (Paris) with objects and furniture from the 18th century in a shared stand with Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz (Paris) and Peter Harrington (London) specialising in rare books, manuscripts, and works on paper. Returning exhibitors of Daniel Blau of Munich will offer Modern and Contemporary works on paper, Robert Young of London with British and European folk and naive art and Wartski London with antique jewelry, Fabergé and silver Aronson Antiquaire of Amsterdam with 17th and 18th century Delftware and Koopman Rare Art of London with fine English silver, gold boxes and jewellery.
Sumptuous lots from Palazzo Volpi, the Renaissance palace on the Grand Canal in Venice and birthoplace of the Venice Film Festival, will come under the hammer at Sotheby’s in Paris on February 28. A total of 200 lots of furniture and works of art from the collection of Count and Countess Volpi of Misurata will include palatial Roman tables, ballroom banquettes, sopraporta panels in the styleof Jacopo Sansovino, Wagner sofas and Venetian mirrors. They will include items from the palace’s piano nobile, the main floor containing the portego (a typically Venetian reception room), the ballroom and the music room. Highlights will include a set of 14 Venetian giltwood chairs, a pair of Italian giltwood side tables and a Venetian Japanese style console.
The magnificent Renaissance residence was acquired in 1917 by Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata (1877-1947), founder of the Venice International Film Festival after whom the Volpi Cup prize for the best actor and actress is still named. Over the course of his lifetime and the generation that has followed, the Count and his family hosted some of the greatest names in the 20th century in the opulent rooms of the palazzo including Winston Churchill, Coco Chanel, Josephine Baker, King Fouad of Egypt, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Andy Warhol, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Barbara Hutton, Elizabeth Taylor, Gina Lollobrigida, Harrison Ford and George Clooney.
The most expensive painting sold in Ireland in 2023 was Sean Scully’s Raval Rojo. It made a hammer price of €580,000 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online art sale last April. At Whyte’s total sales were just under €6 million, there was a new world record for a work on paper by Harry Clarke at James Adam and in 2023 Bonhams recorded the best every turnover in their 230 year history. Sotheby’s continued their Irish sales in Paris, along with London and Christie’s reported projected global sales for art and luxury goods in 2023 of €5.8 billion and say their is a promising pipeline of consignments already in motion for 2024.
As we leave 2023 behind there is every reason to be optimistic about the coming year in the art, luxury and collectible end of things. At Christie’s last year there was a strong influx of new buyers (35%) and a growing participation of Millennials and Generation Z. Much of this is driven by popular culture. Think Freddie Mercury at Sotheby’s and Lady Diana’s dress at Julien’s.
Whyte’s achieved the highest prices in Ireland in 2023 for Jack Yeats (€290,00), Sir John Lavery (€230,000) and Paul Henry (€155,000) – excluding buyers’ premium and VAT. A Seán Keating painting, The Goose Girl, made €62,000 in December. Adams sold over €500,000 worth of paintings by Paul Henry and Harry Clarke’s The Colloquy of Monos and Una, a 1923 illustration for Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, made a record €70,000 and joined the collection of the Crawford Gallery in Cork, where it is now on display.
This Art Deco silver teapot comes up as lot 55 at Hegarty’s New Year auction which begins online at 5 pm on January 3. The London teapot with the mark for 1928 has the maker’s mark G&S Co Ltd. For Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Co. Ltd. It is estimated at 500-600. The auction offers around 280 lots of jewellery, art, antique furniture and collectibles.
The National Gallery of Ireland’s popular annual exhibition of watercolours by J.M.W. Turner opens today and continues for the month of January. This year, Turner’s work will feature alongside coastal scenes by an array of British and Irish artists from the collection. Turner and Coastal Scenes reflects his lifelong passion for the sea. The artist revelled in capturing its ever-changing character, along with the activities of those whose livelihoods depended on it. His watercolours in the Vaughan Bequest at the National Gallery of Ireland range from tranquil beach and harbour scenes to depictions of storm-tossed seas and shipwrecks. Coastal locations include Dover, Hastings, Folkestone, Clovelly, Plymouth, as well as Ostend and Venice, famously known as the jewel of the Adriatic.
This year, the Gallery’s annual display of the Vaughan Bequest of Turner watercolours is complemented by a selection of eighteenth and nineteenth-century coastal scenes by British and Irish artists. Like Turner, these artists drew inspiration from the rugged coastlines and bustling fishing communities that they encountered at first hand. Well-known locations including the Baily Lighthouse in Howth, Dún Aonghasa on the Aran Islands, and the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim are depicted. Significant artists who feature in this display include David Cox the Elder, Andrew Nicholl, George Petrie and Frederic William Burton.
Memo to all Sultans of Swing. In a sale that will attract collectors from around the globe more than 120 guitars and amps from the personal collection of singer songwriter and Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler will come under the hammer at Christie’s in London on January 31. It spans the 50 year career of one of the most influential musicians in the world and chronicles the array of guitars Knopfler used to write, record and perform with Dire Straits. “Wherever I go I’m still crossing streets to look at guitars in the windows of music shops. I’ve done that since I was a little kid” he said. With an estimate range of £500-£500,000 (€582-€582,000) there are opportunities for fans to participate at all levels. Renowned for his virtuoso finger picking style he chose each instrument for its individual tone. The archive includes names like Fender, Gibson, Gretsch and Martin and custom built models by Rudy Pensa and John Suhr. A total of 25% of the hammer price will be donated to charities he has supported for many years, the British Red Cross, Tusk and Brave Hearts of the North East. His 1959 vintage Gibson Les Paul Standard, used on the Sailing to Philadelphia tour in 2001 and the Kill To Get Crimson tour in 2008 is the top lot, estimated at £300,000-£500,000 (€349,000-€582,000).
UPDATE: THE COLLECTION WAS 100% SOLD AND BROUGHT IN £8,840,160
