antiquesandartireland.com

Information about Art, Antiques and Auctions in Ireland and around the world
  • ABOUT
  • About Des
  • Contact
  • Posts Tagged ‘CICERO’

    NEARLY EVERYTHING YOU NEED AT THIS SALE

    Saturday, April 22nd, 2023
    Pair of Regency wingback armchairs. UPDATE: THESE MADE 4,800 AT HAMMER

    Cicero wrote that if you have a garden and a library you have everything you need. Many readers will find the words penned by the Roman statesman and philosopher as apposite today as when they were first written more than 2000 years ago. The concept of a sale devoted to furniture and collectibles associated with the libraries of grand houses in Ireland is seductive. Some pleasing and unique  treasures that lie hidden within will emerge at the James Adam library sale next Wednesday April 26. 
    Even if in 2023 many of us choose to do so online we must recognise that in our contemporary world no substitute exists for the quiet, understated comfort and tranquil atmosphere of the library of old.  Rooms like that cannot be realistically recreated in most modern homes but a quiet corner can be set up, a space for contemplation where ideas and actions can be formulated and advanced and the imagination can soar. There is quite literally no limit to the areas of interest that can be pursued in a library. A really good chair is essential.  It is a mystery to me why anybody would manufacture, let alone buy, a chair that is uncomfortable to sit in or difficult to get out of.  Adams has a fine example of a pair of Regency hide covered wingback armchairs. The estimate of €5,000-€7,000 is steep enough but they are pretty much guaranteed to be a comfortable and stylish investment.  Other chairs like a Georgian style wingback armchair together with a Victorian lady’s armchair in olive green leather are, at €600-€800, more affordable. An oak library armchair attributed to Strahan in the 19th century Mannerist style has an estimate of €1,500-2,000 and there is plenty of other examples to choose from.

     A portrait of Henry Boyle by Robert West. UPDATE: THIS MADE 9,500 AT HAMMER

    The auction is strong in fine antique furniture and there is no shortage of stimulating pieces from silverware, books, porcelain, maps, paintings, prints,  and collectibles like a small brass signal cannon or a brass binnacle with compass.  There are wine coolers and cellarettes, canterburys and music stands, benches and metamorphic library steps, a hide covered chesterfield sofa and an early 19th century folio or map stand.A chalk on grisaille portrait of leading Irish politician of his day Henry Boyle (1682-1764)  by Robert West (1710-1770) is estimated at €6,000-€10,000.  The Knight of Glin and Professor Anne Crookshank posited that this is the only known work by West whose Drawing Academy led to the creation of the  Dublin School.  Boyle, whose estates were centred at Castlemartyr, Co. Cork, was Earl of Shannon and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. A portrait of an unknown young lady by Garret Morphy (1655-1715), one of Ireland’s finest Georgian portraitists, is estimated at €8,000-€10,000.

    A c1780 side table attributed to William Moore UPDATE: THIS MADE 8,000 AT HAMMER

    A collection of 16th and 17th century seal spoons, used to seal letters and important documents and a map of Ireland by Abraham Ortelius was published in 1579 will interest collectors.  A c1780 Irish inlaid side table, attributed to William Moore, is estimated at €10,000-€15,000.  Mirrors, desks, oil lamps, Oriental rugs, Donegal carpets and a collection of African, Australasian, Pacific Islands, Inuit and other ceremonial masks and figures put together by Paddy McEntee S.C. all figure. The most expensively estimated piece out of a total of 444 lots is a set of Great Irish deer antlers and skull (€25,000-€35,000).  Lot 172 is a death mask of Patrick Kavanagh by Seamus Murphy, signed and dated 1967.  The poet and sculptor were contemporaries and first met in Cork in 1943. It is one of only three casts known to exist, with one at the Kavanagh Centre in Co. Monaghan, the other in the Dublin Writen’s Museum.  The estimate is €3,000-€5,000

    BUSTS OF CICERO AND HORACE REUNITED AT TEFAF

    Sunday, March 6th, 2016

    A pair of polychrome marble portrait busts of Cicero, civic hero of the Roman Republic, and Horace, the famed poet have been reunited by Tomasso Brothers Fine Art for TEFAF, which runs at Maastricht from March 1120.  Carved in the same 17th century Roman workshop, theyhave an illustrious provenance.  Originally part of the Valletta collection in Naples, they were acquired around 1721 by Thomas Herbert, the 8th Earl of Pembroke (1654–1733) for Wilton House, near Salisbury, one of England’s finest stately houses. They were displayed at the heart of one of the finest private art collections ever assembled in Europe for more than two centuries.  They flanked the main chimneypiece in the Earl’s ‘sanctum sanctorum’ of the Great ‘Double Cube’ Room designed by Inigo Jones, amongst family portraits by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and works formerly in the esteemed collections of Cardinals Mazarin and Richelieu, King Charles I of England and Thomas Howard, the 14th Earl of Arundel.

    Pembroke’s influence on the tastes and collecting trends of the aristocratic English in the early eighteenth century were considerable.  When he embarked on his Grand Tour in 1676 and set about building a collection in the 1680s, he was all but alone.  Yet the fame of the galleries at Wilton House spread amongst the aristocracy, and by the time of his death in 1733, many of England’s great country houses were beginning to be decorated with antiquities, renaissance and baroque sculpture.  It is through the expertise of Tomasso Brothers Fine Art that the two works have been reunited since their dispersal from Wilton House. Cicero came into the gallery’s collection a short while after the directors had become aware of Horace. They knew instinctively that they were both great 17th century busts, and that the particular specimen of imperial porphyry used for the Horace was a wonderful quality. Whilst recognising the physical similarities of the two works, it was finding an old photograph of the Double Cube Room at Wilton House that set off months of study to discover the full history of the busts.

    Cicero

    Cicero

    Horace

    Horace