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PAUL HENRY – ROAD TO CLIFDEN. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
One Yeats and two Paul Henry’s make for what Dolan’s describe as their best auction for years. The online art sale, which is now live, runs until May 26. The top lots are Man Running by Yeats (€120,000-150,000), Incoming Tide by Paul Henry (€90,000-130,000) and Road to Clifden (illustrated here) (€45,000-75,000). There is a selection of 20th century Irish and international artists along with some rare Irish whiskeys. The catalogue is online.
The Thinker on the Butte de Warlencourt by Sir William Orpen. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £756,000
The private collection of Mary and Alan Hobart, founders of the Pyms Gallery, comes up at Christie’s in London on November 19. From premises in Belgravia and Mayfair the Hobarts mounted pioneering exhibitions at the Pyms Gallery, founded in 1974, which championed Irish art in Britain for the first time since Sir Hugh Lane at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Key artists included in Christie’s sale are William Orpen, Jack Butler Yeats, Mary Swanzy, F. E. McWilliam, Jerome Connor, William Crozier, Rita Duffy, Micheal Farrell, Cecil King, Charles Tyrrell, William Scott, Sean Scully, Grace Henry, Gerard Dillon, Augustus John, Bridget Riley, Patrick Heron, John Tunnard and Eileen Agar. The Hobarts collection was showcased at an exhibition at IMMA in Dublin last year.
The Poet by Orpen made £504,000 and his Changing Billets, Picardy made £441,000. An Afternoon in Dorset by Augustus John made £214,200, a world record for an oil on panel by the artist. There was a world record for Grace Henry when The Rosary sold for £47,880 and one for Rita Duffy when Crossroads Dancing made £14,490.
UPDATE: THE COLLECTION REALISED £5,979,204
O’Connell Bridge by Jack Butler Yeats. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £882,000
JACK BUTLER YEATS, R.H.A. (1871-1957) – O’Connell Bridge. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £882,000
This painting by Yeats is among the highlights of the private collection of Alan and Mary Hobart comes up at Christie’s in London on November 19. The estimate is £400,000-£600,000. Their personal collection — at Farm Street, Mayfair and Cap Ferrat — bears witness to the Hobarts’ highly renowned expertise and discerning taste.
Discovery by Jack B Yeats made €380,000 at hammer
Top lots at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin this evening included: Discovery 1952 by Jack B. Yeats (€380,000 at hammer €473,000 gross); Paul Henry – A Village in the West 1916-17 (€280,000 at hammer); Sir John Lavery’s Miss Alice Fulton at Paisley Lawn Tennis Club 1889 (€95,000 at hammer); Louis le Brocquy – Image of Samuel Beckett 1982 (€100,000); Mary Swanzy – In the Window 1920’s (€90,000 at hammer); The Fourth Estate 1945 by Jack B Yeats (€85,000 at hammer) and William Scott – One Pear 1979 (€60,000 at hammer). The sale grossed over €2 million with 80% of lots sold. It is expected that another 10% will sell by private treaty in post auction sales.
In the Window by Mary Swanzy made €90,000 at hammer.
DISCOVERY, 1952 – JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957). UPDATE: THIS MADE 380,000 AT HAMMER
The distinguished London-based art critic, John Berger, who visited Jack B. Yeats in Dublin in September 1956, wrote to him about this painting a few weeks later. ‘In your canvas called Discovery, the explorer has to enter the cave, walk past the last lights that circle and fly as though they were moth and candle in one, and go even further, trailing a scarf of shadow – but then suddenly in the explorer’s close-up face it is the spectator who makes the discovery. Perhaps all art’s rather like that. But many must be richer for the discoveries that are made through your being the explorer – I among them’.
Discovery is, at €300,000-€500,000, the most expensively estimated lot at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on May 27. The catalogue is online.
Paul Henry’s Cottages by a Lake, Achill, Connemara was the top lot at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin this evening. It made a hammer price of €220,000. Jug and Pear 1983 by William Scott made €120,000 at hammer, Waves at Bowmore, Rosses Point 1936 by Jack B Yeats made 85,000 and The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois by Fortunino Matania made 61,000. Among the other leading prices A Professional Man by Jack B Yeats made 34,000, Little Waves, Achill by Grace Henry made 30,000, Tide Coming In, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo made 28,000, Fair Day, Roundstone 1959 by Frank McKelvey made 26,000, Autumn Coastline by Donald Teskey made 18,000, Sunshower by Dan O’Neill made 18,000, Wild Cherry by Norah McGuinness made 14,000, Like a Dream by Barbara Warren made 12,500, Beyond the Bog by Patrick Collins made 11,500, Captive Man of ’83 from 1983 by Rowan Gillespie made 11,500, Surface, 1995 by Linda Brunker made 9,500 and a Facsimile of the Book of Kells made 18,000.
In the catalogue note to Barbara Warren’s Like a Dream estimated at €4,000-€6,000 (pictured below) Adelle Hughes of Whyte’s pointed out that the work feels distinctly Modern and European yet the feeling it inspires also sits comfortably within the traditional West of Ireland scene. Warren’s death at the age of 91 in 2017 marked the end of a living connection to a generation of pioneering Irish female artists like Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, May Guinness, Norah McGuinness and Elizabeth Rivers who, like Warren, studied in Paris with Andre Lhote.
UPDATE: THE AUCTION REALISED 1.2 MILLION
Art by Lavery, Yeats, Paul Henry and Sean Keating will lead upcoming sales of Irish art at Whytes on December 4 and James Adam on December 6. Lavery’s Switzerland (Hazel and Alice) at Whyte’s is estimated at €180,000-€220,000. The top lot at Adams is The Captain by Yeats with an estimate of €100,000-€150,000 .Given the Lavery exhibition now on at the National Gallery in Dublin the auction of a major Lavery is timely. The catalogue cover lot was painted in Wengen, Switzerland early in 1913 at a time of intense painterly activity for the artist. The tranquility of the work belies the fact that In 1913 the world was on the brink of war. In sharp contrast is Lavery’s London Hospital, 1914 (€60,000-€80,000) at Whyte’s, which depicts early casualties of the First World War. After that one people fantasised about it being the war to end all wars.
A deceptively idyllic 1940’s painting of Aran Harbour by Sean Keating (€80,000-€100,000) at Adams is in fact an antidote to the horrors of the Second World War then raging. It shows two women, one looking out to sea, the other peering at the viewer, with a focus on peace and quiet in a world yet again gone mad. Plus ca change.Sea captains feature in many Yeats paintings. The Captain at Adams dates to 1948 and harks back to his youth on the quays in Sligo where his grandfather had a shipping business.
There are rich pickings for collectors available at each sale. A painting of Dooega, Achill Island by Paul Henry at Whyte’s is estimated at €150,000-€200,000. Among 133 works on the catalogue at Whyte’s is a wide ranging selection from Mary Swanzy to Rita Duffy, Gerard Dillon to Felim Egan and sculptors John Behan to Michael Warren. Notable works by Aloysius O’Kelly, William Leech, Tony O’Malley, Patrick Scott and Pauline Bewick sit alongside small collections by Nathaniel Hone, Letitia Hamilton and Patrick Hennessy. The selection includes auction favourites like Arthur Maderson, Kenneth Webb, Mark O’Neill, Graham Knuttel and Markey Robinson.
Top lots at Adams include three classical Paul Henry paintings Near Leenane (1935-38) (€80,000-€120,000), Keem Bay (c1911) (€60,000-€80,000) and Paysage Sinistre (1914-15) (€50,000-€70,000). The sale features many of Ireland’s finest 19th and 20th century artists including three works on paper by Harry Clarke at a time when there is talk of a Dublin museum dedicated to the artist.The Modernist School is represented with works by Edward McGuire, Patrick Hennessy, Colin Middleton, John Doherty, John Shinnors, Basil Blackshaw and Dan O’Neill. A 19th century painting by James Arthur O’Connor, Clearing in the forest with figures (€30,000-€40,000), was recently discovered in a French private collection.
Two artworks by Sir John Lavery and one by Jack B Yeats each made £381,000 (€437,520) at Sotheby’s Modern British and Irish art sale in London today. The Donkey Show by Yeats and A Moorish Harem and Ariadne, both by Lavery, all sold above their low estimate of £300,000. The Trotter by Yeats made £88,900 over an estimate of £80,000-£120,000 but Woodhenge by F. E. McWilliam failed to find a buyer. The Modern British and Irish day auction at Sotheby’s takes place tomorrow.
The Donkey Show, a 1925 painting by Yeats, is among the headliners at Sotheby’s annual Irish art sales in London on November 21-22. His first painting of the annual Donkey Show at Goff’s Yard in Dublin was burnt in the Royal Hibernian Academy fire during the Easter Rising. In the second version, a decade later, the artist is totally released from his former representational manner. The viewer is invited into the scene by a group of grey donkeys in the foreground with distinctive pitched ears and the work is estimated at €458,440-€687,660. Evening and day sales will offer 54 works of Irish art estimated to bring in more than €2 million. There are two works by Lavery from direct descendants of the artist and contemporary artists featured include Hughie O’Donoghue, Linda Brunker, Orla de Bri, Richard Hearns, Melissa O’Donnell, Jack Coulter, Rowan Gillespie and Nick Miller. Works are on view at the RHA in Dublin today and tomorrow.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for November 2, 2023)
THIS pencil on paper by Jack Butler Yeats titled A Girl Clings to a Young Man on the Beach is from a 1904 illustration for The Collegians. It is based on the 1829 novel by G. Griffin on a notorious murder of a woman in Co. Limerick in 1819. She had been secretly married to a local landlord. Dion Boucicault based The Colleeen Bawn on Griffin’s version of the tale. The signed work comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current online sale of Irish art with an estimate of €3,000-€5,000. The auction runs until the evening of September 11 and the catalogue is online. Meantime there will be viewing in Skibbereen on September 7, 8 and 11.
