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Butterfly Spin by Damien Hirst comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current off the wall online art auction which runs until January 8. The estimate for the acrylic on paper is €3,000-€5,000 and it is among the most expensively estimated works on offer in this sale. The catalogue is online now and there will be viewing in Skibbereen from January 4.
The National Gallery of Ireland announced today that it had acquired Titania Enchanting Bottom by Harry Clarke. It is undergoing conservation treatment and will be on display in the New Year. The luminous stained glass panel was sold by Morgan O’Driscoll last October 24 for a hammer price of €160,000. The acquisition was supported by the Patrons of Irish Art of the National Gallery of Ireland. Born in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day in 1889, Harry Clarke is one of Ireland’s best known and most beloved artists. He achieved significant acclaim in his short lifetime, working across different media including book illustration. His principal career was in the production of stained glass windows, mainly for churches and religious houses across Ireland, as well as in the UK, US and Australia. He also produced a small number of secular works in glass.
Titania Enchanting Bottom is the only glass work by Clarke that is inspired by Shakespeare. It depicts Act IV, Scene I, from Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Featuring characters from the play including Bottom, Puck, Titania, Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Moth, the work is adorned with botanical elements – a detail typical of Clarke’s work. From 1917 to 1922, Clarke made a unique series of miniature panels inspired by literature – including this one – adapting his talent and passion for book illustration to the medium of stained glass. These panels were set into bespoke cabinets, of which several, including this example, were designed by Dublin-born furniture maker James Hicks (1866-1936). Titania Enchanting Bottom is one of just five panels that survive. At the National Gallery of Ireland, it joins The Song of the Mad Prince (1917) which is on display in Room 20 and was acquired by the Gallery in 1987. These panels are significant to the understanding of Harry Clarke as an artist. They are the forerunners to the The Eve of St Agnes based on the Keats poem and The Geneva Window now at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami.
This watercolour by Mildred Anne Butler comes up as lot 14 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s off the wall online art auction which runs until December 5. It is estimated at €1,000-€1,500. A broad range of Irish artists, from Nano Reid to Jack B Yeats, feature in this auction with oils, gouaches, watercolours, lithographs, etchings, pencil drawings and mixed media works. The most expensively estimated work, at €3,000-€5,000, is The Flash Frigate, a pen and Indian ink on paper work by Jack B. Yeats from 1911. UPDATE: THE FLASH FRIGATE MADE €5,000 AT HAMMER
THIS acrylic and mixed media on wood by the late Irish artist Felim Egan comes up as lot 37 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish art online auction which runs until November 27. It is estimated at €800-€1,200 and is already the subject of some spirited bidding. A wide variety of art and artists characterise this sale. There is sculpture by John Behan, drawings by Yeats and Sean Keating, a screenprint by Andy Warhol, and a variety of high popular artists like Arthur Maderson, Graham Knuttel, Cecil Maguire, Mark O’Neill and Markey Robinson. The catalogue is online.
Connemara Landscape, a small oil on canvas by Eileen Meagher, comes up as lot 12 in Morgan O’Driscoll’s off the wall online art auction which runs until October 31. The sale offers an affordable collection with lithographs and prints by William Crozier, Damien Hirst, Paul Henry, Roy Lichtenstein, Joan Miro, pencil drawings, watercolours and oils by a wide range of popular Irish and international artists. The catalogue is online.
Harry Clarke, Paul Henry, Sir John Lavery and Sean Scully are among the leading Irish artists heading up Morgan O’Driscoll’s online art auction which gets underway on the evening of October 24. Major art of this calibre by established artists does not come cheap and estimates for these four range from €50,000 to €150,000. Any one of them would enormously enhance a serious collection of Irish art.
In a dazzling and vivid stained glass panel Clarke delves into a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream featuring Titania and Bottom dated 1922. In a walnut and tortoiseshell cabinet by James Hicks it recreates a strange and marvellous world composed of fragments of transformed reality. Once in the collection of Ann and Gordon Getty, which realised more than $150 million (€143 million) across ten auctions at Christie’s last year, it is estimated at €100,000-€150,000.
There is a similar estimate on Paul Henry’s atmospheric Cottages on Achill Sound which depicts three traditional thatched cottages in a path leading towards the seashore. Most of Henry’s work around Connemara and Mayo includes mountains. in this one the artist has turned away from the land and faces towards the ocean. The Beach, Evening Tangier by Sir John Lavery dates to 1920 and is estimated at €80,000-€120,000. Scully’s Barcelona dates to 1998. The estimate for this watercolour on paper is €50,000-€70,000. These are atmospheric works with their own aura. So is Three Figures by Dan O’Neill, an evocative moonlit scene with three women, their heads covered by scarves, and estimated at €25,000-€35,000. Moonlight features in Connemara by George Campbell, a nightime view, and in Full by Elizabeth Magill.
In sharp contrast is Studio Table by William Crozier, bright with the artist’s palette of colours, and Harry Kernoff’s Madonna with Faun and Doves, inspired by religious icons. Louis le Brocquy, Jack B Yeats, Evie Hone, Peter Curling, Pauline Bewick, Letitia M Hamilton, Kenneth Webb, John Shinnors and Colin Middleton are among the artists featured in an online catalogue that is brimful of interest. The sale is on view at the RDS today, tomorrow and Monday and gets underway online at 6.30 pm next Tuesday.
Barcelona, a 1998 watercolour on paper by Sean Scully, is lot 16 at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online art sale which runs until October 24. The estimate is 50,000-70,000. Viewing for the sale gets underway today in Skibbereen and continues over the weekend until Monday. The sale will be on view at the Minerva Suite of the RDS from October 20-23.
Cottages on Achill Sound by Paul Henry will be a highlight at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish and International online art sale which runs until October 24. One of finest West of Ireland scenes it has for many years been in a private collection in Dublin. The painting depicts three traditional thatched cottages by a track leading down to the Atlantic seashore. Most of Henry’s views of Connemara and Mayo include mountains. In this he has turned away from the land and faced towards the ocean. The estimate is €100,000-€150,000. The catalogue for the sale is online.
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.
