Aidan Foley will offer this Bentley at Ashford auction.
Not every kitchen clear out yields a Bentley, the bronze front doors once at Harrods and lithographs by Miro, Picasso and Dali. But Ashford Castle is not your average kitchen and all these lots will be included in Aidan Foley’s online auction of contents from the kitchens and lodge there on January 20 and 21.
The luxury hotel is carrying out a refit. Among masses of catering equipment and rare once off collectibles is a pair of plate glass doors in their bronze surround originally at Harrods. The large doors were acquired for Ashford Castle as part of a scheme that was never realised. Each one is a single plain glass panel.
The Bentley is estimated at €10,000-€20,000 and there is significant interest in it already. There is a Porsche too. A selection of around 50 lithographs by Miro, Picasso and Dali will whet the appetites of collectors. Around 700 lots will come under the hammer. The catalogue is online and the auction is on view for three days from January 17 in Cong, Co. Mayo at the Old Mill just outside the back gate of the castle.
THE annual Turner watercolour exhibition is now underway and with major exhibitions focussed on Picasso, Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone it is going to be an exciting year at the National Gallery of Ireland. We will have to wait until October for Picasso: From the Studio, a monographic exhibition in collaboration with the Musée Picasso national-Paris.
Picasso lived surrounded by his art. His personal life and his work, his homes and his studios were always intimately linked. This exhibition places Picasso in the context of his studios, highlighting the various facets and phases of his art and life. It will explore the key locations that defined him, from his arrival in Paris at the start of the twentieth century to his studio in Villa La Californie (1955-1961) in Cannes. Featuring paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and works on paper, as well as photographic and audio-visual works the exhibition will run from October 11 to February 22, 2026.
Mainie Jellett & Evie Hone – The Art of Friendship from April 10 to August 10 will bring together 90 works from these pioneering Irish modernist women artists. The exhibition will highlight the early convergences and later divergences in their styles as they developed distinct artistic voices. Featuring paintings, stained glass, and preparatory drawings, it reveals how both women were trailblazers in Irish art although remaining connected to conventional themes such as religion and landscape.
Ludovico Mazzolino – The Crossing of the Red Sea Photo, National Gallery of Ireland
Among many more events at the Gallery is the display of Ludovico Mazzolino’s masterpiece The Crossing of the Red Sea (1521). On display from February 15 to July 6 it celebrates the conservation and re-display of a rarely seen work. Supported by a grant from the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund, the painting has undergone extensive scientific analysis and conservation, revealing its remarkable detail and historical significance. Mazzolino, who worked extensively for the D’Este rulers of Renaissance Ferrara, is best known for his small- scale paintings.
Meantime the annual Turner extravaganza at the National Gallery comes with a new twist in 2025 with an exciting exchange with the National Galleries of Scotland. Both institutions benefitted from the bequest of the wealthy English collector Henry Vaughan. The 38 Vaughan Bequest Turner watercolours which he bequeathed to Scotland are now on display in Dublin. Ireland’s Turner collection are being showcased this month at the Royal Scottish Academy Building in Edinburgh.
JMW Turner – The Piazetta National Galleries of Scotland. Henry Vaughan Bequest 1900
Visitors have an opportunity to see and appreciate a new selection of these masterful watercolours in the annual January show of 2025.The works on loan range from his detailed topographical views of the 1790s to the vibrant and expressive watercolours of Venice and the Alps that highlight his innovative techniques. The exchange, very much in the spirit of Vaughan’s bequest, comes after many years of discussion and planning by the two institutions.
Bequeathed in 1900 the Turner watercolours have been displayed every year since 1901 with the notable exception of the pandemic year of 2021. It was a stipulation of the bequest that the delicate watercolours be displayed only in January, when the natural light is at its lowest. Turner’s Watercolours: Scotland’s Vaughan Bequest runs until January 31 and is supported by Grant Thornton.
A major European criminal network forging and selling artworks by some of the biggest names in modern art including works attributed to Banksy, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso has been broken up by police in Italy. Six forgery workshops were uncovered – two in Tuscany, one in Venice as well as in Spain and in Belgium – and 38 people were arrested.
Those arrested face charges of conspiracy to handle stolen goods, forgery and illegal sale of artworks, the Carabinieri cultural squad and the Pisa prosecutors’ office said in a joint statement on Monday. Authorities were tipped off in 2023 after they seized about 200 fake pieces from the collection of a businessman in Pisa, including a copy of a drawing by Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani. Other artists impersonated included Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Henry Moore, Gustav Klimt, Joan Mirò, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon and Piet Mondrian. More than 2,100 forged artworks were recovered with a potential sale value of about €200 million.
PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) – Femme et jeune garcon nus
A retrospective of Picasso will be among the highlights of next year’s programme at the National Gallery of Ireland. The gallery, in collaboration with the Musée Picasso national-Paris, will present Picasso: From the studio from October 11, 2025 to February 22, 2026. Picasso lived surrounded by his art. His personal life and his work, his homes and his studios were always intimately linked. This exhibition places Picasso in the context of his studios, highlighting the various facets and phases of his art and life. It will explore the key locations that defined him, from his arrival in Paris at the start of the twentieth century to his studio in Villa La Californie (1955-1961) in Cannes. It will feature paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and works on paper, as well as photographic and audio-visual works. Pictured here is a 1969 work on paper entitled Femme et jeune garcon nus which comes up at Christie’s 20th century evening sale in New York on November 19 with an estimate of $1 million – $1.5 million.
La Comedie Humaine, a 1954 Picasso lithograph printed by Mourlot, Paris, comes up at Hegarty’s sale in Bandon on June 26. The estimate is €500-€700. Galway Shawlies by Markey Robinson and a pencil sketch by John Butler Yeats also feature. There are Scottish silver serving spoons and a diamond and sapphire butterfly pendant on offer as well as two photo albums of the Gurka Royal Engineers.
Pablo Picasso – Femme a la Montre (Woman with a Watch)
Picasso’s Femme a la Montre became the most valuable painting sold at auction this year when it was knocked down for $139 million at Sotheby’s in New York last night. This was the second highest price ever achieved for a Picasso after Les Femmes d’Alger (Women of Algiers) which made $179.3m at Christie’s in 2015. Femme a la Montre was previously owned by the late art collector Emily Fisher Landau, who bought it in 1968, and has been purchased by an anonymous buyer. It depicts Marie-Therese Walter, the lover of the Spanish artist and subject of many of his artworks. Known as Picasso’s “golden muse”, Walter was 17 when she met the 45-year-old Picasso in Paris, and the pair later entered into a secret relationship while he was still married to Olga Khokhlova, a Ukrainian ballerina.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for September 13, 2023)
One of Pablo Picasso’s most unique still lifes, containing coded references to his famed “Golden muse,” Marie-Thérèse Walter at a time when their clandestine affair remained a secret, comes up at Sotheby’s Modern evening auction in New York on November 13. Compotier et guitare was completed the day before Valentine’s Day while in the throes of his secretive affair with Marie-Thérèse. It was not until later in 1932 with the opening of Picasso’s celebrated retrospective at the Galeries Georges Petit in Paris that their affair would become public. Selected by Picasso to star in this exhibition (the first and only time he installed his own work), Compotier et guitare’s veiled portrait was exhibited alongside numerous portraits of Marie-Thérèse, announcing to the world that she was his muse. It is estimated in the region of $25 million, placing it among the most valuable still lifes by the artist at auction.
Pablo Picasso’s La fenêtre ouverte (1929) made £16,319,500
The Shanghai to London sale series at Christie’s established a pioneering cultural dialogue between two of the art market’s major hubs and made a total of £249,070,155. Sell-through rates of 90% by lot and 93% by value demonstrated the confidence of the market, building on the successes we witnessed in 2021. Across the three sales, registered bidders from 34 countries and 5 continents reflect the strength of global demand, with 21% of buyers from Americas, 31% APAC and 49% EMEA. Millennial collectors accounted for 28% of registrants.
Shanghai to London led with museum quality paintings by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Franz Marc, and Pablo Picasso: Franz Marc’s The Foxes (Die Füchse) sold for £42,654,500, setting a new world auction record for the artist and the highest price ever achieved in Europe for a restituted work of art. Francis Bacon’s Triptych 1986-7 made £38,459,206 and Lucian Freud’s Girl with Closed Eyes (1986-87) made £15,174,500.
Pablo Picasso – Mousquetaire a la pipe II at Christie’s UPDATE: THIS MADE $34,710,000
In the era of shredded Banksy’s the New York sales over the next two weeks art will be presented in an innovative way that has broken away from traditional sale categories like Impressionism and Contemporary Art. Artists from Banksy and Basquiat to Peter Doig and El Anatsui to Cindy Sherman and Arcadia will kick off the non traditional art sale season in New York at Christie’s 21st century evening sale on November 9. Arcadia is an NFT – non fungible tokens allow people to buy the rights to online art – by contemporary visual artist Andres Reisinger, Grammy award winning musician RAC and poet Arch Hades. Combining music, visual art and poetry this is the first collaborative interdisciplinary NFT to come to auction. RAC, who was born in 1985, is the oldest of the three. UPDATE: Arcadia sold for $525,000.
A year ago few of us had heard of NFT’s – now they are big business. In March US artist Beeple (aka Mike Winklemann born 1981) made worldwide headlines when an NFT of his digital artwork “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” sold for $63.9 million. Beeple is back at Christie’s on November 9 with an NFT called Human One. By September Christie’s had shattered the $100 million dollar barrier for NFT sales. UPDATE: HUMAN ONE SOLD FOR $28,985,000.
Sotheby’s has launched twice yearly sales of NFT’s. The jury is out on whether this is merely a temporary craze or a more permanent feature of the art market. The buyers of NFT’s, including cyber punks and crypto currency gazillionaires, tend towards the non traditional.
Christie’s say their global 20th/21st century auction series reflects evolving market demands and collecting habits. It is also helping to discover new works, physical and digital. The sale on Tuesday offers 39 lots with established contemporaries like Richard Prince and Christopher Wool being sold alongside new market darlings like Nicolas Party, Harold Ancart and Xinyi Cheng.
On November 11 Christie’s will offer The Cox Collection: The Story of Impressionism. With masterpieces by Caillebotte, Cezanne and Van Gogh this is billed as one of the greatest American collections ever to appear on the market. Dallas based Edwin Cox, who died aged 99 a year ago, spent his career in oil and gas exploration and was ceo of his own investment company. The auction will be followed immediately by the 20th Century evening sale. This ranges from Impressionism in Paris in 1880’s to Pop Art in New York in 1980’s with masterpieces by Picasso and Monet and a Warhol portrait of Jean Michel Basquiat.
Untitled IV by William de Kooning at Sotheby’s in New York on November 15. UPDATE: THIS MADE $18,935,250
On November 15 Sotheby’s will offer the Part One of the Macklowe Collection which they describe as one of the most important collections of any kind ever to appear on the market. The sale will include masterworks by Alberto Giacometti, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. The Macklowes are a spectacularly rich warring New York couple in their ’80’s. A judge has ordered the sale of the collection as part of their protracted divorce proceedings. Sotheby’s Modern evening auction is to take place on November 16 and this will be followed two nights later by an evening auction called Now focusing on art made in the last 20 years.
The eleven Picasso masterworks from the MGM Resorts collection made a total of $108,873,350 at a Sotheby’s sale in Las Vegas last night which was livestreamed around the world. Femme au beret rouge orange which features Picasso’s lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter made $40,479,000 over a top estimate of $30 million. Homme et enfant made $24,393,000 and Nature Morte au panier de fruits et aux fleurs made $16,637,350. The Sotheby’s auction was held at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, where the works had been on display in the Picasso Restaurant for years. Picasso was born on October 25 exactly 140 years ago. MGM Resorts plans to diversity its collection to include more art from women, people of colour and emerging nations as well as from LGBTQ artists and artists with disabilities.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for August 11, 2021)
