Landscape with Trees by Roderic O’Conor made €340,000 at hammer at de Veres.
The innate conservatism of the Irish art market was apparent at the big winter sales in Dublin where the dominant artists were the bankable Roderic O’Conor and Paul Henry. Yes the market is developing and making room for modern, postmodern and contemporary Irish artists. Yet while Francis Bacon and Sean Scully will cut it abroad it is the old reliables like Yeats, Orpen, Lavery and Osborne who dominate at home. Who will bring home the Bacon?
Paintings by Irish turn of the 20th century and later artists are in short supply. The best are in public and private collections from which they emerge only rarely. The home market must evolve. At times like this it sometimes seems as if it is being dragged kicking and screaming towards essential evolution. The greatest Irish artists of the last hundred years are still mostly overlooked at the highest levels of the auction market on the home front.
A landscape by Roderic O’Conor topped the bill at the big winter auctions of Irish art in Dublin. Paysage aux Arbres, Landscape with Trees (1890) made a hammer price of €340,000 at de Veres. The Great Sugar Loaf by Paul Henry (1929-30) was the top lot at Whyte’s making €235,000 at hammer. A Coastal Landscape with Galway Hookers by Paul Henry (1930’s) was the most expensive artwork at Adam’s, making a hammer price of €170,000. In October Francis Bacon’s Portrait of a Dwarf made £13.1 million (€14.88 million) at Sotheby’s in London.
