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A watercolour of Samuel Beckett by Louis le Brocquy is among the highlights at Gormley’s evening online art auction in Belfast on February 23). It is estimated at €19,100-€22,750. A bronze standing Irish wolfhound by Stephen McKeown is estimated at €11,500-€17,000. There is a print by Damien Hirst, a lithograph by Salvador Dali and work by Maurice Wilks, Charles McAuley, Brian Ballard, Gladys McCabe, Markey Robinson and other well known Irish artists.
A Beckett painting by Cian McLoughlin sold for a hammer price of 30,000 over an estimate of 6,000-10,000 at the James Adam Mid Century Modern sale in Dublin today. A second diptych, Pozo and Lucky, made 14,500 at hammer over a top estimate of 10,000. They came from the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. In 2006 the Beckett Centenary Festival Committee, with the Gate Theatre and the Department of Arts, Tourism and Sport, launched an exhibition by Cian McLoughlin which explored Beckett’s three main plays – ‘End Game’, ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ and ‘Waiting for Godot’. McLoughlin spent three years talking to, studying and painting the actors who had become synonymous with Beckett’s masterpieces, producing large scale portraits that strove to display not the actor, but the character which they embodied.
Commissioned by the Shelbourne Hotel in 2007 the diptychs capture the tragic couplings of Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) and Pozzo and Lucky from ‘Waiting for Godot’. Encroaching as spectres from the fog, the faces of Barry McGovern, Johnny Murphy, Alan Stanford and Stephen Brennan are transformed.
An image of Samuel Beckett by Louis le Brocquy is among the lots at Whyte’s sale of Irish and International Art in Dublin on March 9. The watercolour on tissue paper is signed and dated 1992 and is estimated at 15,000-20,000. The sale features work by Jack Yeats, Paul Henry, William Conor, Beatrice Glenavy, William Sadler, Nathaniel Hone The Elder, Louis le Brocquy, Tony O’Malley, Donald Teskey and many other Irish artists. Viewing gets underway at the RDS tomorrow.
UPDATE: THIS MADE 19,000 AT HAMMER
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for March 1, 2020).
The evening sale of Important Irish Art at Whyte’s at the RDS in Dublin on November 26 will offer collectors an opportunity to acquire key pieces from this flagship winter sale. Highlights include The Man with the Wrinkled Face by Yeats (80,000-120,000) and le Brocquy’s Image of Samuel Beckett (150,000-250,000) from 1994, one of a number of exemplary works by le Brocquy in the sale. There are three horse paintings by Basil Blackshaw, some exceptional work by Irish women artists, a selection of sculpture and work by a wide variety of celebrated Irish artists. The catalogue is online. Here is a small selection:
IMAGE OF SAMUEL BECKETT, 1994 LOUIS LE BROCQUY HRHA (1916-2012) (150,000-250,000) UPDATE: THIS MADE 200,000 AT HAMMER
THE MAN WITH THE WRINKLED FACE, 1944 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957) (80,000-120,000) UPDATE: THIS MADE 245,000 AT HAMMER
SELF PORTRAIT, c.1914 MARGARET CLARKE (NÉE CRILLEY) RHA (1888-1961) (20,000-30,000) UPDATE: THIS MADE 48,000 AT HAMMER
MOUNTAINOUS LANDSCAPE, WEST OF IRELAND, 1913-1914 PAUL HENRY RHA (1876-1958) (30,000-40,000) UPDATE: THIS MADE 44,000 AT HAMMER
The Joe Barrett medal collection.
The Joe Barrett GAA medal collection was the top lot at Fonsie Mealy’s Rare Books and Collectors sale in Kilkenny on September 28. In 1929 Joe Barrett was the first Kerryman to lift the Sam Maguire trophy and his medal collection sold for a hammer price of 40,000. It went to a private collector in Kerry. The Phil Shanahan of Toomevara GAA medal collection went for 19,000. A facsimile of the Book of Kells made 5,000 and a Seamus Heaney handwritten foolscap manuscript critique of Celtic Art, an introduction by Ian Finlay made 2,000. A pamphlet presented by Heaney to Sean White complete with a three verse poem in Heaney’s own handwriting made 1,700 and an 1840 edition of The Ancient Music of Ireland edited by Bunting made sold for 1,600.
Stirrings Still by Samuel Beckett, with illustrations by Louis le Brocquy and signed by both sold for 1,500. A 1935 limited edition of Ulysses by James Joyce with illustrations by Henri Matisse signed by the artist sold for 1,400.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for September 23, 2016)
A first edition of an early critique by Samuel Beckett with and about James Joyce is available with London rare booksellers Peter Harrington. Published by Shakespeare and Company in 1929 “Our Exagmination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress” comes with letters of protest by G. V. L. Slingsby and Vladimir Dixon. This is copy 45 of 96 large numbered copies printed on Verge d’Arches. This early critique of Joyce’s final work was published some 10 years prior to the publication of Finnegan’s Wake. Part of the incentive to publish was apparently to raise funds for the perennially impecunious Joyce. A myth surrounding this work is that one or both of the two letters of protest were written by Joyce himself. However both authors existed – indeed Beach herself commissioned Slingsby. Dixon’s effort was an unsolicited one by a Russian émigré who was to die in Paris in 1929, just as the book was published. 