Mark Rothko – Untitled (signed and dated 1960) made $48 million
The sale of 30 lots from the Macklowe Collection achieved $246.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York last night. When added to the results of the November auction the total comes to $922.2 million, making this the most valuable collection ever sold at auction. Highlights last night included Mark Rothko’s Untitled, which made $48 million, Gerhard Richter’s Seestuck (Seascape) which made $30.2 million, Andy Warhol’s Self Portrait which made $18.7 million, and Willem de Kooning’s Untitled which sold for $17.8 million.
Paul Cezanne – Clairiere (The Glade) at Sotheby’s in New York next Tuesday. UPDATE: THIS MADE $41,688,500
THE big game hunters of the global art world are out in force right now. There are rich pickings for the super rich in a stellar round of May sales in New York sales showcasing major artistic movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. At Christie’s last Monday evening Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn from the collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann of Zurich sold for a record $195 million (€184,421,250). The 40 square inch canvas became the most expensive 20th century artwork ever sold. In 1964 Warhol developed a time intensive new process and used it to create a limited number of portraits – including Shot Sage Blue Marilyn – before abandoning the technique. The painting has been exhibited at galleries including the Guggenheim, New York, the Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London. The 36 works from this collection realised $317.8 million (€300,610,198), All proceeds will directly benefit the Ammann Foundation’s global efforts to create healthcare and education programmes for children.
With everyone from Monet and Degas to Balthus and Wayne Thibaud Christie’s delivered in style this week. At this stage the running total for their Marquee Week spring sales is $1.36 billion. The Post War and Contemporary art day sale yesterday achieved $97 million.
Next it is the turn of Sotheby’s. Their six sales with 800 lots carry a combined estimate of over $1 billion (€950,800,000) on a level with their record setting season last November. Then the Macklowe Collection of 35 artworks made $676 million (€642.9 million) after real estate mogul Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda were ordered by a judge to sell their collection and split the proceeds during their 2018 divorce trial. Another 30 works from their collection come up next Monday evening with artists like Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Sigmar Polke, Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons, Anselm Kiefer, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Andy Warhol.
The Modern evening auction on Tuesday is the most expensively estimated in the category at Sotheby’s for 15 years. It will feature one of Monet’s finest Venetian works, a 1932 portrait of Marie Therese Walter by Picasso and The Glade by Paul Cezanne. These three works alone are expected to bring in around $150 million (€142.6 million).
On Thursday the Now evening auction and the Contemporary evening auction will bring this months series of marquee evening auctions to a close. The Now sale will open the evening with ten consecutive works by women artists including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Christina Quarles, Jennifer Packer and Tracey Emin. Highlights of the Contemporary evening auction are Study for Red Pope 1962, 2nd version 1971 by Francis Bacon, Cy Twombly’s large scale Untitled from 1969, a silkscreen of Elvis by Andy Warhol and Cold Beer Beautiful Girls, a quintessential text painting by Ed Ruscha. Who could ask for anything more?
Francis Bacon Study of Red Pope 1962, 2nd version, 1971 at Sotheby’s, New York next Thursday evening. UPDATE: THIS MADE $46,284,500.
Jack B. Yeats- Market Day, Mayo / The Long Car Executed in 1920 Exhibited Paris, Galeries Barbazanges, l’Exposition d’Art Irlandais, 1922,
This Yeats painting is again on show in Paris this week. Sotheby’s has included it in their exhibition and viewing of lots for Ireland / France: Art and Literature sale which is open online for bidding until May 16. The sale includes a strong group of paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures by Ireland’s leading artists from the 19th century to the present day, including Roderic O’Conor, John Lavery, Jack B. Yeats, Mainie Jellett, William Scott and Rowan Gillespie. In addition are a select group of books by Ireland’s celebrated writers including Joyce, Beckett and Yeats.
The auction coincides with the centenary anniversary of the 1922 World Congress of the Irish Race – a significant event in modern Irish history in which the newly founded Irish State participated in a week-long international conference in Paris to promote the country’s national identity. In attendance were Irish politicians, diaspora delegates, writers, artists and musicians. It is on view in Paris until May 14.
Roderic O’Conor – Rocks and Foam, St. Guenole, 1893. UPDATE: THIS MADE 352,800
A May celebration of Ireland by Sotheby’s in Paris will introduce Irish art to new European audiences and mark an important centenary. Bidding on Ireland / France: Art and Literature opens May 9. The online sale runs until May 16 and will be on view in the French capital from May 11 until May 14. The newly founded Irish state took part in a week long international conference in Paris in 1922 titled The World Congress of the Irish Race. Irish politicians, diaspora delegates, writers, artists and musicians all turned up with the intention of promoting Ireland on the world stage and highlighting our artistic and cultural uniqueness. The auction this month – staged in addition to the annual sale of Irish Art by Sotheby’s to be held in London next November – coincides with the centenary of that congress.
In 1922 the then capital of the art world was witness to a major, month long Irish art exhibition of three hundred works at Galeries Barbazanges.Sotheby’s will avail of the viewing to exhibit three works on loan from private collections. Two of them, The Rosary by Grace Henry and Market Day Mayo / The Long Car by Jack B Yeats, painted respectively in 1910 and 1920, were exhibited at l’Exposition d’Art Irlandais at Galeries Barbazanges. The third, The Bridge at the River Grez, was painted by John Lavery in 1883. Among the literary offerings are copies of Ulysses (first published in Paris in 1922) and Dubliners by James Joyce; Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett and Stories of Red Hanrahan by William Butler Yeats. There is a death mask of James Joyce by Victor McCaughan.
William Scott – Bottle Still Life, 1958. UPDATE: THIS MADE 50,400
Irish art on offer at this auction spans different generations and styles. There are paintings by Jack B Yeats and Louis le Brocquy, Sir John Lavery and William Scott. Among our leading contemporary artists there is sculpture by Dorothy Cross, Rowan Gillespie and Patrick O’Reilly with painting by Hughie O’Donoghue and John Noel Smith. Cow up a Tree by the west Cork based Australian artist John Kelly is estimated at €24,000-€35,000. A French cafe scene from 1937 by Harry Kernoff – Sunday Evening, Place du Combat, Paris – is estimated at €40,000-€60,000. Head of a Breton boy by Roderic O’Conor dates to 1883 and is estimated at €60,000-€80,000. Work by Evie Hone, Mainie Jellett, Charles Lamb, Sean Keating, Sean O’Sullivan, Aloysius O’Kelly, Sean O’Sullivan, Sarah Purser, Mary Swanzy, William Orpen and Leo Whelan features too.Among the most expensively estimated lots are Rocks and Foam, St. Guenole, 1883 by Roderic O’Conor (€300,000-€500,000), A Stranger by Sir John Lavery and Quatre Poires by Roderic O’Conor each estimated at €120,000-€180,000 and Statue of the Fragonard, Grasse, 1920’s by William Leech (€30,000-€50,000). There is much here to interest the French, the Irish and members of the Irish diaspora and their descendants located right around the globe.
This early 20th century Donegal carpet in remarkably fine condition sold for 5,292 GBP at Sotheby’s in London today. It came up at a sale of Art of the Islamic World including fine rugs and carpets and had been estimated at 4,000-6,000. Made in Killybegs in the early 20th century the carpet, with the label of Maple and Co. London and Smyrna, was discovered about 40 years ago in a sealed room by an antique restorer working on some library panels. It was thought then to have been stored for at least 50 years. The father of the present owner bought it, but found it too big for his home and passed it on to son, who also found it to be too big. So it has been stored ever since. It measures 368 cm x 265 cm approximately.
John Mitchel, Irish Patriot – Autograph letter signed, to Thomas Carlyle
An 1848 letter on Irish Independence written from prison in Dublin by John Mitchel to Thomas Carlyle comes up at Sotheby’s in London on April 13. John Mitchel was the editor of the United Irishman, which called for Irish independence in the bitter aftermath of the Great Hunger. Carlyle had met him on a visit to Ireland in September 1846, and Mitchel was deeply influenced by Carlyle’s “great man” theory of history. In May 1848 Mitchel was tried for seditious libel and sentenced to 14 years transportation. He was taken first to Ireland Island, Bermuda, to work on the construction of the British naval dockyard, then to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), from where he escaped in 1853. He spent much of the rest of his life in America, editing radical Irish Nationalist newspapers, but returned to Ireland to stand for election to Westminster in 1875. He won the election but was disqualified from sitting since he was a convicted felon. A second election was likewise decreed null. The estimate for the letter, in which he bids Carlyle farewell and sends his regards to Mrs. Carlyle, is 2,000-3,000 GBP.
The sale includes an 1848 letter from Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington to General Sir Edward Blakeney, Commander in Chief of the British Army in Ireland, on the possibility of a Chartist rebellion. Also on offer is a letter from William Huskisson, Minister for War, on the French Invasion of Ireland, 1798.
Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. – Hosiery & Factory. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £32,670
Hosiery and Factory by L.S. Lowry comes up as lot 114 at Sotheby’s Made in Britain sale online, which runs from today until March 15. It is signed and dated 1970. The artist also signed the backboard – L S Lowry and inscribed In a Fishing Village about/ 30 miles north of Ireland. The estimate is £30,000-40,000. Sotheby’s say the sale offers something for everyone at every price point. The auction is led by a selection of Damien Hirst prints, exceptional ceramics by Damie Lucie Rie and Gwyn Hanssen Piggot and a trio of beautiful Alfred Wallis works from the family of artist Basil Rakoczi, who was a prominent member of the Irish White Stag art group.
Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1961) made £59,422,000 ($79.8 million) at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary evening auction. This was the highest price ever paid for a painting in GBP in Europe and it tripled the artist’s record. The paradox at its core, as in all of Magritte’s best work, is the artist probing an inherently magical quality as the opposite of our everyday. ‘I have always felt the greatest interest in night and day, without however having any preference for one or the other,’ noted Magritte. ‘This great personal interest in night and day is a feeling of admiration and astonishment.
Claude Monet’s limpid Nympheas (1914–1917) – described by the artist as being ‘the illusion of an endless whole, of a watery surface with no horizon and no shore… made £23,228,500.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for February 16, 2022)
Flora Yukhnovich – Warm, Wet ‘N’ Wild (£150,000-£200,000). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £2,697,000 GBP
The London edition of the Now evening auction at Sotheby’s on March 2 brings together a tightly curated selection of works by some of the most sensational artists of the 21st century. The sale will offer works by Rachel Jones, Shara Hughes and Flora Yukhnovich, and provide a masterpiece context for well-established artists such as Cecily Brown, George Condo and Banksy. Addressing the outstanding demand for young and emerging artists the sale follows the highly successful launch of the format in New York last November.
Banksy – Kissing Coppers (£2.5 – £3.5 million). UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
Irish delegates, with Eamon de Valera (centre), gather for ‘The World Congress of the Irish Race’, 1922, Paris
A dedicated cross category sale entitled Ireland / France: Art, Literature, Wine will take place at Sotheby’s Paris on May 16. It will coincide with the cententary of The World Congress of the Irish Race when the newly founded Irish State participated in a week-long international conference in Paris. The aim of the event was to promote an independent Ireland on a world stage and display the country’s artistic and cultural uniqueness. For the occasion, a major, month-long Irish art exhibition of 300 works was also staged at Galeries Barbazanges a bold statement in the art capital of the world.
Sotheby’s, which is currently seeking consignments for the sale in May, will offer key works by Ireland’s leading artists and writers with French connections or who were represented in the 1922 World Congress. France’s vineyards have also long attracted Irish connoisseurs and the sale will include a select group of lots with Irish links. Ulysses by James Joyce was first published in Paris in December 2020. There will be an online auction from May 9 – 16.
Sotheby’s is currently seeking works by a variety of artists including August Burke, Harry Clarke, William Conor, Eileen Gray, Rowan Gillespie, Paul Henry, Mainie Jellett, Jack Yeats, William Leech, John Lavery, Countess Markievicz, Roderic O’Conor, Frank O’Meara, Louis le Brocquy, Walter Osborne, Evie Hone, William Scott, Sean Scully, Mary Swanzy, Leo Whelan and the writers James Joyce, J.M. Synge, Oscar Wilde and W B Yeats.
