One of William Tillyer’s Kerry watercolours comes up at Sotheby’s Made in Britain sale in London on September 10 The eminent English artist, now 81 and noted for the diversity of his output, worked at the Cill Rialaig Project in 2001 and produced “The Age of Anxiety Watercolours”. This one shows Kerry, but not as we would recognise it and is estimated at £2,500-3,500. The sale will feature a selection of art by the Irish artist William Scott.
Modern and Contemporary British and Irish from the collection of Patrick and Antoinette Murphy will come under the hammer across a number of sales at Sotheby’s in Paris and London. He has served as chairman for the Arts Council in Ireland and Antoinette set up the Peppercannister Gallery in Dublin. More than 30 works from their extensive collection include art by Henry Moore, William Scott, Gillian Ayres, John Bellany, Alan Davie and Sir Matthew Smith.
As a brewer for Guinness, Patrick travelled all over the world – from London and Paris, Tokyo and New York to Kuala Lumpur and Kumasi – acquiring artworks wherever possible. He was chair on the ROSC exhibitions which introduced artists like Picasso, Lichtenstein and Rothko to Irish audiences.
Meet Donegal Man by Lucian Freud. The 2007 etching comes up at Sotheby’s Made in Britain sale in September. Signed with initials in pencil it is numbered 26/46 on Somerset wove paper. The total edition includes 12 artist’s proofs. It was with Acquavella Contemporary Art in New York and the present owner acquired it from Galerie Simon Blais in Montreal in March 2008. Lot 106 in the auction is estimated at £7,000-20,000. The live auction begins on Setpember 10.
The only known complete example of Les Peintures-Gravures published by the legendary art dealer Ambroise Vollard comes up at Sotheby’s in London on September 17. It features a magnificent example of Edvard Munch’s first ever colour lithograph alongside 21 prints by his contemporaries including Bonnard, Vuillard, Redon and Renoir. One of the most important art dealers and publishers of the 20th century, Ambroise Vollard was largely responsible for the validation of lithography as an art form, as well as the propagation of the greatest Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists. Issued in Paris in 1896 the work is estimated at £500,000-1,000,000.
In our brave new world where refugees drown in the Mediterranean, children live in appalling conditions in camps near the Mexican border, and President Trump boldly suggests American born citizens of ethnic origin go back to where their families originated it is interesting to see an exhibition where emigres are celebrated. Brave New Visions: The Emigres who transformed the British art world organised by Sotheby’s shows how in bleak post-war London, a group of émigrés who had found sanctuary in Britain in the 1930s re-made their lives and introduced avant-garde European and British artists such as Naum Gabo, Oskar Kokoschka, Kurt Schwitters, Graham Sutherland and Ben Nicholson to the broader public. Featuring over 40 paintings and sculptures, alongside unique documentary material, the exhibition reveals the story of a displaced community that thrived in an unfamiliar environment. It is at Sotheby’s St. George St. Gallery until August 9. It is all part of Insiders/Outsiders, a year-long festival celebrating refugees from Nazi Europe and their indelible contribution to British culture.
The Beatles’ original management contract with Brian Epstein was sold at Sotheby’s London today for £275,000. Signed by the band on 24 January 1962 the old piece of paper marked the beginning of the transformation of The Beatles into a band that would conquer the world.
Manager Brian Epstein’s signature is conspicuously absent from this contract. He chose not to sign it, meaning that, whilst this contract bound Epstein to the Beatles, it did not bind The Beatles to Epstein. He explained: “It was because even though I knew I would keep the contract in every clause, I had not 100 per cent faith in myself to help the Beatles adequately. In other words, I wanted to free the Beatles of their obligations if I felt they would be better off.”
A a collection of material relating to The Fab Four’s legendary performances in Hamburg sold for a combined £66,625. The city had become instrumental in the development of the British rock and roll scene by chance, thanks to a Liverpool club owner who ended up exporting English rock and roll bands to German bars. The Beatles had been going there since 1960, and performed at the Star-Club, the city’s leading rock venue managed by Horst Fascher. Two performance contracts for The Beatles at The Star-Club sold for £35,000 and £18,750 respectively. A collection of photographs and further materials relating to the Star Club sold for £11,875, many multiples of the estimate of £2,000-3,000.
There was a new record for a medieval chess piece at auction today. A newly discovered warder attributed to the Lewis Chessmen workshop sold for £735,000 at Sotheby’s in London. The piece had been acquired for £5 in 1964 by an antiques dealer in Edinburgh and passed down in the same family by descent. It was stored away in his home before being inherited by his daughter, who believed it was special and perhaps imbued with some magical significance. The warder then passed onto the next generation of the family, who approached Sotheby’s to shed light on what was in fact an important historic artefact. Alexander Kader, Sotheby’s Co-Worldwide Head of European Sculpture & Works of Art, began a year-long study of the warder and deduced that the chessman could be one of the lost pieces of the Lewis group.
The most famous chess pieces to have survived from the medieval world, the Lewis Chessmen were found in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The hoard comprised 93 objects, the majority carved from walrus ivory, which could make four complete sets of figure pieces, with the exception of one Knight and four Warders.
A painting by the Irish artist Thomas Roberts features at Sotheby’s evening sale of Old Masters in London on July 3. A Wooded landscape in Powerscourt Demesne with a brace of fallow bucks and a doe is estimated at £200,000-300,000. Robert Carver’s Wooded Landscape with classical ruins will feature at Sotheby’s Old Master Day sale on July 4.
A first edition of Gulliver’s Travels 1726-27 is among a number of Irish lots at Sotheby’s online sale of English Literature, Books, Childrens’ Books and Illustrations. The sale will include a 1654 Summary of Government Expenditure, Ireland, a copy of the Irish Proclamation estimated at £50,000-70,000 and lower half only copy of the Proclamation with an estimate of £8,000-12,000, paintings by Edyth Starkie, a pencil and watercolour caricature of George Moore by Max Beerbohm and various other lots. The sale opens for bidding today and runs until July 9.
A newly discovered portrait of Olimpia Pamphilj by Diego Velazquez comes up at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in London on July 3. Lost for almost three centuries, this captivating portrait once formed part of the collection of Don Gaspar Mendez de Haro y Guzman, 7thMarques del Carpio. It was last recorded in 1724. Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj – sister-in-law, reputed lover and puppet master of Pope Innocent X – controlled all aspects of Vatican life and was known as Papessa. Her influence over the pontiff was well-known with one Cardinal, Alessandro Bichi, on the election of Innocent in October 1644, supposedly angrily declaring, “Gentlemen, we have just elected a female pope.”
Painted in 1649-50 during Velázquez’s second trip to Rome, the Portrait of Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj is estimated at £2 – 3 million. Sotheby’s say that this is one of the strongest Old Master sales ever staged with major works by the titans of British Art – Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner – as well as leading Renaissance and Baroque painters Botticelli, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Sir Peter Paul Rubens.