Irish art at December sales offer rich pickings for collectors

Sat, 25 Nov, 2023 - 04:15

Des O’Sullivan

Art by John Lavery, Jack Butler Yeats, Paul Henry, and Sean Keating will lead upcoming sales of Irish art at Whyte’s on December 4 and James Adam on December 6. Lavery’s Switzerland (Hazel and Alice) at Whyte’s is estimated at €180,000-€220,000. The top lot at Adam’s is The Captain by Yeats, estimated at €100,000-€150,000.

Given the Lavery exhibition now on at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin the auction of a major work by this artist is timely.

Switzerland (Hazel and Alice) by John Lavery at Whyte's.

The catalogue cover lot was painted in Wengen, Switzerland, early in 1913 at a time of intense painterly activity for Lavery.

The tranquility of the work belies the fact that in 1913 the world was on the brink of war. In sharp contrast is Lavery’s London Hospital, 1914 (€60,000-€80,000) at Whyte’s, which depicts early casualties of the First World War.

Aran Harbour by Sean Keating at James Adam.

A deceptively idyllic 1940s painting of Aran Harbour by Keating (€80,000-€100,000) at Adam’s is an antidote to the horrors of the Second World War then raging.

It shows two women, one looking out to sea, the other peering at the viewer, focusing on peace and quiet in a world yet again gone mad. Plus ça change.

Sea captains feature in many Yeats paintings. The Captain at Adam’s dates to 1948 and harks back to his youth on the quays in Sligo where his grandfather had a shipping business.

There are rich pickings for collectors available at each sale. A painting of Dooega, Achill Island, by Henry at Whyte’s is estimated at €150,000-€200,000.

Black and Green Scarecrow, Maidstone Bridge, by John Shinnors at Adam's.

Among 133 works on the catalogue at Whyte’s is a wide-ranging selection by artists from Mary Swanzy to Rita Duffy, Gerard Dillon to Felim Egan, and sculptors from John Behan to Michael Warren.

Notable works by Aloysius O’Kelly, William Leech, Tony O’Malley, Patrick Scott, and Pauline Bewick sit alongside small collections by Nathaniel Hone, Letitia Hamilton, and Patrick Hennessy.

The selection includes auction favourites such as Arthur Maderson, Kenneth Webb, Mark O’Neill, Graham Knuttel, and Markey Robinson.

Top lots at James Adam include three classical Henry paintings Near Leenane (€80,000-€120,000), Keem Bay, c1911 (€60,000-€80,000) and Paysage Sinistre, 1914-1915 (€50,000-€70,000).

The sale features many of Ireland’s finest 19th- and 20th-century artists including three works on paper by Harry Clarke at a time when there is talk of a Dublin museum dedicated to the artist.

The modernist school is represented with works by Edward McGuire, Patrick Hennessy, Colin Middleton, John Doherty, John Shinnors, Basil Blackshaw, and Dan O’Neill.

A 19th-century painting by James Arthur O’Connor, Clearing in the Forest with Figures (€30,000-€40,000), was recently discovered in a French private collection.

Meantime, if you can’t wait until the following week to acquire a painting, works by Sean Scully, Andy Warhol, Donald Teskey, Dan O’Neill, John Behan, and Kenneth Webb are among the leading lots at Morgan O’Driscoll’s Irish art online auction which ends on Monday evening (November 27).