Do you think your child is a gifted artist?

Do you think your child is a gifted artist? If so, then don't, whatever you do, throw out those early daubs and drawings. They could be worth a lot of money some day. Louis Le Brocquy painted this still life of a bowl of fruit in 1925 at the age of nine and apparently was given £5 by a friend of the family, to encourage his talents, in return for the picture. Last Tuesday, it fetched £3,000 at deVere's art auction in the RHA Gallagher Gallery.

Prices for le Brocquys just keep on rising, it seems. In the same sale a typical watercolour of a head - Francis Bacon's made £22,000 while a panel of stained glass, the only known one made by the artist, fetched £33,000.

Elsewhere in the sale, William Scott's Beans on a Plate with Mushrooms made £52,000; £32,000 was paid for a Louis le Brocquy stained glass panel The Sun is Born into the Autumn Woods; £25,000 for Jack Butler Yeats watercolour The Farmers Ordinary; £8,000 for Jack Butler Yeats ink drawing Tramps; £21,000 for Patrick Collins oil Evening on the Bog; £15,000 for Paul Henry oil Killary Harbour, Connemara; £14,000 for Norah McGuinness oil Mountain Road.