Fine festive wines and gifts for art lovers at Whyte’s Christmas sale

Whyte’s Christmas sale, a timed online-only auction, which will take place this Monday, December 13th, has some nice lots that would work as gifts for the festive season.

For wine lovers, the sale of over 270 lots has a small but good range of fine wines to include seven bottles of Petrus Pomerol (1978), each priced at €1,000-€1,200 with two bottles of Pauillac, Chateau Mouton Rothschild (1985) at €160-€300 and six bottles of Chateau Margaux (1986) at €800-€1,000.

If you feel like treating a cheese lover to some nice port, there's a case of 12 bottles of Dow's Vintage (1977) for €600-€800. Two bottles of Bushmills Millennium single malt from private cask 215, distilled in 1975 and bottled in 2000, are listed at €1,800-€2,000 apiece, while Buchanan's Reserve Scotch (€50-€70) and Hunter's Irish Whiskey from Belfast (€150-€200) offer more affordable options.

For gardeners, the sale has two lovely watercolours by Wendy Walsh, who was one of Ireland's most prominent 20th-century botanical artists. Originally exhibited at the Hendriks Gallery, each are listed at €800-€1,200. Fans of James Joyce will certainly appreciate lot 256, which consists of a pencil portrait and colour photograph of when the Irish novelist graced the cover of Time Magazine (€300-€400).

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Musicians can have a miniature portrait of St Cecilia, their patron saint, in enamel on ivory from 1816. Set in a wonderful frame, the piece bears the inscription on the reverse: "Painted by W Bate, painter in enamel to H.R.H Princess Elizabeth. " Bate came from a long line of Dublin watchmakers and jewellers and ended up with a considerable practice in Dublin and London, where he held the role of painter-in-enamel to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of York, according to Strickland's Dictionary of Irish Artists (€1,000-€1,500).

Yeats prints

While Jack B Yeats’s Shouting failed to achieve the “€2 million or possibly more” that the auction house thought the “masterpiece of epic proportions” would attain at its recent Important Art sale (it sold for €1.4 million before fees), the sale has three hand-coloured Cuala Press prints by Yeats, which vary in estimates from €400-€800.

Lot 251 is a signed limited edition coffee-table book, Basil Blackshaw, by Eamonn Mallie (€100-€150), and the following lot is a collection of art reference books, including TG Rosenthal's The Art of Jack B Yeats and Burke's Guide of Country Houses Vol I by Mark Bence-Jones (€150-€200). Also in there, besides a good number of well-priced pastoral watercolours and prints, is a lovely oil on canvas, The Dugort Road, Achill by Padraig McCaul (€1,000-€1,500). And there are three interesting woodcuts by Harry Kernoff: a seasonally apt Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Leprechaun, and Byzantine Madonna, all of which are listed at €200-€300.

A set of six small, hand-painted ceramic bowls by John Ffrench, each of which are signed and dated by the artist, whose work is celebrated at the Crawford Gallery in Cork, is seeking €500-€700. After establishing Ring Studio and Arklow Pottery, he established Dolphin Studio in Massachusetts and then lived in an ashram at Sevagram – the last home of Mahatma Gandhi.

[ whytes.ie ]