James Adam offers `affordable' picture sale

The James Adam salerooms in Dublin has two auctions next week, the first on Monday. This is one of the company's ongoing Kildare Street sales, with some 400 lots of paintings, silver and plate, furniture and porcelain on offer. One Wednesday, there will be an "affordable picture sale", with 150 lots, the estimates of which start at just £20.

Auction Results

Cupid statue makes top price of £28,000

A total of £400,000 was made at last Tuesday's furniture and fine art auction held by Hamilton Osborne King on the grounds of the Royal Dublin Society. One of the three marble statues in the sale, a piece showing Cupid captured by Venus by Giovanni Giuseppe Fontana, made the day's highest price, selling for £28,000, while the other two such lots, John Gibson's Cupid disguised as a Shepherd Boy and Joseph Gott's Venus and Cupid fetched £20,000 and £16,000 respectively.

A pair of early 19th century terrestrial and celestial globes went for £20,000, a basically 18th century hump back sofa made £16,000, a mid-19th century mahogany banqueting table sold for £9,000 - the same price made by a mid-19th century Aubusson carpet - and a continental 18th century carved giltwood mirror fetched £8,000. Among pictures, the highest price was achieved by F. Leon Righini's watercolour view of the Brazilian coastline, which sold for £9,000.

Orpen self-portrait sells for double its estimate

A recently-discovered self-portrait by Sir William Orpen, showing the artist as a young man in a top hat, went way beyond its pre-sale estimate of £50,000-£60,000 to make £101,600 at Phillips in London earlier this week. Just as impressively, a portrait of an unknown woman by Sir John Lavery, expected to go for £15,000-£20,000 fetched £42,200. A William Scott still life called On Pale Grey went for £45,500.