Osborne work close to world record price

AS reported in this newspaper earlier in the week, a new top price in the Republic was paid for a work by Walter Osborne. The artist's late double-portrait of Dorothy and Irene Falkiner sold for £355,000 at the Adam's auction of Irish art last Wednesday. If another £10,000 had been paid, a new world record for Osborne would have been achieved. The next five best prices from the day were achieved for pictures by Jack Yeats; £300,000 was paid for his Man versus Horse from 1924, £150,000 for Business from 1949 and £100,000 for A Lift. Harry Clarke's Blue- beard's Last Wife, a miniature stained glass panel mounted in a mahogany cabinet made by James Hicks, fetched £42,000, and Paul Henry's Cottages by the Coast realised £40,000. A sum of £32,000 was paid for the same artist's Cottages before Clouds and Mountains, and also for his Cottages in a Western Mountain Landscape. Henry's Dingle Peninsula sold for £30,000. Finally, The Dinner Party, one of only two pictures by 19th-century artist, Matthew James Lawless which are known to have survived (the other is in the National Gallery of Ireland) made more than double its top estimate at £25,000.