Henry's landscapes make a splash at two sales

PAUL Henry was the best-selling artist at both of this week's Irish art sales, with one canvas, Reflections, Killarney, Co Kerry, fetching £20,000 at the de Vere auction in the National Concert Hall on Tuesday evening. Two other Henry paintings in the same sale, Connemara Landscape with Lake and Peat Stakes and Turf Stacks, Donegal made £13,500 and £13,000 respectively. At the James Adam sale the following afternoon, the artist's Landscape - Cottage by a West of Ireland Lake sold for £15,000.

Daniel O'Neill was another artist who did well at both auctions; his Going to Mass sold for £8,000 at de Vere's and his Figures in a Landscapes made £12,000 at Adam's. The de Vere sale also saw a charming Walter Osborne canvas, Children in a Summer Meadow, go under the hammer for £15,500, Gerard Dillon's Moon Lover make £5,000, Aloysius O'Kelly's Cattle Sheltering fetch £4,800, Nano Reid's Boatman make £4,600 and Maurice Canning Wilks's The Mournes from Rossglass, Co Down sell for £4,200.

The last artist's The Maam Valley, Connemara fetched £3,800 at de Vere's, while at Adam's, Wilks's Galway Cottages went for £2,000. Also at the James Adam auction, a coastal landscape by Mary Swanzy sold for £8,500 and Sir William Orpen's The White Swan fetched £8,000, the same price made by both Maurice MacGonigal's Roundstone, Connemara and James Le Jeune's Children Playing in a Garden. Another Le Jeune, Children on a Beach, went for £6,200, Frank McKelvey's On the Lagan made £7,500 and James Humbert Craig's Winter River Landscape sold for £4,500.