Mildred Butler's study of birds ruffles the market

Coinciding with an auction of pictures earlier this week, the James Adam salerooms has released a price guide to Irish art during 1998, listing all such work offered on the market through its premises last year. Of interest here are not just the prices achieved but the number of paintings which came up for sale.

On the latter basis, Mildred Anne Butler was the most popular artist at Adam's in 1998, as 21 of her works were sold there. All watercolours, the top price paid was £9,500 for a view of Three Peacocks and a Peahen outside an Outhouse; birds - along with cattle - are among Butler's favourite subjects. Indeed, birds feature in both her watercolours which were included in last Wednesday's sale at Adam's. High hopes were obviously entertained for one of these, a study of blackbirds called Green Eyed Jealousy, which carried a pre-sale estimate of £28,000£35,000; the previous record of £26,000 for a Butler picture was set almost a decade ago, also in the James Adam salerooms.

In the event, Green Eyed Jealousy fetched £28,000, thereby establishing a new top price for Mildred Anne Butler, who, after being one of the stars of Irish art auctions, has rather languished in recent years. She is by no means the only artist to do so, as a further examination of the Adam's price guide reveals. Other Irish painters whose work sells well, but not necessarily for as high prices as was once the case, include Edwin Hayes, Frank McKelvey and Maurice MacGonigal. A top auction price for the first two of these was made in 1989, while the sum of £24,500 paid for a MacGonigal at Adams of Blackrock in May 1990 has yet to be beaten.

All, however, continue to turn up regularly at Irish art auctions; in Adam's last year, for example, there were 10 pictures by Hayes and MacGonigal sold and nine by McKelvey were also sold, indicating that these artists remain in favour with buyers, even if the latter are no longer prepared to pay quite as much as during the previous Irish art boom.

Last Wednesday, MacGonigal's Summer, River Landscape fetched £7,100 and McKelvey's River at Crolly, Co Donegal went under the hammer for £6,000. In both cases these figures were midway in their pre-sale estimates.

So who is coming through as a strong performer? As mentioned on this page last month, there appears to be a growing demand for work by Northern Irish artist Daniel O'Neill; Adam's sold 12 of his pictures last year and in May 1998 a new auction record for the artist of £56,500 was set at the Sotheby's Irish art sale in London. On Wednesday, his Indecision made £11,000. And, as discussed on this page last week, Frank Egginton is a consistently popular artist; a new auction record was set for the artist on Wednesday when £6,500 was paid for his very typical Pony and Trap in a Connemara Landscape.

Other names regularly featuring in Irish art sales include Percy French, Maurice Wilks, Sean Keating, Harry Kernoff, Paul Henry and Gerard Dillon; Aran Horses by the last of these was sold at Adam's on Wednesday for £15,500.

Most of the artists who sell best in this market do not necessarily come up at auction with great frequency. At Adam's during 1998, only five works by Osborne and Leech, three by Lavery and Orpen and one by Jellett and O'Conor were sold, usually for much higher figures than work by artists who crop up at almost every sale. The exception to this rule, of course, is Jack Yeats, at once enormously prolific and still Ireland's best-selling artist. Hardly a major Irish art sale occurs without several pictures by Yeats featuring; Adam's sold 16 of his works last year and a further three were included in Wednesday's auction, where two of them, both oils, made the occasion's top prices of £92,000 and £35,000 respectively for Engravings (1943) and Between Cork and Kerry (1932). Even during his lifetime, Yeats set the pace for Irish art sales and little has changed since.

However, his expressionistic style of painting markedly stands apart from the more conservative style of Ireland's other popular painters, whose landscapes and figurative views continue to dominate sales. This proved to be the case yet again last Wednesday, when Butler, Leech, Dillon, O'Neill, MacGonigal, McKelvey and Egginton were, as usual, among the strongest performers.