Spoils go to Paul Henry in an upbeat year

January

After an inevitably quiet first fortnight, the frequency of auctions was almost dizzying, presaging a successful year ahead. At the end of the month, for example, Hamilton Osborne King held a sale in its Blackrock premises, where both a carved giltwood convex mirror, dating from around 1820, and a pair of 19th century ormolu, tall candelabra made the same price of £3,200. The latter had been expected to make no more than £2,000 but throughout the following 12 months estimates proved to be unreliable. Also in January, Adams of Blackrock sold a Victorian four-door breakfront bookcase for £4,700, while a Heriz wool rug made £1,400. The January sale at Drum's of Malahide saw both a Victorian mahogany dining table and a French marble chimneypiece go for £1,350, while at Mullen's of Laurel Park the opening sale of the year attracted record crowds. Here a 19th century Chippendale diningroom suite fetched £3,900 and a pair of Napoleon III bronze ewers sold for £3,100.

February

The first country-house auction of the year was conducted by George Mealy & Sons at Kellsgrange House, Kells, Co Kilkenny, on February 11th. The 600-odd lots featured a great deal of good brown furniture, which is always popular among Irish buyers. So an Edwardian mahogany library bookcase with broken pediment above three astragal glazed doors went way over its pre-sale estimate of £1,800-£2,500 to sell for £4,600. In Dublin, Hamilton Osborne King achieved £4,500 for a mid-19th century extending dining table by Strahan and £1,500 for a large mahogany wardrobe by Mack Williams & Gibton. In London, Christie's conducted a sale of furniture which included several important Irish pieces. Among them, a Regency circular mahogany and rosewood breakfast table by Williams & Gibton made sterling£21,850; it had been expected to go for £10,000-£15,000. Similarly, a pair of Irish George III mahogany commodes in the same sale, with a top pre-sale estimate of £10,000, eventually sold for £16,675, and a pair of Irish walnut and cobalt blue glass-framed mirrors (estimate £7,000-£10,000) made £13,800. Equal surprises were found at the James Adam salerooms in Dublin, where a 19th century ormolu cased carriage clock with Sevres panels doubled its estimate to go for £6,000 and a 19th century mahogany longcase clock with brass dial, marked Sanderson of Dublin, more than doubled its estimate to make £4,000.

March

A small country-house sale was held on the first day of the month at Prospect House, former home of artist Timothy Hennessy. Jointly run by Town & Country and Jackson-Stops McCabe, the event saw a set of 12 dining chairs from circa 1820 fetch £5,000 and a pair of Victorian oval girandole mirrors sell for £2,300. At Dunphy's auction rooms in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, a very large 19th century carved oak bookcase was the top selling lot at £5,800, while a set of 12 Victorian mahogany dining chairs went for £4,400. There were two big Irish art sales in Dublin. The first of them was conducted by John de Vere at the National Concert Hall, where close to 1,000 people turned up to bid for works by the virtually unknown Phil Rafferty, who died in 1996. Although there were no reserves here, expectations were confounded by the eventual prices, with pictures presumed to sell for £500-£600 finding buyers willing to pay anything between £1,500 and £2,000. This studio sale brought in £140,000, after which a small George Campbell watercolour portrait of Brendan Behan fetched £1,700, Daniel O'Neill's Foreshore, Co Antrim £6,000 and a Kerry landscape from Paul Henry £12,000. Later in the month, the James Adam salerooms hosted a similar auction, where the best seller was a canvas by Leech called Tennis Court, which went for £42,000. In the same sale, a Paul Henry view of Connemara cottages fetched £18,000, Colin Middleton's The Power and the Glory made £17,000 and Daniel O'Neill's Returning Home attracted £8,000.

Lavery's abiding popularity was demonstrated in London when one of the artist's works was included in a sale at Phillip's. His 1924 view of the Kerry Hills soared way beyond the expected price of £5,000-£7,000 to sell for £17,250.

April

Auctioneer George Mealy described the two-day sale he conducted in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, early in the month as "the best we've ever had in these rooms". Top price among the 1,400 lots was £38,000 for a Regency telescopic mahogany dining table, formerly owned by Viscount de Vesci. A George IV mahogany wine cooler by Mack, Williams & Gibton and carrying the arms of the Smith family of Annesbrook sold for £16,000 and a mahogany side-table by the same manufacturers made £13,000, showing how great is the demand for good Irish furniture. Not quite a house contents sale but certainly bearing a resemblance to this was held at the Cosby family home, Stradbally Hall, Co Laois, in mid-April. An American bidder paid the day's top price of £32,000 for a Regency four-pillar dining table. More than £600,000 was realised at this sale, conducted by Sheppard's of Durrow.

At Christie's in London, an important pair of George II side tables originally made for Bellinter House in Navan, Co Meath, went for sterling£595,500, almost twice the catalogue estimate. In the same sale, a set of eight Irish George III dining chairs similar to those supplied to Castletown House in 1770 fetched £69,700 and a Georgian tea table said to have come from the Irish Parliament building made £19,550. In Belfast, John Ross & Co secured £18,500 for a still-life canvas by 19th century artist Edward Ladell, while at Hamilton Osborne King in Blackrock an Irish elliptical drop-leaf hunt table dating from circa 1800 surpassed its pre-sale estimate of £3,500-£5,000 to go for £11,500.

May

As is now always the case in this month, both Christie's and Sotheby's held Irish art sales in London. Four new records for artists were set at the former's auction. Carrying an estimate of £150,000-£250,000 sterling, Harry Clarke's Queens, a set of nine stained glass panels originally made for Dublin collector Laurence Waldron and unseen in public since 1928 was sold for £331,500 to a private European collector. Equally impressive, Landscape with Figures painted by John Luke in 1948 (estimate £80,000-£120,000) made £194,000, Louis Le Brocquy's Man Writing, dating from 1951 (£60,000-£80,000), went for £133,500 and a view of Dublin's quays by William Turner de Lond (£30,000-£50,000) fetched £71,900. Among the other results at this sale were: £133,500 for Sir John Lavery's The Maid was in the Garden Hanging out the Clothes; £110,000 for Osborne's The Intruder; and £69,700 for Thomas Roberts's view of Rathfarnham Castle. At Sotheby's the following day, Jack B. Yeats was the best performer, with four of his pictures making the top prices. The Expected, which had been expected to sell for a maximum of £200,000 actually fetched £595,500, while The Face in the Shadow (£300,000-£400,000) made £540,500 and Lingering Sun, O'Connell Bridge, Dublin (£150,000-£200,000), which had been owned by the late film director John Huston, sold for £408,500. Finally, Yeats's Wind from the Sea also respectably surpassed its pre-sale estimate to make £243,500. A portrait by Sir William Orpen called The Green Lady went for £221,500, Lavery's Mrs Adam at Dinner went under the hammer for £166,500, and Samuel Watson's A Scene at Donnybrook Fair fetched £166,500. Back in Dublin, the James Adam salerooms joined forces with Bonhams of London for an Irish art sale which realised a total of £750,000. Again, the lead was taken by Jack B. Yeats; his The Soldier's Son, dating from 1945, sold for £100,000, although the same artist's The Fretted Trees, with an estimate of £100,000-£120,000, did not find a buyer. Roderic O'Conor's Red Rocks, Brittany 1898 made £80,000, Paul Henry's view of a Connemara village fetched £35,000 and Louis Le Brocquy's L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune - the second painting ever done by this artist and dating from 1938 - realised £23,000.

In Kinsale, Co Cork, Herman & Wilkinson conducted a clearance sale at the former home of chef Keith Floyd, where a hand-carved rocking horse by Stevenson Bros of England made £1,450.

June

A world record for a work by Paul Henry was achieved at Phillips in London. The Watcher, dating from 1914-1916 when Henry was on Achill Island, had been expected to sell for £30,000-£40,000 but went for more than four times this amount, £166,500 (including sales premium). Another Henry painting made the top price at an art auction in the National Concert Hall conducted by John de Vere later in the month. A view of Killarney Harbour, it went for £20,000, while an oil of sailing boats in Concarneau harbour by Aloysius O'Kelly made £9,700 and William Conor's The Flute Player sold for £9,000. In Co Kilkenny, Mealy's held a two-day auction in which many lots came from Dunbrody Park, formerly home to the Marquis of Donegall, as well as from composer Andrew Lloyd-Weber's Irish property, Kiltinan Castle, and from Dysertmore. A total of almost £1 million was made at the event, with a pair of Queen Anne walnut side tables with green veined marble tops fetching £56,000 and an 18th century French boulle bureau plat £20,000. A sum of £16,500 was paid for a mid-Georgian period mahogany bureau cabinet in the manner of William Kent and £14,000 for a George IV mahogany dining table. In Blackrock, a Tangiers beach scene by Sir John Lavery went for £28,000 at Thomas Adams. In Sixmilebridge, John Dunphy sold a George III mahogany-cased bracket clock made by Ralph Glover of London (circa 1770) for £3,800. The same price was also made at this sale by a George III serpentine-fronted mahogany sideboard. At a house contents auction in Durrow, Co Laois, George Sheppard sold an early 19th century console table and mirror for £8,000 and an eight-foot long Victorian breakfront bookcase for £7,700. At the end of the month, the James Adam salerooms had a very successful sale in which an Irish Georgian mirror attributed to the Dublin firm of John & Francis Booker made £23,000 and a pair of giltwood console tables sold for £42,000.

July

Early in the month, the Curraghmore tables, a pair of Irish George II giltwood pier tables with marble tops which were probably commissioned by Marcus Beresford, first Earl of Tyrone, for his Co Waterford home, made sterling£200,000 at Christie's in London. At the same sale, an Irish George II giltwood side table went for £100,000 and a George II walnut concertina-action card table sold for £72,000. At Hamilton Osborne King's Blackrock premises, an early 19th century mahogany and rosewood banded side cabinet bearing the stamp of Gillingtons made £7,800, while an early 19th century centre table went for £3,200, as did the centre section of an Irish Regency dining table. And, as so often during the year, estimates were greatly exceeded at Mullen's of Laurel Park, where a yew wood, bow-fronted cabinet with an estimate of £1,200-£1,400 was eventually bought for £4,800.

August

During an otherwise quiet month, Mullen's reported a total of £120,000 from a sale at which an oriental hardwood and brass inlaid cyclinder desk fetched £2,000 and a set of six William IV dining chairs made £1,150. Kilkenny auctioneer Loughlin Bowe's house contents sale at Kilnacourt, Co Laois, saw a 19th century gilt pier mirror sell for £2,300, a set of eight Victorian dining chairs for £1,955 and a Regency card table for £1,900. A 19th century Dutch oak-panelled wall with entwined fluted sectional panels and fireplace inset was sold by Town & Country for £2,150.

September

The autumn season got off to an excellent start with a collection of Hicks furniture coming up for sale at James Adam's. Even the auctioneers were taken aback when a Georgian-style mahogany extending dining table exceeded its estimate by over seven times to sell for £23,000. Among the other Hicks pieces, a pair of George II-style mahogany rectangular silver tables went for £21,000 and a George III-style inlaid mahogany serpentine-front display cabinet was bought for £19,000. At Drums of Malahide, a pair of diamond-drop earrings reputed to have once been in the possession of Queen Marie Antoinette were bought by rock star Bryan Ferry for £2,000. Later in the month, Mealy's disposed of the contents of Killuragh Glen, Co Cork, home of Mr and Mrs Robin Boyd. The big surprise was the price paid by an English dealer for a portrait of Prince Platoff by Sir William Beachey; it made £10,000, five times the pre-sale estimate.

A collection of Gerard Dillon pictures turned up at a sale held by Rosebery's in London, where the most expensive oils were bought by a Mayfair gallery. Two Pierrots sold for £7,400 and Pierrot and Crows made £4,500. A mid-19th century oil called The Toy Seller's Visit by Joseph Kennedy went for £11,000 at an antiques and fine art auction conducted by Sheppard & Sons in Durrow, Co Laois.

In Dublin, the world record price for a work by Paul Henry, set only months earlier, was broken when the artist's 1916 The Spoils of the Sea sold for £175,000 (including premium) at the James Adam salerooms. A Jack B. Yeats oil of Brandon Head fetched £22,000 and a Walter Osborne oil sketch of Connemara sold for £17,000.

October

De Vere's Irish art auction early in the month demonstrated yet again just how unreliable guide prices can now be. In the National Concert Hall, Roderic O'Conor's Lady in a Summer Hat, which had not been seen in public for some 40 years and been expected to go for no more than £45,000, was sold to a London dealer for £115,000. A sum of £20,500 was paid for Leech's Killiney under Snow and £12,700 was made by Colin Middleton's The Ventriloquist.

At Thomas P. Adams in Blackrock similar results were achieved as Francis Wheatley's The Reconciliation made £6,600 and Aloysius O'Kelly's Fishing Fleet, Concarneau was sold for £5,500. In the James Adam salerooms, a silver sale saw a Dublin-made Georgian coffee pot go for £4,400, a set of 12 George II Irish soup plates realise £5,200, and a George III dish ring make £3,700. In Cork, a Georgian giltwood girandole mirror was sold for £5,000 at Woodward's, where a pair of Regency inlaid rosewood card tables made £4,750.

November

The Mealy's two-day sale on the company's Co Kilkenny brought in a total of £800,000 realised. The main interest here was in fine porcelain, particularly a Worcester blue scale dinner service, dating from circa 1770. It was divided into seven lots, with a 25-piece dessert service realising £6,200. A rare pair of Chelsea red anchor, oval cabbage leaf moulded tureens and covers (circa 1755) made £6,500 and a 15-piece gold anchor Chelsea service (circa 1760) was bought for £6,000. Among furniture, a Regency oval brass-bound mahogany wine cooler made £20,000 and an unusual Georgian Anglo-Indian side or serving table inlaid with ivory realise £17,500. At Town & Country's disposal of the contents of Castle Durrow, Co Laois, a George IV economy dining table fetched £3,220 and a Victorian giltwood overmantle mirror sold for £2,700. Towards the end of the month, at the RDS in Dublin, Hamilton Osborne King held a fine art and furniture sale, at which three marble statues featuring Cupid were the leading attraction. One of these - Cupid captured by Venus, by Giovanni Giuseppe Fontana - went for £28,000, while examples by John Gibson and Joseph Gott made £20,000 and £16,000 respectively.

Fine furniture included a pair of early 19th century terrestrial and celestial globes (£20,000), an essentially 18th century humpback sofa (£16,000) and a mid-19th century mahogany banqueting table (£9,000). A set of 12 Irish Victorian mahogany balloon-back dining chairs was bought for £6,600 at the James Adam salerooms, where a George IV mahogany rectangular library table, reputed to have belonged to an earlier Duchess of Leinster, made £6,000 and a Victorian inlaid walnut circular centre table found a buyer at £4,700. In Belfast, John Ross & Co reported a complete sell-out at the auction of Maurice Wilks's studio contents. All 285 lots found buyers, with an oil of Roundstone fetching £4,800 and a watercolour study of a cottage interior maing £3,100. In London, a newly-discovered Orpen self-portrait showing the artist as a young man in a top hat sold for £101,600 at Phillips. A Lavery portrait of an unknown woman made £42,200.

December

At the beginning of the month, de Vere's held another Irish art sale in the National Concert Hall, where a Roderic O'Conor oil called Red Rocks and Foaming Sea, which had just been thoroughly cleaned, sold for £50,000. A village scene by Paul Henry, definitely one of the artists of the year, went for £20,000 and a 1954 Louis Le Brocquy work, Man at a Window, was bought for £14,000. Loughlin Bowe, in association with Sothby's, conducted the last country-house auction of 1997 when he disposed of the contents of St Joseph's, a former presbytery in Co Limerick which had been home to Mrs Zenia Atkins and her late husband. Among the 600-odd lots, the highest price made was £15,500 for a 1932 oil by James Lynwood Plamer called Portraits of Gingersnap and Ben. A pair of Irish mahogany console tables (circa 1825) sold for £6,670 and a mahogany partners library desk, the drawers signed Lady Cecile Rushout fetched £7,130. Both of these items exceeded their estimates by considerable amounts

At the James Adam salerooms in Dublin, a new world record was set for a work by Walter Osborne when his Beneath St Jacques, Antwerp sold for £345,000, well above its guide price of £150,000-£200,000. William Ashford's A Mill near Lucan went for £58,000 and Sean Keating's News from the Mainland attracted £44,000; the latter had an estimate of £14,000-£16,000. A copy of the original proclamation of the Irish Republic was sold by Mealy's for £27,000.

Finally, the National Library of Ireland failed to secure a rare manuscript which had been in its keeping for some 60 years. The 48leaf Nugent manuscript, which dates from the last quarter of the 16th century, had been on loan to the library until recently. However, it was sold at Sotheby's in London to an unknown purchaser, who paid sterling £155,000.