London . . . 50% unsold

Just half the works in Bonhams first Irish auction sold this week, with some selling later

THE top-selling painting at the first Irish sale at Bonhams last Wednesday fetched just £18,000 (€21,272) – a far cry from the Celtic Tiger boom years when Irish paintings regularly sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds at London auctions.

Just 50 per cent of the 108 lots sold on the day. But Bonhams yesterday said that it had sold four of the paintings in post-auction deals – including A Wet Dayby Gerard Dillon for £39,600 (€46,785), the top price overall. "On balance, considering the economic realities within which this sale took place, the Irish art team at Bonhams is feeling pretty bullish," marketing director Julian Roup said.

Frank McKelvey's A Sunlit Farmyard,which made £18,000 – in the mid-range of its estimate – shows a whitewashed cottage near Bessborough, Co Down and was sold by a family who had bought it directly from the artist in 1933.

A painting titled Model Yachts, also by McKelvey, who was born in Belfast in 1895 and died in 1974, made the second highest price of £15,000.

Among big- ticket items which failed to sell were Louis le Brocquy's watercolour Image of Francis Bacon No 18, which had the highest estimate (£60,000 -£80,000), and The Cat Amongst The Stars, an oil-on-board from 1949 by Jack B Yeats (£50,000-£70,000).

However, the highlight of the auction was one of the items with the lowest estimate. A little sketch – Roundabout Ponies– the last drawing, created on his deathbed in a Dublin nursing home by Jack B Yeats, was sold to a private London buyer for £5,760. It far exceeded its estimate of £1,500-£2,000.

Bonhams traditionally sold Irish art in joint sales with Dublin fine art auctioneers Adam’s but the privately-owned British firm ended that agreement last year, established an Irish art department and decided to conduct its own sales in London.

Portlaoise native Penny Day, the head of Irish art at Bonhams, admitted after Wednesday afternoon’s auction that the new venture had started “in the toughest time imaginable” but was hopeful of selling all the unsold lots in post-sale deals.