One of the beauties of art auctions is that they can bring new and wider recognition to an artist, who was unworthily neglected during his or her lifetime. Such is the case with the Deborah Brown Collection sale at Adams on Tuesday, October 1st.
To artists and critics familiar with her work, the Belfast-born artist was radical and innovative. Brown (1927-2023) was one of the first artists in Ireland to embrace abstraction, experiment with fibreglass and engage with the international avant-garde; yet few of her paintings have ever come up for sale at auction.
“A quiet and unassuming person most at home in Ramelton [Co Donegal], it was often easy to forget that she was a student in Dublin in the late 1940s, lived in Paris in 1950 and exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and ROSC during the 1970s,” writes Dr Riann Coulter in a catalogue essay.
Brown exhibited at the Victor Waddington Gallery in Dublin and the Mayfair Gallery in London, as well as with the Ulster Academy of Arts, the Society of Women Artists in London and the Women’s International Arts Club. The Ulster Museum and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin both held retrospective exhibitions of her work in the 1980s. And the FE Williams Gallery in Banbridge, Co Down, held another substantial retrospective of her work in 2012/2013.
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Although much of her most significant work was in abstract painting, the public will know Brown best for her life-size sculptures Sheep on the Road (1991), which stands by the Waterfront Hall in Belfast; and Johann (2002), the bronze goat on a granite plinth in Cushendun, Co Antrim.
The current collection features early landscape and still-life paintings, expressionist paintings and her later more abstract drawings, watercolours and paintings. These include Orange and Red Abstract (estimate €700-€1,000), and Black Form on Red (€500-€700). Some of her fibreglass pieces (including Orange Fibreglass Form, €3,000-€5,000) and maquettes and small sculptural pieces are also up for auction as part of her estate.
The sale also has works by her artist friends and contemporaries, including Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Alice Berger Hammerschlag, William Scott, Basil Blackshaw and James Humbert Craig, who was her first art teacher and a family friend.
The desire to escape to warmer climes usually becomes stronger as autumn begins so an auction called Escape from the Château seems to go against the grain a little. Nevertheless, the aforementioned decorative interiors sale by Victor Mee Auctions, October 1st-3rd, will hold plenty of romance, as it includes many lots from a successful Irish antiques dealer who has moved back to Ireland from a chateau in the Charente region of southwest France. The chateau in Le Pignaud, Aumagne, has already been sold.
Among the ten tapestries for sale is a late 17th/early 18th century wool and silk tapestry (€6,000-€12,000) made in Aubusson, the French town with a long history of history of weaving. The other 20th-century tapestries are all much more affordable, with estimates from €300-€500/€600.
As with all house contents sales – even castle contents – there is a wide range of furniture (including Middle Eastern and French pieces); carpets (mainly Persian style of various sizes); and mirrors, including an Irish 18th-century flatly carved giltwood mirror, with an estimate of €3,000-€5,000. There is also a spectacular variety of lamps and ornamental shades and light fittings.
But, perhaps the most surprising inclusion is a range of musical instruments: guitars, accordions, mandolins, a saxophone (€150-€250) and a xylophone with drum sticks (€60-€120).
Finally, Usher’s Auction Rooms in Kells, Co Meath, will close its timed auction on Monday, September 30th. Robert Usher is keen to point out some rare silver items for sale, which originated in the Sugrue family from Kerry and Cork. These include an antique art nouveau-style sterling silver serving fork and spoon (€200-€350); an early-20th-century silver coffee pot (€650-€1,050), an engraved Irish silver teapot (€340-€640;) and a set of Irish silver Celtic-style spoons (€280-€480).
The antiques and collectibles sale also includes some reproduction pieces, which would suit any home looking to bring a bit of novelty to its interior style. These include a beautiful blueware ceramic foot bath (€40); two oriental blueware jars, one with a lid and one without (€60-€120/€70-€140); and a stick or umbrella stand with similar design (€40).
A 19th-century carved oak corner armchair (€100-€200), and lots of historical advertising signs and collections of books on literature, local history, law and politics are other items in the Usher auction, ready to be snapped up by collectors.
adams.ie, victormeeauctions.ie, usherauctions.ie
What did it sell for?
Jack Butler Yeats, Broadsides
Estimate €5,000 – €7,000
Hammer price €7,000
Auction house deVeres
Gabriel Stokes brass sundial
Estimate £5,000-£7,000
Hammer price £5,120 (€6,127)
Auction house Bonhams
Irish silver sauce boat, Matthew West
Estimate €250-€450
Hammer price Not sold
Auction house deVeres
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