PAINTINGS BY some of Ireland’s most acclaimed artists which are expected to sell for millions of euro in a forthcoming sale in Sotheby’s are due to be exhibited in Dublin next weekend.
The auction house’s sale of Irish art, to be held in London on May 7th, will showcase works by artists including Sir William Orpen, Roderic O’Conor, William Scott, J B Yeats and George Barret. The collection of Irish paintings is valued at more than €8 million.
Some 70 works from the sale were exhibited in Lismore Castle in Waterford over the weekend.
They are set to go on display at the Belfast Waterfront Hall tomorrow before being exhibited at the Dublin branch of Sotheby’s on Molesworth Street for four days from next Saturday.
Grant Ford, head of Irish art at Sotheby’s, said they were thrilled to be offering such high quality works by Irish artists of international renown. The works were painted between the 18th century and the present day.
"The sale includes many of the most reputed names in Irish art and in particular we are delighted to offer several exceptional works by Sir William Orpen." The several Orpen paintings in the sale include On the Cliff, Dublin Bayand his portrait of Noll, Son of Oliver St John Gogarty, with a price estimate of between €270,000 and €380,000.
Gogarty, the famous poet, author and physician, was a close friend of Orpen and this picture is one of the artist’s few portraits of children outside of his own family.
The setting overlooking Portmarnock Strand is characteristically Irish. The sale also has a particularly strong group of works by Sir John Lavery that spans his career from his time at the artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing in the early 1880s to 1932, in the last decade of the artist’s life.
A Windy Dayhas not been seen in public since it was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1910 and is thought to depict one of his favourite models, Mary Auras, a beautiful young German girl who is also the sitter for Miss Auras, The Red Book.
The sale will include a private collection of works by Belfast-born artist Daniel O’Neill.
In 1995 Sotheby’s became the first auction house to hold a London sale dedicated to Irish art.
Their Irish sales have come to dominate the Irish market in London.
In 2001, Sotheby's sold Orpen's Portrait of Gardenia St Georgefor £1,983,500 – a record for Orpen and the most expensive Irish painting ever sold at auction.