A PRIVATE European collector yesterday paid £331,500 sterling for a set of nine stained glass panels by Harry Clarke, the highest sum paid for a work by this artist. The panels, illustrating J.M. Synge's poem Queens, date from 1917 and were auctioned at a sale of Irish art conducted by Christie's in London. The item had been expected to make £150,000 to £250,000.
Because most of Clarke's glass was made for church windows, examples of his work rarely come on the market. According to a Christie's spokeswoman, no Irish institution was represented at yesterday's auction.
Queens, commissioned by the Dublin stockbroker and collector Laurence Ambrose Waldron and not seen in public since 1928 when the panels were taken out of Ireland, is believed to be the most important piece by Clarke to be auctioned. The last major work to be sold, the Geneva Window (1929), was bought privately by the Wolfsonian Foundation in Miami, Florida nine years ago for a six figure sum. One of Clarke's preparatory drawings for the Geneva Window was sold by Christie's for £18,700 in June 1994.
The last lot of the auction, a 1948 landscape with figures by the Northern artist John Luke, who died in 1975, surpassed its top estimate of £120,000 to make £194,000. It was sold to an Irish dealer. The previous record for a work by Luke was £174,000. Among contemporary artists in this auction, Louis Le Brocquy's Man Writing from 1951 sold for £133,500, which is also a new record for the painter. His previous best price, in June 1989, was £51,700. Fortuitously, an exhibition of Le Brocquy's most recent work opened to the public yesterday at the London gallery, Gimpel Fils.
Two early 19th century canvases by William Turner de Lond showing views of Dublin and Ennis went over their estimates to make £59,800 and £71,900 respectively. But Jack B Yeats, one of whose works set a new world record at a London auction last year, fared less well. Only two of the nine pictures by this artist found a buyer. A Roderic O'Conor canvas was also withdrawn.
Interest in Harry Clarke is likely to remain keen, however; another rare example of his work comes up today at the Irish art auction being held by Sotheby's in the company's London salesrooms.