IRELAND HUNG out its brightest colours for an art auction in London yesterday and bidders spent over €2 million.
Sotheby’s said its 17th annual Irish sale had “achieved the highest total by far for any Irish art auction worldwide in two years”. Over 60 per cent of the lots sold, compared to just 40 per cent in last year’s sale.
The highest price paid was £337,250 (€383,993) for Landscape, Cassis, an oil-on-canvas painted in the south of France in 1913 by Roscommon-born artist Roderic O’Conor. It soared above its estimate of £120,000-£180,000 and was bought by a private collector in Ireland who bid by telephone. Grant Ford, Sotheby’s head of Irish pictures, said the painting had been “keenly sought-after” and described the price as “fabulous”.
Mr Ford said the auction had attracted new buyers and bidders from Ireland, the UK, the US and China, and saw the “reappearance of certain buyers from Sotheby’s Irish sales during the 1990s”.
Auction-goers arriving at the saleroom in New Bond Street, Mayfair, were ushered in by a commissionaire, Irishman Phil Casey, who “grew up in Kimmage and used to be a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion”.
Many were willing to talk but not to be named. An Englishwoman who was hoping “to bid on a Yeats” for her Irish-born husband was worried that “they’d find out our address and do the house over”. A woman from Dublin who had travelled to London especially for the sale remarked that there was “good value”, but she “lost [her] nerve” and failed to make a bid. A man from Northern Ireland who bought two paintings, was “very pleased” with his purchases.
Some 71 works of art were offered for sale. Porters wearing a uniform of navy apron, white shirt and tie, rolled up their sleeves and displayed the lots, while an electronic screen flashed up the bids in different currencies including Swiss francs, Hong Kong dollars and Russian roubles.
Fifteen staff monitored telephone and internet bidding. Some of the bidders stood at the back of the room despite the empty rows of chairs in front.
Of the top 10 paintings sold, Sotheby’s said that eight were bought by “UK buyers” and two by private collectors in Ireland.
A 1948 painting by Jack B Yeats, The Child of the Sea, achieved the second highest price, £229,250; while a portrait of Lady Gwendoline Churchill, titled A Lady in Brown by Sir John Lavery sold for £121,250. Total sales amounted to £1.9 million (€2.1 million).
Among the 26 unsold lots, the main casualties were a second painting by Roderic O’Conor, Les Quatre Poires and Louis le Brocquy’s Study (Man with a Towel), both of which failed to reach their reserves.
Elsewhere in London yesterday, fine art auctioneers Bonhams sold a letter, written in Italian by James Joyce, for £33,600 – double the estimate.
In the two-page handwritten letter, sent from Trieste in 1919 to Italian writer Carlo Linati, Joyce complained about efforts to censor his work and blamed priests, the British, the US government and fellow Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. Bonhams said the letter had been acquired by a collector in France.
Last night in Paris, Christie’s began a three-day sale of a French collection of 20th century design, which features furniture by Irish-born designer Eileen Gray.
The sale is expected to raise up to €50 million.