JACK Yeats's A Walkover, depicting the finishing post at the Strand horse race at Drumcliffe, Co Sligo, became the most expensive painting in the Irish art sale in London yesterday when an anonymous collector paid £205,000 sterling for it. Its estimated price was £30,000.
The largest ever sale of paintings by Irish artists raised more than £1.7 million at Christie's Auction house in London, where most works were brought by Irish collectors.
"I estimate half of the paintings were brought by Irish collectors with the rest being brought by British and American buyers of Irish extraction," said Mr Bernard Williams, director of Irish works at Christie's.
More than 150 paintings were auctioned, including works by Sir William Orpen, Roderic O'Conor, Gerard Dillon, Sir John Lavery and Jack Yeats with 70 per cent of the lots being sold.
Orpen's painting, Myself and Cupid painted in 1910 as part of a series of self portraits, fetched the second highest price of £150,000. The Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, owns the rest of the series. "This picture will be returning to Ireland but we are unable to state whether it was brought privately or by a company," said a Christie's spokeswoman.
An Irish collector invested £139,000 in Yeats's The Flapping Meeting, exceeding the estimated price of £40,000.
The sale was "a great success", said Mr Williams, adding that Christie's hoped it would be "heralded as an important event both in Ireland, the UK and the US".