Top prices at two big auctions this week went to a durable duo: Jack B Yeats took the lead over Paul Henry at Adam’s Irish art auction – but Henry led the field at Whyte’s.
IN 1964, The Irish Times review of the Royal Hibernian Academy’s annual summer exhibition expressed the exasperated wish that “It might be no harm if the Paul Henry tradition of western landscape were let die and its life artificially prolonged no further. And the rollicking, frieze-clad, donkey-galloping school which descends from the earlier Jack Yeats has not much more vitality left.”
Not a chance. Half-a-century later, both these artists remain popular and collectors still favour images of blue-remembered hills, peat-brown bogs, whitewashed cottages and galloping riders to the sea. Two major art auctions took place in Dublin this week and the top prices were achieved for paintings by the durable duo.
At Adam’s on Wednesday evening, Jack B Yeats cantered ahead – but it was a close-run race. His oil-on-board, The Westering Sun made €135,000 – the highest price paid for a painting in Ireland in 2011 to date.
Punters in the St Stephen’s Green saleroom also chased Paul Henry’s Connemara Landscape which sold for €110,000.
Earlier in the week, Paul Henry led the field at Whyte’s auction in the RDS on Monday evening. His oil-on-canvas West of Ireland Landscape emerged as the top lot with a winning bid of €106,000.
And there was strong bidding for a selection of lots by Jack B Yeats. His watercolour Only Two in It , of two speeding horses and jockeys, sold for €25,000.
Even items associated with Yeats sold well. A Studio Archive Collection of the artist’s paint boxes, palettes, brushes, palette knives and paper ephemera – found in the Dalkey home of his late niece, Anne Yeats, made €24,000.
The sale also proved the collectability – and value – of good quality art books. A first edition copy of Life in the West of Ireland, Drawn and Painted by Jack B Yeats , published in 1912 by Maunsel and Company Ltd of Dublin and London, sold for €1,850 – six times the €200-€400 estimate .
Meanwhile, an early painting by Paul Henry which was given to a Scottish couple as a wedding present in 1919, is on the market for the first time next Tuesday, June 7th, at auctioneers Lindsay Burns and Company, 6 King Street, Perth, Scotland. Peat Bog has an estimate of £10,000-£15,000 (€11m224-€16,836). (lindsayburns.co.uk)
* WHYTE’S: Its Irish art auction on Monday featured some 300 lots and 73 per cent sold for a total of €720,000. An unnamed Dublin collector won the bidding for the top lot – Paul Henry’s West of Ireland Landscape.
Five paintings by Sean Keating, used to illustrate an early edition of the Playboy of the Western World ,also went under the hammer. But only one sold. The image of Christy Mahon fighting with his father, used as the frontispiece illustration in the book and also on a commemorative stamp issued by An Post for the centenary of the death of Synge, made €41,000 – just above its estimate of €30,000-€40,000.
Among the more affordable lots which sold were: Still Life With Chrysanthemums And Silver CupBank of Ireland, College Green by George Collie, which made €2,700; , 2005 by Aidan Bradley, €950; and a drawing by Tony O’Malley, titled Mill House And Pond In Wexford , €850. A Portrait of Berthold Hempel (son of the German envoy to Ireland during the second World War), by artist Patrick Hennessy, sold for €3,000 (estimate of €2,000-€3,000). The portrait of his sister Liv Hempel had sold at Whyte’s earlier this year for €4,800.
ADAM’S: Its Important Irish Art Sale on Wednesday evening featured 162 lots with 70 per cent sold, raising €1.1 million.
Apart from the buzz generated by Jack B Yeats and Paul Henry, all eyes were on Gerard Dillon’s painting, Italian With Fowl – depicting a macho man holding two chickens.
After very spirited bidding, it sold for €85,000 – almost tripling the estimate – 62 years after it was first bought in Dublin for £25.
Erskine Nicol’s 150-year-old painting Insolvent sold for €36,000 – making a killing for the unknown buyer who had snapped it up at auction in England for just £6,500 (€7,294) in March.
Among the more affordable lots, Oisín Roche’s view of Dublin’s Castle Market , sold for €900 (€1,000-€2,000).
Whyte’s Top 5
1 West of Ireland Landscape by Paul Henry €106,000 (€60,000-€80,000)
2 Illustration for the Playboy of the Western World - frontispiece by Sean Keating €41,000 (€30,000-€40,000)
3 Two Sisters by Daniel O’Neill €29,000 (€30,000-€40,000)
4 Only Two In It by Jack B Yeats €25,000 (€25,000-€30,000)
5 Studio Archive Collection (of paints, brushes, palettes etc) used by Jack B Yeats €24,000 (€20,000-€30,000)
Adam's top 5
1 The Westering Sun by Jack B Yeats €135,000 (€80,000-€120,000)
2 Connemara Landscape by Paul Henry €110,000 (€60,000-€80,000)
3 Italian With Fowl by Gerard Dillon €85,000 (€25,000-€35,000)
4 Her Garden by Walter Frederick Osborne €67,000 (€50,000-€80,000)
5 The Waterfall by the Road by Jack B Yeats €47,000 (€30,000-€40,000)
tied with
The Story of the Hunt by Thomas Hovenden €47,000 (€50,000-€70,000)
