It’s not easy being Irish. The world has no sympathy for your fragile economy but it’s happy to buy up your paintings judging by the success of Sotheby’s Irish Paintings sale this week. Here’s the Irish Times on the matter:
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. […]
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.
Collectors spend over €2m at Sotheby’s auction (Irish Times)
