Irish Art

Shifting Covid-19 regulations have complicated the Irish and Scottish art markets but online and phone bidding has helped to keep results relatively robust

The Irish art market produced lively action just before new Covid-19 rules came into effect.

As with fellow Dublin saleroom Whyte’s, Adam’s (25% buyer’s premium inc VAT) latest Irish art sale was led by a Paul Henry.

Among the works bringing competition at de Veres (25% buyer’s premium) of Dublin on October 20 was a handmade woollen wall hanging by Patrick Scott (1921-2014).

Works by Daniel O’Neill (1920-74) are a common sight at auction, mostly paintings of mysterious female figures in unspecified landscapes.

This small watercolour by Irish artist Mildred Anne Butler (1858-1941) titled 'The Garden, Kilkenny' sold for an unexpected £2500 at Wessex Auction Rooms (17% buyer’s premium) in Chippenham.

Irish artist James Humbert Craig’s (1877-1944) passion for the outdoors and landscape painting took him frequently to Donegal, Connemara and the glens of Antrim.

Two pictures purchased from one of the first commercial exhibitions of the artist dubbed ‘the Irish Alfred Wallis’ soared above their estimates at auction this month.

Private domestic demand rather than trade drives bidding at Scottish and Irish art auctions.

Cubist work by often-overlooked artist fuels keen bidding before heading to California.

A near sell-out show at The Redfern Gallery in London in 1963 immediately established Patrick Procktor (1936-2003), the Dublin-born painter, as a star of the London art scene at the age of just 27.

Works by the Irish artist Paul Henry (1877-1958) appear frequently in Irish and UK salerooms but it is far more unusual for a painting by the Belfast-born painter – whose favoured subject matter was views of the west of Ireland – to emerge in Australia.

Pittsburgh entrepreneur Joseph Calihan and his wife Brenda bought their first piece of Irish art – an oil by Paul Henry – in the early 1990s.

Gracing the catalogue cover of Whyte’s Irish & International Art auction in Dublin on October 1 is this work by Séan Keating (1889-1977).

“Isn’t it possible that the Irish could be just as brilliant in the visual arts as they have been in music and literature?”