Lissadell contents fetch €2m by day's end

As the fourth helicopter landed on the lawn outside, Lady Gore-Booth could barely contain herself. Seated with her husband, Sir Josslyn (in festive yellow pullover under his wool jacket), in a discreet spot behind the auctioneer she ticked the lots off in her catalogue, smiling broadly as the bids spun wildly beyond the estimates.

She was doubtlessly congratulating herself that they had turned down the pre-auction offer of €750,000 for Lissadell's contents from the estate's new owners.

When a Victorian painted duck decoy, "lacking lower beak", sold for three times its highest estimate, and a (very) "distressed" figure of Venus fetched over 12 times its estimate among a raft of moose heads and rickety sofas, it was a sign of things to come.

The Gore-Booth's counter proposal that the owners Constance Cassidy and Edward Walsh pay 250 per cent of the higher estimate for items purchased pre-auction began, occasionally, to look like a bargain. By evening, two art records had been set and the sale was fetching double the estimate at over €2 million.

A Sarah Purser portrait of Constance and Eva Gore-Booth as young girls - high on the Cassidy-Walsh wish list and estimated at €30,000-€50,000 - fetched €200,000 (excluding the 19½ per cent buyers' premium added to all prices). Joseph Patrick Haverty's iconic "The Limerick Piper", estimated at €40,000- €60,000, realised €190,000, after some early bidding by dealer John Farrington, acting for the Cassidy-Walshs, fell away to a telephone offer and a round of applause.

"We really wanted that painting," said Constance Cassidy of the Purser, "we pushed it right up to €195,000". Their efforts were noted. By contrast with the Haverty, an outbreak of polite boo-ing greeted the final offer for the Purser from a telephone bidder, said - like the Haverty buyer - to be a private Irish collector.

With a crowd of 800 to 1,000 leaving standing room and stagnant air only in the hall opening into the gallery where the auction took place, the priorities of Cassidy and Walsh were clear. They focused on lots that were an integral part of the house, or had particular associations with Eva and Constance Gore-Booth or W.B. Yeats.

For Nick Nicholson of HOK Fine Art (who handled the sale with Christie's), the surprise of the auction was the €31,000 (including premium) achieved for a self-portrait of Casimiar Markievicz, estimated at €3,000-€5,000. This stayed in Lissadell after a hectic two-way battle in which the Cassidy-Walshs went "over and above budget", according to Ms Cassidy.

They also held on to the Purser portraits of the Gore-Booth parents, some charcoals by Constance Gore-Booth (one achieving six times its estimate), the grand piano (€5,200 before premium), a 132cm-high stuffed brown bear (€4,000), some sealing and whaling equipment (with intimations of where Constance might have got her taste for weaponry) and a selection of serious furniture.

The steel handcuffs reputed to have been used on the countess and estimated at €300-€500, sold for €4,000 to a private Irish buyer, according to HOK, although a book of Irish verse, with an ink inscription to Eva Gore-Booth by W.B. Yeats (estimate: €10,000-€15,000), failed to sell.

Much of the general chatter was of the very low estimates in the catalogue. "They forgot to add a zero," complained one young dealer, to which Christopher Gray, a collector and dealer from Trim responded: "How can you build emotion into prices?"

But this didn't go down well with Nick Nicholson of HOK. "If you say that, you are saying that people are lacking judgment, are acting irrationally. But these people have certainly not done that. They have viewed thoroughly, done their homework, and had a very good catalogue".

Constance Cassidy described herself "as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" as darkness fell outside the vast windows of Lissadell. And those hapless folk without a helicopter trudged down the long, mucky avenue in search of their cars.