Paintings by Irish artists Sir John Lavery, Jack Butler Yeats and Louis le Brocquy - whose works have made over £1 million sterling (#1.6 million) at auction - are the highlights at today's Sotheby's Irish sale. The auction also includes works by Kernoff, O'Conor and Orpen. Meanwhile, a Roderic O'Conor painting goes under the hammer in New York next Wednesday. At Sotheby's last May, Louis le Brocquy's Travelling Woman with Newspaper fetched £1.15 million. In today's auction, le Brocquy's Sick Tinker Child is estimated at £200,000 to £300,000. It portrays a stricken mother who has handed her sick child to a man, possibly a healer. A distressed older child clutches her mother's dress at the sight of the apparent loss of her sibling. Works by Belfast-born Sir John Lavery in the auction include The Tennis Party, regarded as one of his best-loved paintings. Painted in 1885, it portrays what was then the newly fashionable recreation for the children of rich industrialists and is estimated at £250,000 to £350,000. Lavery's Return from Markets, dating from his two early stays at Grez-sur-Loing, is estimated at £300,000 to £400,000. It portrays the unhurried atmosphere of the village where the artist community settled after 1875. Jack Butler Yeats's Secret Laughter, painted in 1950 and expected to fetch £200,000 to £300,000, is set in a Dublin pub, with a smiling impish figure to the left who has just picked a pocket. Davy Byrne's Pub by Harry Kernoff features the artist in the pub with characteristic trilby and glasses. Proprietor Davy Byrne and Martin Murphy, a theatre set-maker, also feature. It is expected to go for £40,000 to £60,000. Houses at Lezaven, Pont-Aven by Roderic O'Conor, depicting a scene partially illuminated by intense sunshine, is expected to sell for £300,000 to £400,000. Sir William Orpen's Portrait of Gardenia in Riding Clothes of the girl on the threshold of womanhood is estimated at £400,000 to £600,000.
Meanwhile, in the US next Wednesday, an early impressionist landscape painting by Roderic O'Conor will be auctioned at William Doyle Galleries. It is expected to fetch up to $250,000. Roderic O'Conor (18601940), regarded as one of the most important Irish artists, painted Autumn Landscape circa 1887. Estimated at between $150,000 and $250,000, it depicts a French woodland glade enveloped in a silvery mist, with a town in the distance, thought to be Grez-surLoing. "It is vigorously painted and applied with wet-on-wet layers of paint with both palette and brush, resulting in a richly textured surface evocative of the paintings of Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley," says William Doyle Galleries. O'Conor worked with impressionism from 1886-1890, after which his work took on a more expressive post-impressionist style. Autumn Landscape reveals the artist's "importance as one of Ireland's foremost artists working in the genre". O'Conor travelled to Paris to pursue his art training and studied under Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran. He learned "direct painting", whereby form and colour are conceived and executed simultaneously, virtually eliminating the need for preliminary sketches.
But he left Paris for the fledgling art colony of Irish and Scandinavian artists in the rural village of Grez-sur-Loing. "His bravura as a young artist and ability to master impressionism at the age of only 25 inspired other artists in Grez to embrace the impressionist style they had previously avoided. In all probability, O'Conor was the first artist from Ireland or Britain to take to impressionism," says the auction house.
To contact Sotheby's about today's Irish sale, telephone 0044 20 7293 5000. Website: www.sothebys.com
For further information about Roderic O'Conor's Autumn Landscape, call Alan Fausel of Doyle New York telephone 001 212 427 4141 Ext 238. Website: DoyleNewYork.com
jmarms@irish-times.ie
