Although this is traditionally one of the busiest times of the year for Irish auctioneers, so far 2000 has been relatively quiet in terms of major sales. The reasons are not hard to find; although there are an abundance of keen buyers in the market, the amount of material coming up for sale is much less than has been the case for any time during the recent past.
Demand has greatly outstripped supply. Auction houses are quietly admitting this situation is causing difficulties, as they cannot bring together enough lots to make up a good sale. So far this year, for example, there has not been a country house sale of any great consequence and even the auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's later this month are smaller than usual.
Sheppard's of Durrow, Co Laois, deserve congratulations, therefore, for holding a sale of no less than 600 lots next Tuesday. Among the pictures, there is a fine coastal scene in gouache by Norah McGuinness (lot 397, £800-£1,200) and a bright-toned Harry Kernoff watercolour of Killiney Strand (lot 451, £25,000-£30,000). Lot 447 is something of a curiosity: a pair of coastal landscapes by a now forgotten painter, Robert Cresswell Boak.
Born in Co Donegal in 1875, he studied in Derry as well as Paris and Rome and then taught art at a number of schools before deciding to devote himself entirely to painting. An exhibitor at the RHA in the years before the second World War, when he lived in Belfast, he died in London in 1949. These two pictures have an estimate of £500-£800 for the two.
Among the furniture lots, however, there are fewer Irish pieces, such as a Dublin-made mahogany long-case clock bearing the name Charles Craig and with a swan-necked pediment (lot 591, £1,500-£2,500). Also worthy of note is an Irish 18th-century mahogany bureau bookcase with an eagle carved at the centre of its pediment (lot 401, £4,000-£6,000).
Among the more interesting non-Irish lots are numbers 151 (a 19th-century three-section overmantel mirror with convex central section below a Greek key pattern motif, £1,500-£2,500) and 100 (a 19th-century carved giltwood console able with serpentine-fronted marble top, £2,000-£3,000). Next Tuesday's sale containing all these lots is due to start at 2 p.m.
