After the excitement of last week's London sales of Irish art, there ought to be considerable interest in next week's auction of work conducted in Dublin by Adam's in conjunction with Bonhams & Brooks.
Familiar names abound at this event, with a fine example of Jack Yeats's later work - The Light is Going dated 1950 and expected to fetch £150,000-£200,000 - and another by Roderic O'Conor. The latter's 1920 Still Life with Fruit and Vase was painted in the artist's Paris studio and has a reflective character; it carries a presale estimate of £120,000-£160,000.
There are two archetypal pictures by Paul Henry - By a Connemara Lake and A Connemara Village with pre-sale estimates of £40,000-£50,000 and £30,000-£40,000 respectively. It is worth attending the viewing to see excellent work also by Leech, Craig and McKelvey, among others. Instances of pre-20th century art in the same sale include a very fine oil by James Arthur O'Connor. One of three works by the same artist, River Landscape with Figure in a Boat and Traveller on a Path is a small painting measuring just 25cm by 31cm but with a lot of fine detail, especially in the feathery depiction of the trees; the estimate is £6,000-£9,000. Three fascinating pictures in the auction deserve special mention and inspection. All attributed to William Healy, they are grisaille pastels on paper, come from the same source and are in identical 18th century gilt frames in the form of intertwined ribbons tied in a bow at the top. Very little is known about William Healy, whose career seems to have spanned less than a decade from 1769 to 1778; even the dates of his birth and death are unclear. He was a younger brother of the artist Robert Healy, renowned for his chalk drawings, who died from the effects of cold after sketching cattle at the Earl of Mornington's home, Dangan Castle in Co Meath. A Robert Healy chalk portrait depicting the Countess of Clancarty sold for £32,000 at an auction conducted by HOK Fine Art in November 1999. Interestingly, one of the trio being sold next week by Adams is a copy of this same picture although it lacks some of the details of the original's landscape and clothing.
The second picture shows Lady Clancarty's mother, Mrs Gardiner, wearing mourning dress. Both works probably date from around 1770 and would therefore have been produced shortly before Robert Healy's death. As in his work, the figures are strikingly attenuated with face and arms longer than would be the norm. The third picture has a religious theme, being a copy of a Holy Family by the Italian artist Francesco Trevisani. This has an estimate of £2,000-£4,000 whereas the two portraits are expected to fetch £8,000-£12,000 each; given their common origin and frames, it would be a great pity if the three had different buyers. The auction takes place in the James Adam salesrooms next Wednesday from 2.15 p.m.
