Demand among collectors in recent years means that the sale season for Irish art has grown steadily longer. As late as the mid-1990s, it used to be both a short and sparse affair. Now, large auctions continue as late as June 19th, when De Vere's holds a sale of Irish work.
However, a week earlier, Whyte's, which only entered this field a couple of years ago but has already made quite a mark, is holding its own similar event at the RDS in Dublin. The lot most likely to make the highest price on the night is number 62, a Louis Le Brocquy Aubusson tapestry called The Garlanded Goat. Given that a large number of the artist's tapestries have recently been on exhibition at Agnew's in London, this certainly seems to be an opportune moment for such a work to come on the market, especially since the item in question has been in a private American collection.
Based on a 1949 painting Goat in Snow, the tapestry has always been very much admired; a writer in the June 1957 edition of the Architectural Review commented that aside from some work by the French designer Lurcat, this particular piece was "the most successful tapestry I have seen and a superb latter-day example of the Celtic art of surface decoration." The lot carries a pre-sale estimate of £50,000-£70,000.
A second Le Brocquy, an oil from the mid-1960s called Evoked Head which has been with the present owner since first purchased from dealer Leo Smith in 1967, comes with an expected price of £30,000-£40,000.
The auction also contains work by two more of this country's most distinguished artists, Camille Souter and Patrick Scott. The former, lot 43, should certainly cause something of a stir because in style it is quite unlike the work for which this artist has become known. Dating from 1955, Milano is an abstract oil on paper, reminiscent of the American expressionists who would have been very much in vogue at the time, and in particular, owing a certain debt to Jackson Pollock.
Professor Anne Crookshank, in a catalogue on Souter written more than 20 years ago, describes how the painter's art of the 1950s was "dripped and dragged and spilt and thrown" onto a surface. Souter has just been given a major retrospective exhibition at Sligo's Model Arts centre covering her entire career, and this show is due to open in Dublin during the summer. The picture at Whyte's has an estimate of £4,000-£6,000.
Lot 61 will be more familiar to collectors, being one of Patrick Scott's very fine Gold Paintings using gold leaf and tempera on unprimed canvas and, in this instance, dating from 1989. Scott is due to be the subject of a retrospective show at the end of the year in Dublin's Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art and this will undoubtedly affect the price his work fetches at auction; the item being sold on June 12th is expected to make £6,000-£8,000.
Several other familiar names whose work does not come up for public sale with great frequency can also be discovered in the Whyte's catalogue. These include the late Edward Maguire whose Blackbird on a Plate II (lot 47, £8,000-£0,000) may look familiar because it was reproduced on the cover of poet Paul Durcan's book The Berlin Wall Cafe.
Then there is a very fine picture by the late Patrick Hennessy, as haunting as anything this artist ever painted, Potrait of Joyce, lot 48 with an estimate of £7,000-£8,000). Finally, among a wealth of lots worthy of mention, there is number 57, a view of Dalkey Island by Patrick Collins, an artist whose reputation is once more gaining ground; it is expected to go for £10,000-£12,000.
