Last May, the James Adam Salerooms in Dublin teamed up with London auctioneers Bonhams for a sale of Irish pictures which realised around £800,000. The event was judged sufficiently successful for another to be arranged for next Wednesday. Once again, almost all the most important names are in evidence here, with a handful of lots likely to excite particular interest.
Among these is a large watercolour on cardboard of Lady Hibernia by Harry Clarke. Very typical of the artist's dainty style and preference for elongated figures, the work was painted for the managing director of the Hibernian Fire and General Insurance Company in 1915. Then it cost 15 guineas, now it is expected to fetch at least £15,000.
A pair of stained glass panels from the Harry Clarke studio, showing St Colmcille leaving Ireland, and formerly in St Mungret College, Limerick, has the same estimate of £15,000-£20,000. A Clarke cartoon and a pencil drawing with gilt highlights are expected to sell for £1,500-£2,000 and £600-£800 respectively. The day's top price will almost certainly go to an oil by Walter Osborne called Beneath St Jacques, Antwerp, painted in 1882 and showing three figures and a kitten in the Flemish town. It has an estimate of £150,000-£200,000. Suppertime, a sentimental pastel by Osborne of a cat with two kittens has an estimate of £40,000-£50,000, while an oil study of a fox terrier is expected to make £7,000-£10,000.
The surprise is that this sale contains only one work by Jack B Yeats; And So My Brother, Hail and Farewell for Ever More (£80,000-£120,000) dates from 1945 and shows a man, possibly the artist himself, standing before Sligo Bay. By contrast, three Paul Henry pictures are up for sale: the selfexplanatory Sailing Boat on Killary Bay (£30,000-£40,000); A Wicklow Farm (£30,000-£35,000); and Killary Bay (£15,000-£20,000). Older works in the auction include James Arthur O'Connor's dark and dramatic The Gathering Storm (£30,000-£40,000), a picture very much in the romantic mode, and William Ashford's pastoral A Mill near Lucan (60,000-£90,000). Then there is a west of Ireland coastal scene by Nathaniel Hone (£12,000-£16,000), a watercolour of the Colleen Bawn and the Colleen Dhu by Samuel Lover (£5,000-£7,000).
