With estimates ranging from €50 to €500, Adam’s online-only auction of 135 oils, watercolours, illustrations and photographic prints from the UTV art collection is an excellent opportunity to acquire affordable artworks from a well-regarded corporate collection.The TV company, which was founded in 1959, wanted to support the local arts scene by buying work from lesser-known and young artists. The works on offer range from representations of prominent Belfast landmarks such as the Harland and Wolff shipyard (Lot 108, €60-€80 ) and the Albert Clock (Lot 24, €100-€150) to delicate watercolours by George Morrison RUA (Lots 4 and 5, €100-€150 each) and William Henry Burns’s attractive renderings of inland waterway scenes (Lots 13 and 14, €250-€350 each).
There are cartoons by Rowel Friers and silver gelatin prints of historic black and white photographs. All aspects of life in Northern Ireland are portrayed: despair and uncertainty in Jack Pakenham’s Sketch for the City (Lot 60, €400-€600), the everyday familiarity of TV programmes (Lots 84 and 85, €150-€250); a large and cheerful triptych of Belfast’s red double-decker buses (Lot 51, €400-€600). The catalogue is - appropriately - now online, and the entire collection will be on view on Monday and Tuesday at Adam’s, 26 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2. The UTV Art Collection Online-Only Auction, closes Monday October 8th. For catalogue, viewing times and bidding details see adams.ie.
New antiques fairs
Tomorrow sees the launch of two brand-new antiques fairs - one in Clontarf and one in Clonmel. On the shores of Dublin Bay, the Marine Hotel in Sutton is the setting for a new fair from Antique Fairs Ireland Vintage Ireland. It will include an antiques and collectibles fair as well as a smaller fashion event, with traders offering authentic vintage fashions and accessories. Tickets cost €3.50 and the fair runs from 11am to 6pm. Co Tipperary also gets a new collecting event with the Clonmel Antiques, Art & Vintage Fair at the Clonmel Park Hotel from 11am to 6pm.
Dublin Book Fair
The novelist John Banville will open the 2018 Dublin Book Fair at the Freemasons’ Hall on Molesworth Street in Dublin next weekend. Some 20 booksellers from Ireland, England and Scotland will bring everything from general secondhand books to very rare prints, manuscripts and ephemera to this annual gathering, organised by Joe McCann of Maggs Brothers in London, one of the world’s largest and oldest antiquarian book firms. Book lovers can also browse the offerings from Foster’s Bookshop (London), P & B Rowan (Belfast), Jerry Kelleher (Kildare), John Morton (Manchester) and William Cowan Books from Oban, Scotland. The Dublin Book Fair is on Saturday October 6th, 12pm-6pm and Sunday October 7th, 11.30am-5pm. Admission €2.
