Drawing from Beit art collection sold for €87,500

A drawing from the Beit art collection was sold at auction in Christie’s in London yesterday for £74,500 (€87,500).

The sale of Aurora and Cephalus, by 18th-century French artist François Boucher, is the latest in a series of sales of art and antiques by the Alfred Beit Foundation, the charitable trust that runs Russborough House in Co Wicklow. The foundation is trying to raise money to create an endowment fund to pay for the ongoing upkeep and conservation of the stately home located near Blessington.

The black-and-white chalk drawing, which measures approximately 14 by 10 inches, depicts Aurora, the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology, with a putto, or winged infant, seated on clouds.

The character Cephalus is not depicted in the scene, which was inspired by an episode in Ovid's epic Latin poem Metamorphoses. The drawing had a pre-assigned estimate of £30,000-£50,000 (€35,000-€59,000) ahead of the afternoon auction in King Street in central London.

The sale was a curtain-raiser for another auction at Christie's tomorrow evening, when three oil paintings from the Beit collection will go under the hammer. Venus supplicating Jupiter, by old master Peter Paul Rubens and two paintings of Venice by Francesco Guardi have a combined top estimate of £2.3 million (approximately €2.7 million).

Withdrawn

The three paintings – and the drawing – were withdrawn from auction in London last summer following a public outcry in

Ireland

and an effort was made to persuade philanthropists to buy them and donate them to the National Gallery of Ireland. However, buyers failed to materialise and the pictures were re-consigned to auction.