A HISTORICALLY significant painting of the Battle of Aughrim, which was found on the online auctions website eBay earlier this year, is being put up for sale.
The picture was acquired for an undisclosed sum by the Gorry family who run an art gallery in Dublin. They brought it back to Ireland and have now decided to sell it. They are seeking €165,000.
Yesterday, James Gorry said he hoped a State institution might buy the painting and that it would become part of the national collections but he believed such an outcome was “unlikely given the way things are”. While the State has “first option”, he said the painting would be available for sale “from next Sunday at 3pm”.
Even if sold, the painting will go on public display, for two weeks, from next Monday at the Gorry Gallery on Molesworth Street.
Battle of Aughrim was painted by John Mulvany and first exhibited in a gallery on Grafton Street 125 years ago. The painting was last seen in Denver, Colorado, in 1914 and was since believed to have been lost. But it was spotted on eBay by Niamh O’Sullivan, professor of visual culture at the National College of Art and Design, and then bought by the Gorrys from a dealer in San Francisco who had thought it depicted an American military scene.
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