A painting by Louis Le Brocquy has fetched £1.15 million sterling, the highest price yet paid for any work by a living Irish artist. Dating from 1947-48, Travelling Woman with Newspaper was offered at auction yesterday afternoon by Sotheby's of London, where it had been expected to make £200,000 to £300,000.
The artist said he was "flabbergasted" at the amount when contacted by The Irish Times.
The previous record for a Le Brocquy picture was £120,000 sterling, paid for Man Writing at Christie's in May 1997.
Sotheby's declined to reveal the identity of the purchaser of Travelling Woman; the auction house would say only that the work had been bought by a private collector bidding by telephone.
The current record for an Irish painting sold at auction was reached in December 1998 when The Bridge at Grez by Sir John Lavery (who died in 1941) was sold at Christie's for £1.3 million.
Speaking after the sale from the south of France, where he has lived for many years, Mr Le Brocquy described himself as "utterly and totally flabbergasted" by the news. Asked if he had expected the painting to do so well, he said: "Absolutely not at all; I thought it wouldn't reach anything like that at all."
The droit de suite law, which gives artists a percentage of money made at subsequent sales, has not been implemented in Britain or Ireland and therefore only the preceding owner benefits from this auction result. Mr Le Brocquy, who is 83, commented: "The great thing is, I'm still here."
He then magnanimously added, "One does hope it will raise the profile of Irish art generally." Together with his wife, artist Anne Madden, he will be leaving France at the end of next week and returning to live in Ireland.
Travelling Woman with Newspaper, which used to be known by the alternative title The Last Tinker, is now more than half a century old and reflects the time Le Brocquy spent in Europe before the outbreak of the second World War. In particular, its cubist character indicates the artist's intimate study of Picasso's work during this period.
The picture is one of a series painted by Le Brocquy after he came across a group of travellers outside Tullamore, Co Offaly, in 1945. The subject remained of great interest to him; the earliest painting in the series, Tinkers Resting, was acquired by the Tate Gallery in 1958.