A PORTRAIT of the daughter of Germany’s envoy to Ireland during the second World War sold at auction in Dublin last night for €4,800.
The pastel Portrait of Liv Hempel,by Cork-born artist Patrick Hennessy, comfortably exceeded its pre-sale estimate of €2,000-€3,000 when it went under the hammer at Whyte's art auction at the RDS in Ballsbridge.
The picture dates from 1939 and was commissioned by Dr Eduard Hempel, the “envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the German Reich” to Ireland from 1937 to 1945. It shows his 4-year-old daughter Liv outside the family residence in Dún Laoghaire. Auctioneer Ian Whyte said the picture had attracted interest from institutional and private collectors in Ireland and overseas. It was bought by Ann Woods, of south Co Dublin, who attended the auction with her husband Andrew and outbid stiff competition from telephone and internet bidders. She said she had known the Hempel family as a child when her father, Dutchman Henry Broekhoeven, the managing director of Siemens-Schuckert in Ireland, was friendly with Dr Hempel.
Ms Woods said she had often been taken to play with the Hempel children at their house, Gortleitragh. She said she liked the picture “very much” and said it was “also something to remind me of my father”.
Ms Hempel, now aged 75 and living in New York, was astonished that the picture had turned up – in Dublin – over 60 years after the family had left Ireland.
The portrait had been sold off during a clearance auction many years ago and she never expected to see it again. But the painting was unexpectedly consigned to Whyte’s by a German man who had inherited it from his father – an art collector who had bought it at auction in Germany.
