Wednesday evening's sale of art at the National Concert Hall was described by auctioneer John de Vere White as "quite wonderful," no doubt because the occasion realised some £550,000, with only a couple of the 62 lots remaining without a buyer. At the core of the auction was the late dealer Leo Smith's own personal collection, all of which performed particularly well.
Alan Hobart of the Pym Gallery in London described Smith as "the greatest post-war Irish dealer" and went on to prove the point by paying the day's highest price of £220,000 for Walter Osborne's Piping Times, bought by Smith in 1977 shortly before his death. Hobart also bought Leech's Aloes, St Martiques for £62,000, while a private buyer paid £12,000 for a self-portrait by the artist's American-born first wife, Saurin Elizabeth Leech. This had carried a pre-sale estimate of £2,500, just as her French Street Scene, which had been expected to make £1,500-£2,500, found a buyer willing to pay £4,000. John Butler Yeats's portrait of Abbey Theatre actress Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh was another lot which surpassed its estimate, setting what Mr de Vere White believes is a new world record for this artist when it fetched £26,000. And Grace Henry's seascape, called Boulders of the West, also set a world record for the painter when it made £11,500; one of her other pictures, Feeding Time, was bought for £6,500.
Among living artists, another new record was made for Camille Souter; her small but dazzling Winter Heliotrope was acquired by a private buyer in Dublin for £18,000. Other successful lots were Niccolo Caracciolo's watercolour of the Tornabuoni Gardens in Florence (£3,200), Louis Le Brocquy's watercolour study of W.B. Yeats (£6,200), Daniel O'Neill's Women Waiting (£11,000), the same artist's Donegal Landscape (£10,500) and two pencil drawings by Jack B. Yeats (£5,200 and £5,000 respectively).
A late addition to the sale, George Russell's Irish Rebels on the Donegal Shore sold for £10,500 and William Conor's Chair-o- Planes fetched £7,000. With both Sotheby's and Christie's staging sales next month, these prices bode well for Irish art at auction.
