Another year of boom for Irish art forecast

January

The year got off to a predictably quiet start in the auction rooms, but a few rare and unusual items changed hands. An enormous collection of papers, documenting 400 years of a Yorkshire family's history, fetched £10,500 at a Whyte's auction, three times their catalogue estimate. The several thousand documents, relating to the Atkinson-Jowett family, span a period from the late 1500s to the present decade, and were bought, predictably, by a UK buyer.

Hamilton Osborne King got the year off to an interesting start with a lecture evening on Dublin's architectural and furniture heritage. Historian Peter Pearson gave a talk on the Victorian houses of the capital to a packed audience of owners keen to find out exactly how their period homes should be furnished. In Malahide, Denis Drum sold a pollard oak diningroom table and 13 chairs from a Co Cavan convent for £8,600.

February

De Vere's held the first of a series of studio sales when they offered a large collection of work by the late Arthur Armstrong. The sale was almost entirely sold out, helped perhaps by the fact that some lots carried no estimates and sold for as little as £50.

Other pictures soared over their expected amounts, including a brightly coloured work, Two Men in a Spanish Interior, which made £7,700, against a catalogue estimate of £1,500£2,000.

Buyers from as far afield as the West Indies, along with dealers from Continental Europe and the UK, resulted in a lively furniture and fine art sale at James Adam, where a second-period Belleek table centrepiece in the form of a dragon made £6,000 and a set of 12 19th- century mahogany dining chairs in the style of Hepplewhite fetched £12,000. More than 300 bidders competed for items from a large collection of Irish coins, called the Terenure Collection, which were auctioned by Whyte's. A piece of Celtic gold "ring money" was sold for £2,800 to a London dealer, while an Irish institution paid £3,000 for a small hoard of Viking silver ingots, which were found in Co Limerick in 1840.

March

Walter Osborne was the best performer at a sale of Irish art at the James Adam salerooms, where his The Pump at St Nicholas, Antwerp made £94,000. A smaller and more sketchy oil treatment of the same subject fetched £29,000. In Castlecomer, Mealy's realised £30,000 for a collection of animal head trophies during a two-day sale. An elk skull and antlers sold for £6,500 and a pair of rhinoceros heads fetched £3,350. Some fine furniture was disposed of in the same sale, including an early William IV mahogany double breakfront bookcase, which fetched £17,000.

In Dublin, Hamilton Osborne King achieved £3,500 for an 18th-century Dublin long-case clock, made by Alex Gordon, at one of its in-house sales in Blackrock. Nearby, at the Thomas P. Adams salerooms, a Paul Henry painting, The End of the Day, fetched a strong £36,000. Yeats again proved to be the top seller at a de Vere art auction, where a small drawing by the artist, And She Followed the Dark Eyed Gypsy O, sold for £11,200, against a top estimate of £9,000.

April

A large collection of paintings once owned by the distinguished art dealer and collector Leo Smith, who died in the 1970s, was auctioned by de Vere's in April. Born in 1910, Leo Smith had been co-director with Victor Waddington of the Waddington Gallery in Dublin before setting up the Dawson Gallery in 1944.

John de Vere White described the sale as "quite wonderful", not surprising since the occasion realised £550,000. 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, a painting which Smith had bought shortly before his death in 1977.

John Butler Yeats's portrait of Abbey actress Maire Nic Suibhlaigh was another lot which surpassed its estimate, when it fetched £26,000 - a new record for the artist. Among living artists, another new record was made for Camille Souter, whose small painting, Winter Heliotrope made £18,000.

Durrow auctioneers Sheppards fetched some strong prices at one of its furniture sales, notably £23,000 for a 19th-century Wellington chest and £12,000 for a late 18th-century Italian gilt-framed chair.

May

The now annual Irish art auctions in London produced some exceptionally high prices and set the tone for what would be a very good year for Irish paintings. World record prices were set by two paintings at Sothebys when Jack B. Yeats's Oh, Had I the Wings of a Swallow achieved £881,500 under the hammer and Sir William Orpen's A Mere Fracture sold for £716,000 at Christie's. Also at Christie's, Walter Osborne's Beneath St Jacques, Antwerp sold for £370,000, setting a new overall record for the artist.

Back in Dublin, Mullens of Laurel Park sold an Italian bronze fountain for £14,000 and a pair of large terracotta urns and covers for £11,400.

In Co Cork, Hamilton Osborne King's sale of the contents of Ileclash saw a 19th-century bureau plat go under the hammer for £4,000. In Waterford, at R. J. Keighery's auction rooms a side-table with a brass-mounted Egyptian head sold for £11,000, almost twice its top estimate.

June

A sale of much of the contents of Upper Court Manor in Kilkenny realised £600,000, a strong total given that some of the key lots were withdrawn days before the sale due to a dispute with heritage authorities. Mealy's conducted the sale and the proceeds were earmarked for refurbishments to the 18th-century house.

Two lots achieved the top prices of £14,000 - a Georgian mahogany library bookcase, with gothic glazed panel doors, and a large bronze garden fountain. A 19th- century white statuary marble mantelpiece, reputed to have come from Johnstown Castle, fetched £11,500 and a long-case clock, which is signed John Sanderson, Dublin, made £8,750. In London, a landscape view of the Lakes of Killarney attributed to Jonathan Fisher was expected to make £10,000-£15,000 at a Phillips sale but the eventual selling price was a startling £98,300.

July

Traditionally a quiet month in the antiques world, July had little to offer the seasoned auction-goer. However, at the end of the month Mealys auctioned the contents of the Kilshane Estate in Co Tipperary. The property was owned by South African-born Ian Hurst and his wife, and the majority of items in the sale came from them. However, there was also a number of lots provided by Mr Hurst's mother-in-law, Mrs Trench, who had lived on the estate, as well as lots from Ambrose Congreve of Mount Congreve and Viscount de Vesci.

One of the lots included by Ambrose Congreve fetched the highest price, a large pastroal landscape by Francesco Zuccarelli, which sold for £40,000.

In Dublin, O'Reillys Auction Rooms sold a 2.16 carat diamond solitaire ring for £7,600 and a Victorian gold bangle set, with 57 diamonds, for £6,400.

August

During an otherwise quiet month Thomas Adams & Co of Blackrock fetched £4,500 for an early 19th-century table in the manner of George Smith. In the same sale a mahogany extending dining table made £4,000 and a German burr walnut-cased boudoir grand piano fetched £1,200. Town & Country fetched £3,000 for a set of 12 Victorian mahogany balloon-back dining chairs at a house contents sale in Ranelagh, where other prices included £1,470 for an 19th-century bureau and £1,280 for a mahogany linen press.

September

Catalogue estimates proved woefully inadequate at a sale of furniture and fine art at the James Adam salerooms, where a pair of Regency mahogany-framed tub- back armchairs in the manner of Thomas Hope fetched £36,000, many times their £3,000£5,000 estimate. In the same sale a George III rectangular made £15,000, having been expected to fetch £4,000. A set of nine Regency dining chairs (estimate £3,000£4,000) fetched £8,800.

Denis Drum sold a Dublin Portland stone door frame in need of restoration for £2,100.

In London, Christies sold a pair of Irish George II mahogany side-tables from a house in Buckinghamshire for £56,000.

October

1998 saw very few good country house sales but some fine pieces of furniture and other contents from a Co Meath house, Kilsharvan, were offered through the James Adam Salerooms. Here was an opportunity to buy some genuinely good pieces with provenance, and while some items from the Georgian house were in poor condition, they had added value by virtue of being McDonnell family originals; the family lived at Kilsharvan for over a century.

A top price of £22,000 was paid for a Victorian walnut, kidney-shaped desk by the London furniture makers, Holland & Sons; the item fetched three times its catalogue estimate. In Galway, Mealy's held a sale at Rafford House, which had just been sold by its owners, the Hemphill family. While there were some fine original items belonging to the house, many of the lots were brought in. Again, £22,000 was the top price, paid for an oil by Arthur Wardle, entitled Tigers at Dusk. Among the furniture lots, a George III inlaid mahogany serving table, originally from the Speaker's diningroom at the Irish House of Commons, made £12,000, as did a Regency telescopic dining table.

Elsewhere in the salerooms, Woodwards of Cork fetched £8,350 for a Georgian walnut chest on chest and an Irish Georgian sideboard fetched £4,400 at a sale held by Lynes & Lynes, also in Cork.

November

This month was a busy one for the James Adams salerooms, which handled the Sybil Connolly sale at the firm's St Stephens Green premises. While experts agreed that much of the furniture and furnishings of the late couturier's Merrion Square home was not top quality, the sale included lots of pleasant decorative pieces that were all the more valuable for having been chosen by Sybil Connolly. The viewings were held in Merrion Square and thousands visited the house over the four-day period. The sale itself attracted a high level of private buyers, with few dealers competing. Many of the buyers were keen to pick up a souvenir of the designer, who was friendly with Jackie Onassis.

The designer's sketches, which had been estimated to fetch £100£150 a box, made between £1,000 and £1,600 a box and most were bought by an American buyer. James Adam were also instrumental in the sale of two classic chairs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the art nouveau architect and designer, which sold for a total of £241,000 sterling at Bonhams in London. James Adam were appointed to sell the chairs by their Irish owner, a Co Monaghan woman who had inherited them from her mother. The chairs, which were originally made for a Glasgow cafe, had been bought an at auction in Clones in the mid-1950s.

December

The year ended on a high note for Irish art, both in London and in Dublin. Christies set a new record for an Irish artist when it fetched £1.3 million at auction for Sir John Lavery's The Bridge at Grez. The painting had had an interesting past. According to a story told by Lavery, it was bought by a friend "wishing to help me" in 1886 for £30 and was acquired in 1889 by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburg. It had not been seen since 1966 when it disappeared into a private collection in the US.

A week earlier, also in London, Sotheby's sold a Roderic O'Conor still life for £276,500, more than twice its estimate and a new world record for the artist. In Dublin, a new record was set for a Walter Osborne portrait when £355,000 was achieved for Dorothy and Irene Falkiner, one of the last works painted by the artist and exhibited in the RHA in 1903. Including the auctioneer's premium, the figure paid was £408,000. Bought by a London dealer, Mr Alan Hobart of the Pym Gallery, it had carried a pre-sale estimate of £150,000£200,000. Thus the year ended on a high note for Irish art and experts are predicting further price rises in 1999.