Market buzzing after record price

A Yeats painting of small-town life in Mayo – bought this week for €1 million – has become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Ireland

THE SALE at Adam's of a major painting by Jack B Yeats in Dublin on Wednesday evening wasn't just the highlight of a busy week in the salerooms. The €1 million hammer price achieved for A Fair Day, Mayowas the highest price ever paid at auction in Ireland for a work of art, a welcome boost for the Irish art market and a triumph for the St Stephen's Green-based fine art auctioneer.

Adam’s managing director, James O’Halloran, said the record price “showed that Adam’s can attract the really big hitters” to sales in Dublin and is more than a match for the London auction houses. The painting was chased by four bidders and sold to an unnamed Irish buyer, bidding by telephone, who paid €200,000 more than the highest estimate (€500,000-€800,000).

The oil-on-canvas painting, measuring 2ft by 3ft, was painted by Yeats in 1925 and borrowed by Fianna Fáil founder Éamon de Valera to hang in his office. But Dev didn’t buy the picture, which was returned to the artist in 1944.

It was then bought for £250 (about €300) by the Reihill family of Blackrock, Co Dublin, who have owned it until this week.

A second painting by Yeats, The Dawn,sold at the Adam's auction for €80,000 (estimated at €80,000-€120,000).

The record-breaking price paid for A Fair Day, Mayois likely to entice owners of other major pictures to test the market in the months ahead. Indeed, Adam's has just revealed that another important work by Yeats has been consigned to auction by a private Irish collector. Jazz Babies, a painting capturing the mood of the 1920s Jazz Age, will go under the hammer in December and is likely to create a pre-Christmas flutter.

Overall, 70 per cent of the lots on offer sold at Adam’s, a total of €1.4 million in sales.

Sales throughout this week have provided further evidence that many Irish investors are looking to art and antiques as a safe haven for their cash amid the ongoing euro and stock-market crises.

At Sheppard's three-day "Legacy of the Big House" sale, a new Irish auction record price for a piece of Chinese furniture was achieved when an internet bidder in China paid €69,000 for a pair of Huanghuali Zitan ceremonial wooden chairs, estimated at €1,500-€2,500. Sheppard's had previously achieved the record price for Chinese porcelain sold at auction in Ireland. A painting titled Horses and Hounds,by Carl Suhrlandt, made €13,000 (€8,000-€10,000).

Buyers snapped up the paraphernalia of gentry life, from a Georgian mahogany bootjack, which made €120, to an Edwardian brass gong, which fetched €140.

Meanwhile, at Whyte’s big history sale last Saturday, 70 per cent of lots were sold for a total of €200,000. A wooden model of an Irish round tower – made by Sinn Féin’s presidential candidate, Martin McGuinness, when he was an IRA prisoner in Portlaoise Prison in 1974 – sold to a telephone bidder in the United States for €5,200 (€1,000-€1,500). An archive of documents from the Munster Bank, which collapsed in the late 19th century, made €1,700 (€800-€1,000).

* For full lists of results, see adams.ie, sheppards.ie and whytes.ie