Sotheby’s to relaunch ‘The Irish Sale’ in London

Sotheby’s has signalled confidence in the Irish art market by announcing the relaunch of dedicated Irish art sales in London this autumn.

The international auction house dropped the annual Irish Sale four years ago after Irish art prices crashed following the economic downturn.

Arabella Bishop, head of Sotheby's Ireland, said that over the last couple of years interest has increased and they had seen new collectors – both from Ireland and internationally – "actively buying and bidding" for Irish art.

“The moment is right to relaunch a dedicated annual sale,” she said.

Key event

During the

Celtic

Tiger era, the Irish Sale was a key event in the social calendar and attracted high-spending bidders from Ireland and from throughout the diaspora to the Sotheby’s saleroom in London’s New Bond Street. The highest price ever achieved was in 2001 when Sir William Orpen’s

Portrait of Gardenia St George with Riding Crop

sold for £1.98 million to an anonymous US collector.

The reinstated event will take place on October 21st and, by chance, the principal lot is another painting by Orpen, titled Nude Girl Reading, which has a top estimate of £500,000 (circa €720,000).

Orpen, who was born in Stillorgan, Co Dublin, in 1878, became a leading portrait painter in London and was one of Britain's official first World War artists. He married English woman Grace Knewstub in 1901 but he went on to have affairs – in London with Mrs Eveleyn St George, whose daughter Gardenia's portrait he painted; and, in France, with Yvonne Aubicq, the daughter of the mayor of Lille. She was the sitter for Nude Girl Reading, which was painted in Paris in about 1921. Orpen died, aged 52, in 1931.

Nudes

Sotheby’s said

Nude Girl Reading

“belongs to a small and important group of nudes by Orpen for which Yvonne modelled in the 1920s”.

Orpen’s affair with Aubicq continued until 1928 when they split up and, along with a generous settlement, he “gave her his black Rolls-Royce, together with his chauffeur Charles Grover­Williams, who Yvonne subsequently married”.

Sotheby's will exhibit Nude Girl Reading and other pictures in the sale – including The Forlorn Hope by Jack B Yeats, which has a top estimate of £180,000 (circa €260,000) – in Dublin ahead of the auction.

Sotheby’s has also moved its Irish office into bigger premises and, last month, opened a new 1,350sq­ ft office at 29 Molesworth Street which, it said, “further cements [its] commitment to the Irish market”.