Five sculptures by the late Edward Delaney have been sold for a record €300,000, ten times the guide price.
The artworks had been kept in the garden of a Connemara house before being given to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma).
An unnamed UK buyer bought the main piece, two bronze 2.5 metre high statues entitled King and Queen, which sold for €190,000.
The previous world record for a piece of Irish sculpture at auction was €95,000 for F.E. McWilliam's Evein December 2006.
Stuart Cole, director at auctioneers James Adam’s, said it was a shame Delaney, who died in September, was not alive to see the sale. “It’s a fitting tribute to Ireland’s most important sculptor of the 20th century,” Mr Cole said. “We catalogued these works for the sale before his death, and it’s a shame he didn’t live to see them sell for world record prices.”
The pre-sale estimates for the five lots started at just over €30,000.
Delaney, a member of Aosdána, is best known for his Wolfe Tone statue at St Stephen’s Green and Thomas Davis opposite the front of Trinity College.
The sculptures, which also included Anna, Running Figureand Organic Form, had been owned by an old friend of Delaney's and kept in his garden in the 1970s and '80s before being loaned to Imma.
They were handed over to the Dublin-based auctioneers weeks before Delaney died.