The Performance of the Art Market in Ireland and the sale of Irish Art in 2013
Ireland has no money, that’s common knowledge but how has the art scene in Ireland performed over the last year? An article in the Irish Times, dated Thursday, December 19, 2013 written by Michael Parsons entitled; ‘return of the good time? The art and antiques market- the highlights of 2013’ highlights some of the key moments in the art and antiques market throughout 2013. The article, which I recently came across online has inspired me to write this post relating to the same topic. It will be interesting to highlight some pieces that have fetched high prices at auction in Ireland and sales of Irish art works that have done well internationally. I agree with Michael Parsons in his article in The Irish Times that ‘2013 will be remembered as the year of Francis Bacon’. I am an admirer of Bacon’s work and fascinated by his life and his artistic theories. I recently wrote an essay for my masters on the installation of the Francis Bacon studio in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, an interesting although controversial story that I will post in the near future. His triptych Three Studies of Lucien Freud, 1969, broke auction records when it sold for $142.4 million (€105.3 million) at Christie’s in New York on November 12th 2013. Bacon’s top auction price prior to this record was a colossal $86.3 million, spent by Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich in 2008. The studio is now a major visitor attraction in the Hugh Lane in Dublin, together with the wealth of material collected from the studio project. Considering the astronomical prices that Bacon’s works are fetching at auction, it is highly unlikely that the Hugh Lane will be able to build up its Bacon collection, especially with finished works. Other private collectors of Bacon’s paintings are thought to include American hedge-fund billionaire Steve Cohen; Sheikha Al Mayassa, daughter of the Emir of Qatar, and an unnamed ‘Irish billionaire’, believed to have bought one at a 2008 London auction for £17 million.
Art prices of 2013 have shown a current
trend for Post-war and contemporary art (which refers to work by artists born
after 1910). James O’ Halloran, MD of Adam’s Fine art auctioneers is quoted as describing the contemporary art
market as a ‘bubble which centres around New York, a few artists, top end
dealers, a couple of auctioneers and some billionaires’ .
Other major works sold this year were those
done by Walter Frederick Osborne, Paul Henry, Sir William Orpen, Séan Keating,
Sir John Lavery and Jack B. Yeats. The sale of a major figurative painting by
Irish, cork-born artist Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), A Figure of Erin went
under the hammer in London with an estimate of €120,000-€160,000 consigned by
the Guinness family, originally passed on by the late Mariga Guinness. It was
probably the most important work by Maclise to come on the market in over 50
years. After checking the auction results from the 4 November sale, I can see
the painting went unsold on the day. For
more information on this work and the results of other lots sold in this sale
you can click on the link below:
In 2012, when I was working for Bonhams
Auctioneers in Dublin, A painting by Walter Frederic Osborne, Feeding the Chickens was consigned by
two Irish brothers to auction due to go on sale in London in July 2012. The
painting with an estimate of £500,000 - 700,000 (€600,000 - 840,000) went
unsold when bidding stalled at £420,000 (€492,715) after much publicity and
media attention. The painting was on display in the Bonhams’ Dublin office in
March for the opening night and circulated international territory such as New
York and Hong Kong. About eight months later, I was at the TEFAF art fair in
Maastricht and there on the wall of the stall of The Fine Art Society London, was
the Osborne painting previously consigned to auction in Bonhams. I was emotional
and excited to see the painting in the flesh again, something I never thought
would be possible. With the growth in
prices in Irish works of art in 2013, would the painting have sold if it had
been put up for auction at a later stage? Nobody can know for sure because the art
market is unpredictable and volatile. It
is understood that the painting has since changed hands in a private
transaction for an unknown price. The highest price ever paid at auction for a
painting by Osborne was achieved at Adam’s in Dublin in December, 2001, when In the Garden, Castlewood Avenue fetched
£748,000.
Lot 96
Walter Frederick Osborne RHA, ROI
(Irish, 1859-1903)
Feeding the chickens
signed and dated 'WALTER OSBORNE/85' (lower
left)
oil on canvas
91 x 71.5cm (35 13/16 x 28 1/8in).
19th Century Paintings, Drawings and
Watercolours London, New Bond Street
11
Jul 2012 14:00 BST
Auction 19923
In September, Adam’s sold the remainder of
the former Anglo Irish Bank’s modest art collection for €281,000 and NAMA
finally sold off all but one of the remaining paintings from financier Derek
Quinlan’s art collection at Christie’s. I think that since the repossession of
AIB and other art collection of financial institutions, we saw a lot more great
modern Irish art works in the market. Some
highlights of 2013 include; Paul Henry’s Potato
Gatherers sold for €400,000 at Adam’s in May 2013; Since then, numerous
works by Paul Henry have appeared at auction in Dublin and London, and two
‘important’ paintings by Séan Keating: Pipes
and Porter (€80,000 – 120,000), sold for €80,000.00 and Good Old Stuff (€40,000 -€60,000), sold
for €36,000.00.
The most controversial art related story in
the papers was the withdrawal of 17 paintings from Gormely’s auction at the
Radisson St. Helen’s Hotel in Dublin on 12 November 2013 after a Dublin based
art dealer spotted some paintings in the catalogue which he believed were ‘not
right’. The authenticity of works ascribed to Walter Frederick Osborne, Roderic
O’ Conner and Aloysius O’ Kelly were in question leading the works to be returned to the owners who are reportedly having the works checked by an
expert. This case highlights the importance of the need for stricter regulation
of the fine art auctioneering sector and the need for experts, art consultants
and auctioneers to carry out proper research and provenance checks before
putting a work up for sale.
In terms of antiques such as furniture, silver
and porcelain still have their place in the Irish market. Traditional ‘brown’
furniture has declined in value and popularity because of changing tastes and
lifestyles. Pieces of furniture such as: Sideboards, davenports and wardrobes
appear to be the worst hit and that with the exception of exquisite examples of
authentic 18th century furniture, the market for period mahogany
furniture is at an all-time low. By contrast; ‘Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Arts and
Crafts and mid-20th century vintage furniture are all currently in
vogue and performing well in the sales’, reports Auctioneer George Gerard Mealy
of Mealy’s Fine Art. In addition to art; ‘silver and china (including Meissen and
early Belleek), and antique jewellery were among the sectors performing well in
2013.
The international art and antiques market
is booming but the Dublin art market (although signs of recovery since the
crash of 2008), is a bit on the disappointing side. After spending a year in
London, I can see the buzz in galleries and museums; I can feel the excitement
and the enthusiasm people have over exhibitions and auction prices that is just
not felt here in Dublin. I recently attended some interesting exhibitions in
London in the Royal Academy and the Victoria and Albert Museum. I visited the Australia exhibition and Mexico:
A Revolution in Art, 1910-1940 in the RA, as well as the Richard Rogers RA:
Inside Out. I mostly enjoyed an exhibition in the V&A which was a display
of the most important pearls in the world and the history of pearl fishing. The
exhibition also looks at the creation of cultured pearls through Mikimoto and
the impact this has had. I can’t say I
have attended many exhibitions that have excited me all that much in Dublin in
the last year. I have been intending to go to the Eileen Gray exhibition,
extended to Sunday 26 January 2014 in The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. I will be watching the market very closely in 2014 and
looking out for the most exciting stories and sales in Dublin and in London. Lets
see what the market has to offer over the next year. I am sure there will be a
few surprises that will capture the interest of many art and antique enthusiasts
like myself.
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