Two early pieces by Joseph Walsh, the innovative world renowned Riverstick, Co. Cork based furniture maker whose work features in major international collections like the National Gallery of Ireland and the Musée des Art Décoratifs in Paris feature at Marshs sale in Ballinhassig, Co. Cork on August 29.
The first is a sixteen foot long part Canadian cherrywood wall cabinet, comprising centre cabinet and two side cabinets dating to 1999. The second is a Canadian cherrywood tv cabinet. It is complete with centre cabinet and two side cabinets.
This is an auction of vintage tractors, lorries, farm machinery and railwayana by Marshs at the Ramble Inn, Ballinhassig, Co. Cork on behalf of Alan and Mary Barry, who are retiring. Among other lots in this sale of 333 lots are a James Crighton thrashing mill, a Terex 8 Ton excavator and an antique yard crane. There is a large selection of original enamel wall signs and a lifelong collection of memorabilia like a Victorian brass cash register, a collection of skillet pots and famine pots and a framed coloured print of the Chetwynd Viaduct.
The auction will be on view in Ballinhassig on August 26, 27 and 28 and the live and online sale is at 11 am on Saturday August 29.
The summer exhibition of painting, print, photography, sculpture and craft the at the Lavit Gallery in Cork runs until August 29. Participating artists include Tom Climent, Johnny Bugler, Debbie Dawson, Deirdre Frost, Etain Hickey, Victor Richardson, Tim Goulding, Damaris Lysaght, John Behan, Rachel Joynt, Jo Kelley and Billy Foley.
A marble torso of a Roman Emperor probably representing Augustus, Tiberius or Claudius at Sotheby’s.
A series of auctions from an amazing single owner collection including the most important Roman Imperial sculpture at auction in over a decade will kick off at Sotheby’s in New York in October. Assembled over decades it encompasses more than 900 works ranging from Roman Imperial marble, Old Master paintings, ancient Near East ceramics, Islamic court carpets, Royal French furniture, Impressionist masterworks and 20th century design.
Probably representing Augustus, Tiberius or Claudius the commanding Roman sculpture complete with upper body armour is estimated at $8-$12 million (€6.92-€10.38 million). In one of this collectors residences it stands in a room that holds Richard Avedon’s revered portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Four Savonnerie carpets commissioned by Louis XIV for the Grande Galerie of the Louvre lie beneath furniture that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Art includes masterworks by Canaletto, Degas, Fragonard, Guardi and Picasso. Works from a private collection expected to realise more than $60 million (€51.9 million) will be displayed across four floors of Sotheby’s new hq at the Breuer building in New York from October 17-22. There will be four New York sales on October 21, 22 and 23, with further lots at the Modern evening auction in New York in November. Prized and precious objects from a mosaic of civilisations will continue to feature at 22 sales in New York and Paris into 2027.
This 1937 Mercedes Benz was the car used by Hitler’s ambassador to Ireland.
The 1937 Mercedes 170V Cabriolet B saloon at Marshs sale in Cork on August 29 was registered to the German Ambassador to Ireland during World War II, Dr. Eduard Hempel. Vintage cars like this one are always highly sought after and its significant history should add considerable value.
The Mercedes – refurbished in 1988/89 and in storage since – will form part of a sale of vintage tractors, lorries, farm machinery and railwayana by Marshs at the Ramble Inn, Ballinhassig, Co. Cork on behalf of Alan and Mary Barry, who are retiring.
Appointed to Dublin by Adolf Hitler in 1937 the career diplomat was pressured to join the Nazi Party in 1938 and remained ambassador until 1945. Formal diplomatic accreditation was maintained during the Second World War because of Irish neutrality. The German legation at 58 Northumberland Road in Dublin was a hub for intelligence gathering and communication, though its effectiveness was limited by strict surveillance by Irish counter intelligence.
It was to Dr. Hempel’s home at Sloperton Road in Dun Laoghaire that Eamon de Valera famously called to express the condolences of the Irish Free State on the death of Hitler in 1945.
After the war Dr. Hempel and his family were granted asylum and remained here until 1950. They then returned to Germany where the former ambassador to Ireland helped set up the diplomatic service for the new Federal Republic.
Over the course of half a century, the American businessman Alan Medaugh assembled one of the largest and greatest collections of woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858). Ohashi Atake no yudachi (Ohashi bridge, sudden shower at Atake) is a perfect example of what makes the Medaugh collection special. The image with rain falling across the page is iconic. The condition in full, unfaded color, is pristine. The impression is an early one, with the two boats beside the far shore still visible. The estimate is $50,000-$100,000.
A group of more than 600 sheets, many of the absolute greatest rarity, quality, and state of preservation focusing on the earliest impressions is to be auctioned at Christie’s in New York. The first of what promises to be a three-sale series of sales on September 17 will include more than 180 prints spanning the artist’s career. Hiroshige is especially famous for his compositions, atypical points of view, and his rich and striking use of colour. His prints helped usher in one of the greatest eras of Japanese printmaking and they changed Western art as well as they were hugely influential on 19th century European art.
Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac Wine Label 1990.
It is no secret that world renowned artist Francis Bacon was a lover of wine. In 1990 he created a formal dance about a wine-glass for the Mouton Rothschild 1990 label, distorting it to the curve of the label. A copy, still in its original white board tube with the name Chateau Mouton Rothschild and emblem in gilt along with an unused post card depicting the lithograph, will come up at a sale by Purcell Auctioneers in Birr on September 16. It is inscribed in French in homage to Bacon, who offered to Mouton one of his last works and signed both by Bacon and Baronne Philippine de Rothschild. Lot 373 is estimated at €800-€1,600.
Titled the W B Yeats sale and filled with collectible treasures the auction of 578 lots offers the libraries of the late Professor Warwick Gould and his wife Deirdre Toomey. Both prominent scholars they had a particular interest in the poetry, prose and drama of Yeats. The leading lot in the sale is a first (1726) edition of Gulliver’s Travels with an estimate of €8,000-€16,000.
Pair of composition stone garden urns, 62 inches high. UPDATE: THESE MADE €1,500 AT HAMMER
A pair of terracotta coloured composition stone urns, an Italian sandstone model of three cherubs at play, a pair of Gothic Revival cast iron garden seats, a three tier marble fountain and a famine pot from Ballyduff, Co. Waterford are among the top lots at Fonsie Mealy’s summer garden furniture and outdoor effects sale in Castlecomer on August 12. Viewing for the auction of 192 lots gets underway today. The catalogue is online.
A set of Victorian wrought irons gates, 110 inches wide. UPDATE: THESE MADE 340 AT HAMMER
Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) – La physique du sol. Courtesy Christie’s
It is a tribute to the Parisian taste of Jeanne Marie de Broglie that the furniture she collected in the 1970’s and ’80’s is of a type that makes vast sums of money in today’s market. Maybe the key is thinking outside the box. Princess Jeanne-Marie, the forward looking daughter of a duke who established Christie’s Paris office in 1968, did not go for the fashion of the time. Instead she followed the avant-garde.
Her private collection of over 150 lots, to be sold at Christie’s in Paris on September 30, reflects an expertise in art and friendships forged with artists. Close friends with gallery owner Daniel Cordier she was active in a visionary artistic circle where she met and became friends with Jean Dubuffet. Physique du sol (€200,000-€300,000) from her collection forms part of Dubuffet’s Texturologies series developed from the late 1950’s in which the artist uses a language of textures, layers and vibrations to transform painting into a physical and sensory experience.
Diego Giacometti (1902-1985) – Table basse ‘Berceau’.
Jeanne Marie de Broglie, who died last year aged 95, made an early acquisition of a Structure végétale chandelier by Claude Lalanne (€200,000-€300,000). The centrepiece of her collection is a unique piece by Diego Giacometti, a cradle table modelled on her dog Séraphim (€400,000-€600,000).
In an apartment emblematic of the elegant characteristics of great Parisian collections ceramics by Picasso, Charles X era candlesticks and an 18th century Limoges porcelain service sat alongside art by Marc Chagall, David Hockney, Dorothea Tanning, Léon Spilliaert, Henri Michaux, Miodrag Dado, Edgar Degas and Eugène Delacroix.
Claude Lalanne (1925-2019) – Lustre Structure végétale
Daughter of Gilles de Maillé de La Tour-Landry, Duke of Maillé and Anne-Marie Radziwill, Jeanne Marie became a princess through her marriage to Guy de Broglie in 1949. The aristocratic lineage is evident in several pieces in the collection like a diamond brooch in the shape of a Maltese Cross from the Radziwill family (€30,000-€50,000) and a portrait of her grandmother Dolly Radziwill by Adrian Désiré Étienne Drian. A service bears the cipher of her ancestor Princess Louise of Prussia.
For Francois Curiel, chairman of Christie’s Europe, she was a mentor. “After a year’s apprenticeship in London as a young specialist, I had the privilege of working alongside her in Paris in the 1970s. At that time, she was writing a crucial chapter in the history of the auction house as it expanded internationally. It was under Jeanne-Marie’s watchful eye that I embarked on this adventure, which has now lasted for over 50 years.”
Christie’s, now celebrating 260 years in business, describe this sale as a tribute auction to a major figure in the European art market who helped to shape the rapidly changing landscape of post war Europe.
A sandstone heart shaped pendant with a gold plated chain
The last she saw of her husband was from the lifeboat. He was waving to her from the upper decks of Titanic . Florence Agnes Angle, who died in 1969 aged 93, never remarried. A brooch and pendant which the Titanic survivor and nurse cherished will come under the hammer at the next Lynes and Lynes auction in Co. Cork. Florence eventually settled in Leamington Spa in her native Warwickshire.
She did not talk about it a lot. But when in 1961 the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported the death of Finnish born Helga Hirvonen in New York – describing her as the last survivor of the Titanic – the elderly but feisty Mrs Angle went to the newspaper office to set the record straight. She was then a very much alive Titanic survivor and was certain that other living survivors were out there too. In an interview at that time she recounted how she had been asleep when Titanic hit the iceberg. Her husband woke her and told her to get dressed. Instead she went back to sleep. Woken up again by the commotion outside the cabin the couple went to the upper decks together. There she was separated from him and placed in a lifeboat.
A newspaper cutting reporting the death of Mrs. Angle
The story of Titanic is as potent as it ever was. Memorabilia and artefacts continue to command huge auction prices. A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of Macy’s co-owner Isidor Strauss made £1.78 million (€2.08 million) at Aldriges in Wiltshire last year. A letter written by his wife Ida on Titanic stationary and posted in Cobh (Queenstown) sold for £100,000 (€116,880). Denis Lynes has put more modest estimates of €5,000-€10,000 on a sandstone heart shaped pendant with a gold plated chain, emblematic of all the heartbreak and tragedy of the Titanic disaster, and on a c1900 gold pink tourmaline and half pearl brooch. Eat your hearts out Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Willed to an Irishwoman by Mrs. Angle the jewellery will come up as lots 349 and 350 at his sale in Carrigtwohill on August 29.
A c1900 pink tourmaline and half pearl brooch pendant.
White plaster portrait bust of Charles Stewart Parnell. UPDATE: THE CLOSING BID WAS €1,040
A plaster portrait bust of Charles Stewart Parnell is the leading lot at the sale by South Dublin Auctions on August 9. Created by artist Mary Grant in 1892 it is likely that this is a cast after the one in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The estimate is €3,000-€6,000. Among 1380 lots on offer are contents from a Limerick antique shop, a London penthouse, jewellery and small collectible pieces.
