Buyers of art are often intrigued when an art sale includes works held as part of a lifetime collection. And so it is with the Adam’s Important Irish Art auction on Wednesday, May 27th, when 11 works owned by the late Reeta and Frank Hughes will go under the hammer.
“The collection was arguably one of the finest collections of Irish art in Ireland,” writes James O’Halloran of Adam’s in the auction catalogue. The Hugheses, who were bookmakers from Warrenpoint, Co Down, first began buying Irish art in the 1960s when it was less fashionable to do so. They continued to buy at auction and in galleries over the next five decades.
Frank McKelvey’s The Fair Day at Camlough, Co Armagh (€20,000-€30,000) is one of the paintings from the Hughes collection. McKelvey was born into a working-class Belfast family, one of six children of painter-decorator, William McKelvey and Mary McKelvey (née Baird). His artistic endeavours began as an apprentice lithographer and poster designer before he entered Belfast College of Art as a full-time student. He later became known as one of the leading landscape artists of the so-called Northern School of Painters, or the Belfast School.
Dancing at the Crossroad (€10,000-€15,000) by James Humbert Craig, who was a contemporary of McKelvey, is also for sale. Known as the People’s Artist, Craig was a talented fiddle player who hosted musical sessions at his home on the Antrim coast. Like his fellow artists from Northern Ireland, Charles Lamb and later Gerald Dillon, he was keen to record and celebrate rural Irish traditions.
Tea Party (€150,000 -€200,000) by Belfast-born Dillon is one of the top lots at Adam’s. First exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1955, the painting includes several of the artist’s close friends, as well as the artist himself, in a house in Roundstone, Connemara.
Landscape paintings by Sean McSweeney, Patrick Collins and Basil Blackshaw are in the Adam’s sale, as are still life paintings by Norah McGuinness. Works in bronze by Sonja Landweer, Michael Foley, FE McWilliam and Imogen Stuart are also included.
Meanwhile, Purcell Auctioneers in Birr, Co Offaly, has become a specialist in selling antiquarian books, since pivoting to the category during the Covid pandemic. This happened a little by chance, as books were easier to sell online and dispatch across the world during lockdowns.
Since then, Purcell Auctioneers has sold the libraries of many public figures, including the late politicians Conor Cruise O’Brien and Garret FitzGerald, the late journalist Bruce Arnold and the late owner of Grogan’s pub on Dublin’s South William Street, Tommy Smith.
On Wednesday, May 27th, Purcell’s will sell the second half of the collection of An Irish Gentleman’s Library, with other bound historical books (those printed before 1501 were known as incunabula), early maps, and signed and limited-edition books.
Take for example, Questiones Subtilissme Scoti Metaphysicam Aristotelis (Most Subtle Questions of Duns Scotus on the Metaphysics of Aristotle), which carries an estimate of €10,000-€15,000. Edited and bound by the Irish Franciscan brother Maurice O’Fehily, and printed in Venice in the late 15th century, this book compiles the writings of Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus on the Greek philosopher Aristotle. It is particularly significant as it is the first edition of the first book with an Irish connection destined for the printing press, rather than the scriptorium.
O’Fehily was a theologian and author who was later appointed archbishop of Tuam in 1506. Reluctant to leave Italy, he didn’t take up his episcopal duties in Ireland until 1512, and died the following year.
Another significant item at Purcell’s is a 15th century medieval legal manuscript, with an estimate of €4,000-€8,000. The manuscript was originally owned by Sir Thomas Phillips, one of England’s most prolific collectors of books and manuscripts in the 19th century. Many of Phillips’s books were sold to national and regional libraries across Europe following his death.
A plaster death mask of James Joyce (€3,500-€4,500), from the personal library of the late Irish poet Eavan Boland and her writer husband Kevin Casey, is also for auction. Three original death masks were made after the death of Joyce in Zurich in 1941. However, a limited number of authorised bronze and plaster casts – as well as unauthorised replicas, such as the aforementioned one – were produced in the following decades. One of the originals is in the James Joyce Tower and Museum in Sandycove, Dublin.
And finally, anyone tasked with clearing out homes of deceased relatives should be careful not to throw out random folders of seemingly inconsequential papers – one Co Meath family recently discovered letters from three American presidents in an attic. The letters, on White House paper from President Dwight Eisenhower, President John F Kennedy and President Lyndon B Johnson, in response to various requests from Albert Rossellini, governor of Washington state, will be included in the Usher timed online auction on Monday, May 25th. Each letter has an estimate of €300-€600.
A series of hunting books with illustrations by Lionel Edwards (1876-1966), and others by the renowned Irish writer and hunter Stanislaus Lynch (1908-1983), will also be sold at Usher’s auction.
Adams.ie; purcellauctioneers.ie; usherauctions.ie
What did it sell for?
Irish harp clock
- Estimate: €6,000-€9,000
- Hammer price: €16,500
- Auction house: Keighery’s
Porsche 944 Turbo
- Estimate: €35,000-€55,000
- Hammer price: Not sold
- Auction house: Sheppard’s
Field glasses owned by Willie Pearse
- Estimate: €3,000-€5,000
- Hammer price: €2,600
- Auction house: Sheppard’s
Japanese 19th century Imari jardiniere
- Estimate: €400-€600
- Hammer price: €380
- Auction house: Sheppard’s
