There wasn’t much auction action in the month of September, but Sotheby’s did host a rather eclectic Irish Art sale over in London a few weeks back. Let’s see what changed hands…
Works in the sale ran the gamut, ranging from 19th Century realist works, to mid-century Impressionist and Modern works, all the way through Contemporary with one work being completed as recently as this year! There were sculptures, paintings, and drawings… sketches and studies; to be honest, it was a bit all over the place… and we’re only talking about 77 lots, so not a lot of any one thing. All that said, let’s get into the numbers.
Jack B. Yeats
The top lot here was the catalog cover-piece, Jack B Yeats’ Sunday Evening in September. The work, painted in 1949, was accompanied with provenance dating back to the artist, where it was first sold through British dealer Victor Waddington. The work has remained in a private London collection since 1999, when it was acquired by the present owner for £265K (at that time, it was estimated at £120-160K). This time around, the work was expected to bring £300-500K and found a buyer at £395K… at an annual rate of return of just over 2%, the owner would have done better betting on the DOW but hey, they got to live with this beauty for nearly 20 years!
John Luke
In second was PAX by John Luke, widely regarded as one of the most exquisitely beautiful paintings of his entire body of work and said to be a turning point for the artist. In a letter written by the artist himself in 1944, Luke describes this work as “bright and luminous, yet rich and colourful. Very precise yet soft. Firm but yet gentile. Smooth yet lively. Broad yet detailed… It is Gloriously, Brilliant Technicolor. It’s Stupendous. It’s COLOSSAL! But it is only 15×11.” Sounds like someone was a big fan of his own work – hah. The work was acquired in 1995 for just £65K ($102K – est. £35-50K) and this time around, it went for £225K ($292K – est. £80-120K)… that’s roughly a 5.5% annual rate of return – better but still not great.
Jack B. Yates
Rounding out the top three was a tie… another work by Yeats and one by Gerard Dillon. The Yeats, titled Early Sunshine, was expected to bring between £120-180K whereas the Dillon was expected to bring just £60-80K. This Yeats was fresh to the market and never previously offered at auction. The Dillon, on the other hand, last surfaced in London in 1999 where it went for £79K ($128K – est. £30-50K)… Both the Yeats and Dillon found buyers at £212K – the Dillon yielded a 5.25% annual rate of return.
Gerard Dillon
At the end of it all, 52 of the 77 (68%) found buyers – so roughly 1/3 of the material offered failed to sell. The total take was just over £2.68M… with the lower end of the estimate range at £2.02M, they made their number with the help of a few well performing lots (typical for this type of sale). From the looks of it, I can’t imagine your financial advisor pitching you on parking your money in Irish Art, but as we always say… you should buy what you love and who knows what will happen over the next 20 years.