DUBLIN.- Whyte’s auction of Important Irish art promises to deliver another exciting opportunity for collectors to acquire rare artworks of outstanding quality and enduring value. On Monday 3 March 2025 the auction comprises 129 lots of Irish art valued at €1.3 million.
Discover the quintessential Irish landscape: Immerse yourself in the idyllic world of Paul Henry's paintings with this beautifully illustrated biography. Order your copy today and experience the magic of the Irish countryside.
The live auction will take place at the Freemasons Hall, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 and online at bid.whytes.ie. Viewing takes place at Whyte’s Galleries in Molesworth Street from Monday 24 February to Friday 28 February, 10am to 5pm, Saturday and Sunday 1st & 2nd March, 1pm to 5pm and Monday 3 March – day of sale - 10am to 4pm. Bidders and browsers can avail of useful auction features on Whytes.ie such as extra photographs of each work, including in domestic settings, as well the free Art Realizer App allowing you to project pictures to scale on walls to see if a work will suit your home or office; frame sizes and condition notes for every lot are published on our website, and, most importantly, Whyte’s provide a lifetime guarantee for every lot in the sale.
A trio of Paul Henry works are the top lots by value. Lake and Mountains in Connemara, 1933-1936 (lot 20, €250,000-€350,000) is an exceptional example from the artist's later work. The foreground is flooded with a wide expanse of water that stretches the breath of composition, which is significantly wider (8 inches) than it is tall, immersing the viewer into the scene. This device creates an immediacy to the painting, as though it were a snapshot of a moment of fine weather captured swiftly by the artist. The gently rippling water binds the composition reflecting both the neat cluster of white-washed cottages and their turf stacks as well as the pale, cumulus clouds in the backdrop.
West of Ireland Landscape, 1925-35 (lot 21, €150,000-€200,000) is almost certainly of Moyteoge and Achill Head, seen from the Keel to Dooagh road. The predominating mountain must therefore be Croaghaun and the barely indicated stretch of beach to the right, where the high ground meets the sea, is Keem Strand. The late Dr Brian Kennedy wrote ‘A characteristic of Henry’s output from about 1916-18 onwards, as in this picture, is an absence of people as he grew more interested in the landscape per se. And yet his ubiquitous cottages and turf stacks evoke a redolence of humanity and of our relationship to the very ground that supports us.
The harsh reality of life in the west of Ireland during the era in which Paul Henry was painting can be felt to great effect in Cottages, Connemara (lot 22, €80,000-€120,000). Here, the changeable nature of Irish weather, particularly on the Atlantic coast, is captured in a dramatic burst of storm clouds gathering atop the distant mountains which dominate more than half of the picture plane. Their looming presence towers over the diminutive cottages and haystacks that appear to lie perilously close to the edge of a rocky precipice. The original owner of Cottages, Connemara - a friend of both Paul and Grace Henry - acquired it, along with a number of other pictures, directly from the artist.
One of Ireland's best-loved watercolour painters, a contemporary of Mildred Anne Butler and Percy French and cousin of the author/artist Edith Somerville, Rose Barton was born in Rochestown, Co. Tipperary. Barton painted a number of exquisite watercolours of Nassau Street in Dublin, two of which sold previously through these rooms; Nassau Street, from Outside the Kildare Street Club, Dublin (Whyte's, 2 October 2023, lot 8) and Catching the Tram in Nassau Street, Dublin (Whyte's, 28 April 2008, lot 104). Sunset Towards St. Andrew’s Church, From Nassau Street (lot 3) is another fine example depicting a bustling early evening scene full of movement with trams, horses and carts and crowds of people all making their way home at the end of the day.
Nano Reid’s painting Through the Door (George Campbell in his Studio) (lot 35, €10,000-€15,000) depicts Reid’s friend and fellow artist standing purposefully in front of his easel. The painting was one of twenty-four works exhibited by Ireland at the 25th Venice Biennale in 1950; That year there were twenty-three participating nations and Ireland - represented by two female artists, Nano Reid and Norah McGuinness - was included among them for the first time that year. The Italian critic Umberto Apollonio praised Reid's 'audacious expressionism' while James White (who wrote the catalogue entry for the artists at Venice) claimed the critics were 'amazed to learn that Reid was a woman artist' because of her strongly expressionist style.
Mary Swanzy was an artist that wasn't burdened with monetary constraints and spent much of the 1920s - when La Route (lot 34, €20,000-€30,000) was painted - travelling having gained financial independence with the inheritance from her parents' estate. During this decade she journeyed through central and eastern Europe to Canada, Hawaii and Samoa among other places, returning in between to Paris to exhibit the fruits of her travels. La Route bears similarity to a number of other French scenes by Mary Swanzy dated to the 1920s and was exhibited in her celebrated retrospective exhibition 'Voyages' at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2018/2019.
Painting in a Garden (lot 29, €25,000-€35,000) is one of a series of self portraits that William Leech painted from the 1920s until his death in 1968. In this portrait Leech’s personality is portrayed in his attention to detail in his dress: his polished shoes, ironed trousers and white shirt. He has his shirt sleeves rolled up, he is tieless and hatless and his gaze is focusing on the canvas instead of looking out at his reflection in the mirror. he adopts a happy, relaxed pose as he leans towards his canvas, his right arm extended and his left arm loosely dropped at his side. He captures the sunlight on the grass in vivid greens and yellows framed by the frieze of darker trees in the top one third of the picture.
In 1928, Colin Middleton was impressed by an exhibition of van Gogh’s work held in the Leicester Galleries in London. Sligo Landscape, 1940 (lot 42, €14,000-€18,000) foreshadows the influence that the Dutch painter will have on Middleton later in the 1940s. The swirling sky creates a pattern that runs throughout the work and is mirrored in the trees, but the patchwork of fields in the middle distance and the rhythmic blocks of colour into which the light breaks down the mountains are much more elements of Middleton the designer. Middleton employed similar techniques in abstracting and defining form in some landscape paintings of the 1970s, demonstrating the essential consistency of much of his work.
Michael Farrell’s Nature Morte Ireland (lot 69, €5,000-€7,000) was carried out by the artist during the 150 year anniversary of the second year of the Great Hunger and shares compositional elements with Black '47 a slightly larger work completed in the following two years. That work is held in Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University, Conneticut, USA. The figure pictured is Charles Trevelyan, who was charged with administering famine relief in Ireland. His inaction and personal negative attitude towards the Irish people are widely believed to have slowed relief for the famine.
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