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 25 May 2026 the auction has 132 lots of Important Irish art valued at €1.4 million.

Louis le Brocquy’s Traveller series represented a significant breakthrough for the artist whose work over the decades involved a varied and deepening exploration of the human condition. For him, the Traveller group experienced exclusion based on prejudices for their difference from settled communities, and for their adherence to their nomadic way of life. Travelling People, 1945 (lot 45, €100,000-€150,000), is one of the most significant examples of the series. Even so early in his career, the artwork demonstrates Louis le Brocquy's personal, independent aesthetic. While based in figuration - a constant throughout his oeuvre - he departed nonetheless from a literal and illusionistic form of representation, seeking instead to indicate something of the interior life of his subject. This is an important painting that is sure to attract interest at auction.

The top lot by value in the sale is an impressive and important oil painting by Paul Henry. Dapping on Lough Mask, 1928-36 (lot 24, €150,000-€200,000) is a rare, later example which includes the presence of human activity within the immense natural environment of the west and it exudes a simplicity and timelessness for which the artist has since become associated. The palette displays the influence of Whistler in its monochromatic harmonies and as SB Kennedy writes of this period, 'By now his palette was consistently lighter in tone than it had previously been… [and] is characterised by a pristine clear light and the colours too, although limited in range, are clean and un-muddied.' The work was one of eight works chosen by the artist to illustrate in his autobiography, An Irish Portrait, 1951. Henry we can assume carefully and very deliberately selected the paintings that would best represent his oeuvre for posterity. A Sunny Day, Connemara, chosen to be illustrated on the dust jacket, sold through Whyte’s for a record price of €420,000 in October 2020. A Bog by the Sea, 1915-17 (lot 27, €70,000-€90,000) is an earlier example depicting Blacksod Bay, north of Achill Island, and shows the darker palette, heavy clouds and solid film of paint from that period. In The Loch of the Tears of the Sorrowing Women (lot 31, €60,000-€80,000) the influence of Whistler surfaced. There is here a softness to the landscape, with its heavy, atmospheric mist and darkness and the muted tones and limited palette are clearly Whistlerian.

ALOYSIUS O’KELLY

The discovery of this remarkable watercolour on paper (lot 18, €20,000-€30,000), a version of Aloysius O'Kelly's chef d'oeuvre, Mass in a Connemara Cabin (1883), was of considerable artistic and historical importance. The work was found in the attic of a rectory in New York State in the 1960s and hung on the wall of a retired priest until 2005 where it was exhibited at the Gorry Gallery, where purchased by the present owner. Quite apart from their exceptional quality, the execution of these images, at a moment when radical Fenianism and land agitation sought a rapprochement with the Catholic Church, makes them very interesting images indeed. Described by the Freeman's Journal (2 June 1888) as being amongst 'the most important of modern artists', O'Kelly's Mass in a Connemara Cabin was described as 'exceptional'. The Irish Daily Express (25 February 1889) considered it 'admirable', noting that the figures were 'finely grouped and carefully drawn'.

The Mournes (lot 34, €60,000-€80,000) by John Luke is one of the artist’s major works of the 1930s. It was shown at the 1946 Luke exhibition at the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery and in the Luke retrospective that took place in Belfast's Ulster Museum and Dublin's Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1978. The work comes from the collection of J. C. Sheridan and has not been seen at auction before. Sheridan, a prominent Belfast businessman, would become an important patron of Luke's, amassing a small but significant collection of his work.

Letitia Hamilton travelled to Venice for the first time in the autumn of 1923 and during the 1930s made regular visits to that city, Florence, Siena and the northern Italian lakes. During this period Letitia travelled with her sister Eva and the artist Ada Longfield of Longfield House, Cork, who offered to share her apartment and studio in Venice with them. Letitia owned her own gondola, which she used as a floating studio. View of Santa Maria della Salute (lot 32, €15,000-€20,000) and Gondolas on the Grand Canal (lot 33, €15,000-€20,000) are important examples from this period. Both lots have the desirable provenance of coming from the collection of the artist's family.

Raised in Glasthule Lodge, Glenageary, Co. Dublin, Kathleen Fox attended Loreto Abbey in Dalkey before entering the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), where she studied under William Orpen, becoming one of his star pupils and later working as his studio assistant for a time. Her major works rarely appear at auction and Pont de Sully, Paris (lot 20, €5,000-€7,000) is a significant example. The painting exudes the characteristic excitement of Fox's early work with the bridge - in a 'patriotic' green - calling to mind her Dublin scene The Four Courts, c.1922 (Collection of University College Dublin).

Magdalene, 1939, (lot 37, €30,000-€40,000) was the first work listed in Colin Middleton's 1943 one-person exhibition at Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. It was clearly an important painting for Middleton, placed at the beginning of the exhibition. The precision of Middleton's draughtsmanship and the highly-finished surface demonstrate technical skills associated with his work as a damask designer, to which the roll of pale fabric is also perhaps a reference. K at the Piano (lot 38, €20,000-€30,000) is based on a dramatic contrast between dark and light that is unusual within Middleton's work. Although this is primarily a division between the pale mass of the figure, and the dark piano, Middleton builds in rhythm with the black square of the piano stool, and the pale grey horizontal of the piano keyboard.

Dr Eduard Hempel was appointed as 'Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the German Reich' in Dublin by Adolf Hitler in 1937 and he continued to represent the Third Reich in Ireland until 1945. Dr Hempel commissioned portraits of each of his family members by the then emerging Cork artist Patrick Hennessy. Lot 36 in the sale (left, €4,000-€6,000) depicts Hempel’s wife Eva in a gold dress holding a rose. The portraits were made at Dr Hempel's official residence on Sloperton Road, Dún Laoghaire and it was to this address that then Taoiseach Éamon de Valera famously called to express the Free State's condolences following Hitler's death in 1945.

There are major works included by Jack Butler Yeats, Daniel O’Neill, Basil Blackshaw, William Crozier, John Vallely, Peter Curling and many others.

Watch out for… a collection of Flora H. Mitchell watercolours of old Dublin city (lots 1-6, estimates range from €1,000 to €2,200. A collection of Walter Osborne sketches and watercolours, and William Osborne oil that come from the family of the artsits by descent. An important portrait of Daniel O’Connell by Nicholas Joseph Crowley was executed during the nationalist leader's imprisonment for conspiracy at Richmond Bridewell. O'Connell was held there for three months after his proposed 'Monster Meeting' at Clontarf in favour of Repeal of the Union, or Irish self-government, had been declared illegal. Other popular artists in the sale include Markey Robinson, Ciaran Clear, Cecil Maguire, Arthur Maderson and many others.

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 18 May to Friday 22 May, 10am to 5pm, Saturday and Sunday 23 & 24 May, 1pm to 5pm and Monday 25 May – day of sale - 10am to 4pm. Bidders & 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. Most importantly, Whyte’s provide a lifetime guarantee for every lot in the sale.