LONDON.- Sotheby's will relaunch dedicated sales of Irish Art in London with an auction on 21 October 2015. The sale marks the 20th anniversary since Sotheby's was the first international auction house to hold dedicated sales of Irish art. The auction features leading Irish artists of the twentieth century, including John Lavery, William Orpen, Jack Butler Yeats, Walter Osborne, Paul Henry, Louis le Brocquy and Roderic O’Conor, alongside an exciting selection of works by contemporary Irish artists. The contents of the 71-lot sale will be on public exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin from 8 to 10 October, prior to viewing in London.*

Arabella Bishop, Head of Sotheby's Ireland, said: "Ever since our first Irish art sale in 1995, we have seen a loyal following of collectors, both in Ireland and around the world, willing to pursue the finest works on offer. Over the last two years, our global buyer base has expanded and demand from collectors of Irish art outside Ireland has increased. Our relaunch this October of a dedicated Irish Art sale is intended to meet that demand, with a sale that encompasses not only Ireland's favourite artists but also the dynamic Irish contemporary art scene, where other names are making themselves integral to the history of Irish art. It is also our great pleasure to stage a pre-sale exhibition in Dublin at the Royal Hibernian Academy, where the public can enjoy, albeit for a limited period, a comprehensive overview of Irish art, including several museum-quality works which have been on long-term loan to public institutions in Ireland. Together with our move earlier this year to a larger office space in Dublin, the outlook for sales of Irish Art is encouraging."

John Lavery, Japanese Switzerland, oil on panel. Estimate: £300,000-500,000 / €411,000-685,000
In 1914 Japanese Switzerland by John Lavery was included in a retrospective on the artist at the Grosvenor Galleries in London, prompting A. Stodard Walker to hail it as ‘one of the most poetically conceived things that modern art has produced.’ Visiting Wengen, in the Bernese Oberland, at the end of November 1912, after a heavy snowfall, Lavery was struck by new beauties of design. Reconsidering the decorative and expressive power of the silhouette, he went on to produce one of his most sophisticated compositions. The resulting picture was in essence the summation of the artist’s stay in Switzerland. The painting is reminiscent of Ukioye prints, although it is unlikely that Lavery deliberately set out to reassess the vogue for Japanese prints in Glasgow, his adopted city, during his youth; it is more possible that having stood back from the finished work, the similarity was obvious. The painting depicts Lavery’s wife Hazel, and step-daughter, Alice, his most consistent models in Wengen. Hazel was to become the most familiar ‘Irish’ face in the twentieth century, being featured as Kathleen ni Houlihan on the Irish currency up to 1975. Acquired by Lavery’s Scottish patron, Patrick Ford, not long after the Grosvenor Galleries retrospective, Japanese Switzerland has most recently been on loan at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, a testament to its importance in the artist’s oeuvre.

William Orpen, Nude Girl Reading, oil on canvas. Estimate: £300,000-500,000 / €411,000-685,000
Nude Girl Reading belongs to a small and important group of nudes by William Orpen. By the winter of 1921 Major Orpen had returned belatedly to civilian life after months of ‘official’ portrait painting as an Official War Artist. Paris provided a welcome respite for the exhausted painter. Travelling to the city with his model/mistress, Yvonne Aubicq, Orpen took the decision to produce three important nude paintings of Yvonne, with the intention of re-charging his batteries, and towards the end of 1921, he visited the Louvre seeking inspiration. Orpen had met Yvonne, the daughter of the Mayor of Lille, while he was undergoing treatment at the military hospital in Amiens during the winter of 1917-18, where she was acting as a nurse. During his recovery, having read stories of the recent execution by the French, of Mata Hari, an alleged German spy, he painted her on two occasions as ‘The Spy’. The resulting paintings unexpectedly attracted the attention of the military censor and Orpen found himself facing court martial. He returned to London where the charges were only dropped after the intervention of Lord Beaverbrook; the offending pictures were re-titled The Refugee. Yvonne remained by Orpen’s side during most of the 1920s, even after their affair had cooled and she had taken up with his chauffeur. In its intimate depiction of his mistress en déshabillé, caressing her breast as she reads intently, Nude Girl Reading is considered one of Orpen’s most erotically charged works.

Jack Butler Yeats, The Talkers, oil on canvas. Painted in 1951. Estimate: £150,000-250,000 / €206,000-342,000
The Talkers was painted in the last decade of Yeats’s life at the climax of his career. During the 1940s Yeats consolidated the powerful painting style he had been developing over the previous decade to create his most expressive and exuberant works. The painting displays the artist’s masterly facility with the brush and his unrestrained use of colour. Boldly fluid strokes define the silhouettes of the principal characters in the foreground, caught in action amongst the throngs of a high-spirited and glamorous aristocratic party. Interior settings had long been a source of inspiration in Yeats’ career, in addition to his circus and theatre scenes. For an artist enthralled with stories and characters, these interior subjects allowed Yeats to explore a range of emotions, from melancholy to intense joy. The Talkers encapsulates the buzz and excitement of city life, and provides an important contrast to Yeats’s more well-known lyrical landscapes of the West of Ireland. Further oils by Yeats in the sale include A Storm / Gaillshion (estimate £150,000-250,000 / €206,000-432,000), The Forlorn Hope (estimate £120,000-180,000 / €165,000-247,000), The Trotter (estimate £80,000-120,000 / €110,000-165,000) and The Learner (estimate £50,000-70,000 / €68,500-96,000), in addition to a number of illustrations by the artist.

Walter Frederick Osborne, Hastings Railway Station, oil on panel. Estimate: £60,000-100,000 / €82,500-137,000
With its atmospheric light, square brushwork and modern subject matter, Hastings Railway Station encapsulates the artistic principles that distinguished Walter Osborne as one of the most significant and influential artists of his generation. A defining image of British Impressionism, the painting – dating from circa 1890 – is a rare example of the artist focussing on urban rather than rural life. This transition echoed the new direction Claude Monet took ten years or so earlier when eager to be considered a painter of modern life, he began his series of works of the Saint-Lazare station in Paris. Like Monet, Osborne was clearly motivated by the challenges the subject matter presented and for an artist with a keen sensibility to atmosphere and the effects of light, the railway station provided an ideal subject. In depicting the hustle and bustle of the station, he injects flashes of light on the platform and highlights the golden walls of the houses beyond the station, while clouds of steam rise from the train. Hastings Railway Station, most recently on loan to the Hunt Museum in Limerick, is one of the last pictures Osborne painted in England before returning to Ireland, where he became a highly respected teacher at the Academy Schools until the end of his life. Two further works by Osborne in the sale include The Loiterers (estimate £60,000-80,000 / €82,500-110,000) and Potato Gathering (estimate £50,000-70,000 / €68,500-96,000).

William Orpen, View from Howth, oil on board. Painted in September 1912. Estimate: £80,000-120,000 / €110,000-165,000
Orpen’s annual holidays at Howth Head on the south side of Dublin Bay from 1909 to 1913 were the high point of his year, providing a welcome respite before the artist’s return to his London studio. Not only could he swim in the cool waters of the bay, but there were frequent hill-top picnics and parties with family, friends and students. Despite these social occasions, work for the artist never ceased. Orpen was captivated by the ever-changing light, and in View from Howth he captures how it falls across the water and momentarily illuminates the inland passage from the Bull lighthouse into Dublin port and Dun Laoghaire harbour. The profound serenity of this scene was soon to be shattered by the events of the First World War and the 1916 Easter Rising.

John Lavery, Alice on Sultan, Tangier, oil on canvas. Estimate: £150,000-250,000 / €206,000-342,000
Riding was one of the most important recreational pursuits of John Lavery’s annual winter sojourns in Tangier. During the years up to the First Word War, motor transport remained relatively rare in Morocco; horses were the principal means of transport for longer overland journeys and shorter visits to friends in the Kasbah or on the far side of the city. Despite her mother’s reservations, learning to ride greatly appealed to the artist’s eight-year-old stepdaughter, Alice Trudeau. On the Tangier holidays, Alice was to become Lavery’s favourite model, even though the annual migration to the ‘white city’ was cut short in 1913, the year Alice on Sultan, Tangier was painted, because the artist was obliged to return to London for sittings with the Royal Family. A regular winter visitor to Tangier, Lavery often declared that the tremulous shoreline of North Africa helped to wash the grey London light from his eyes. Originally owned by Alice and since passed down by descent through the family, Alice on Sultan, Tangier is being offered at auction for the first time in its history.

IRISH CONTEMPORARY
Basil Blackshaw, Foinavon, pencil and charcoal. Estimate: £18,000-25,000 / €24,700-34,200
This highly charged sketch by Basil Blackshaw relates to the artist’s major work Grand National (Foinavon’s Year), 1977, which at over twelve feet wide is a tour de force of painting. It depicts the extraordinary moment when during the 1967 Grand National a few riderless horses caused a chaotic pile up at one of the fences, forcing almost all the ensuing horses and riders to fall. Foinavon, a rank outsider at 100-1, was the only horse who managed to avoid the melée and despite seventeen horses remounting and finishing the race, Foinavon easily cantered home to victory. The jump at Aintree is now named the Foinavon Fence.

Patrick Swift, Portrait of Tony Swift, oil on canvas. Estimate: £12,000-18,000 / €16,500-24,700
Patrick Swift’s portrait of his brother, Tony Swift, comes to auction from the estate of the artist. It is a prime example of Swift’s use of muted colours, minimal shading, and smooth, flat paintwork, characteristics which are reminiscent of early paintings by Lucian Freud, with whom he shared a studio in Dublin in 1952.

Gottfried Helnwein, The Murmur of the Innocents 45, oil and acrylic on canvas. Estimate: £30,000-50,000 / €41,100-68,500
Children are a central motif of Gottfried Helnwein’s work, from his earliest 1960s street performances to his more recent, ‘bloodied’ portraits. They are undoubtedly confrontational, all the more so for their hyper-realism. Growing up in post-war Austria, Helnwein was shocked by the horror of what had happened during the Nazi reign, and continued to be shocked and enraged by a mixture of denial to the horrors that had been committed and the continuing trend of horrors in different guises: child abuse, greed, imperialism and militarism. The Murmur of the Innocents 45 is a crystallisation of the emotional impact which is the driving force of the artist’s work. Helnwein moved to Ireland in 1997 where he now lives and works.