C108
Article
Under
the hammer - collecting at auction in Ireland
The secondary market for art in
Ireland has grown at a stunning pace. Jane Eckett explains
how and why.
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Robert Ballagh: My studio,
1969; sold by Whyte's Auctioneers, for 96,000
euro in February 2004
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Traditionally the point of sale for
the antique rather than the contemporary work of art,
auction houses worldwide now handle an ever-increasing
volume of living artists' works, frequently at headline-making
prices. Whilst this is of course to be expected in a system
where contemporary artists are no longer 'patronised'
so much as they are 'collected', it is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Where collectors at the advent of the twentieth
century cast their acquisitive eyes back to the eighteenth
century and beyond, by the mid-twentieth century their
collective vision had shifted - re-focused on the historically
closer nineteenth-century Impressionist and post-Impressionist
artists. Perhaps it was therefore inevitable, in a Baudrillardian
sense, that by the beginning of the twenty-first century
the collective lens should have contracted again, so much
so that buyers now look for yesterday's artworks in today's
auction catalogues.1
In November 2002, sales of contemporary art in New York
outstripped for the first time those of Impressionist
and Modern Art ($170m over $156m respectively).2
Irish contemporary art has yet to reach such dizzying
heights, but there are indications of a similar upwards
surge in interest in the local auction rooms. This short
review intends to place in an historical context the main
auction houses where Irish art3
is handled and to examine the place of contemporary art
in the Irish auction market.
In previous centuries, Irish artists
frequently looked to London for sources of patronage;
hence it is unsurprising that this is where the oldest
auction houses handling Irish works of art - Christie's
and Sotheby's - are based. These two also control a staggering
95% of the art-saleroom business worldwide.4
James Christie founded the business which still bears
his name in 1766. Whilst Christie's have never opened
an office in the Republic of Ireland, they have for many
decades conducted country-house sales in conjunction with
local auctioneers such as Hamilton and Hamilton (now HOK5)
and Mealy's. They have also long employed the services
of local representatives such as Desmond FitzGerald, the
Knight of Glin, who would arrange for individual works
to be shipped to London to be included in a range of specialist
auctions. Up until 1996, Irish works were included in
Christie's 'British and Irish' sales, usually constituting
approximately a quarter of the works in each sale.
Sotheby's was founded in 1744 by
one Samuel Baker, a book auctioneer, and it was in this
field that Sotheby's remained until the 1860s, when under
the direction of Baker's nephew, John Sotheby, the firm
diversified into such collecting areas as prints, medals
and coins. By the time of the First World War they were
concentrating on Old Master paintings and drawings, then
a booming growth area, and their reputation as fine-art
auctioneers began then. Sotheby's first established an
office in Dublin in the late 1970s, with Gertrude Hunt
(later co-founder of the Hunt Museum in Limerick), glass
expert Mary Boydell, Lord Henry Mount Charles and his
cousin Nick Nicholson (now consultant to HOK Fine Art)
all acting as representatives. Their first major auction
was the controversial sale of the contents of Clonbrock
House in 1976.6
Soon afterwards they moved offices to Slane Castle, where
at the invitation of Lord Mount Charles they held four
auctions of "Irish silver, antiquities, glass, decorative
art and paintings," from 1978-1981. Nancy Bergin, administrator
for Sotheby's at the time, recalls these as "great events,"
with Irish goods sourced mainly from English collections
attracting large crowds of local and international (primarily
American) bidders.7
However, interest lay mainly in Irish decorative arts
such as Belleek china, Waterford glass and Georgian silver.
Irish paintings fetched relatively low prices; for instance,
oils by Jack Yeats, which would now be valued in excess
of half a million euros, sold for IR£3,000 - 5,000. The
reasons for the demise of the Slane Castle sales are unclear,
but seem to lie partly in the introduction of VAT on items
imported from the UK, and partly due to the growing strength
of sterling over the punt, resulting in Irish vendors
preferred to sell their goods to London.
Throughout the 1980s and the first
half of the '90s, Sotheby's sold Irish pictures as part
of their British sales. In 1995, at a time of relative
instability in the art market following the boom-time
eighties, they launched their much-vaunted 'Irish Sale'.
The gamble paid off and they grossed £3.6m sterling. Their
success no doubt spurred Christie's to follow suit the
following year, adopting the same name for their sale
and setting a date within days of Sotheby's. Thus the
so-called 'London season' of Irish sales was created,
of which the ninth such was about to take place at the
time of writing.8
It is salutary to note, however, that neither house sells
many works by living Irish artists. In the May 2004 sales,
only five lots (or 2%) in Christie's sale and eighteen
lots (or 15%) of Sotheby's sale are by living artists.9
This number is even less significant when it is considered
that only one artist in the Christie's sale (Peter Curling),
and three in the Sotheby's sale (Mark Francis, Graham
Knuttel and Patrick O'Reilly) are classifiably 'young',
under fifty years of age.
The auctioning of most contemporary
art takes place within Ireland itself. In the south, the
James Adam Salerooms, Whyte and Sons, De Vere's and HOK
all hold regular sales of Irish art, as do a growing number
of smaller firms, whilst in the north, Ross's and Anderson's
are perhaps the best known. James Adam founded his company
on St. Stephen's Green in Dublin in 1887, initially as
a general estate auctioneer. The decline of the 'big house'
in Ireland, hastened by the civil strife of the 1920s,
resulted in a wealth of fine works (including those by
Irish artists) put up for sale, and salerooms such as
Adam's, Battersby's, Allen and Townsend, and Hamilton's
handled a great many of these clearances. In 1975 Adam's
held the first sale devoted entirely to Irish art, an
area they continue to specialise in, holding four sales
annually, including two in conjunction with Bonham's of
London. In their last major sale of Irish art (31 March
2004), thirty-nine lots (24%) were by living artists,
with five of these (3%) being by artists under fifty years
of age. Adam's also hold four sales annually of contemporary
and modern art, to which many artists consign their own
work and thereby avoid the hefty commissions of galleries.10
However, prices here are modest and works by 'big-name'
artists such as Louis le Brocquy are usually retained
for the 'Important Irish Art' sales.
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An auction in progress at Whyte's
auctioneers; courtesy the author
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De Vere's was established in 1985,
when John Taylor of the Taylor Galleries (successor to
Leo Smith's Dawson Gallery) asked John de Vere White to
conduct an auction of some of his excess stock on behalf
of a friend who was opening an art shop in the newly built
Swan Centre, Rathmines. The initial auction was a success
and the two men went on to form a partnership, with Taylor's
substantial stock of small but quality works by such artists
as Mary Swanzy, Evie Hone and Nano Reid being offered
alongside a great many contemporary artists. By the late
1990s, however, Taylor pulled out of the auction side
of the business in order to concentrate on his main interest,
representing living artists, whilst de Vere White formed
a partnership with the real-estate auctioneer Barry Smyth
and moved to offices in Kildare Street. The focus on contemporary
art remained: "for years in our annual reports we were
telling people that Ireland had a very strong stable of
contemporary Irish artists," recounts John de Vere White.11
"Artists such as Louis le Brocquy, Camille Souter and
Michael Farrell were grossly undervalued...There was a
belief that if you bought anything by a contemporary artist
you had to wait till the artist died until you traded
on." Persistence paid off, however, and he now sees contemporary
art generating the biggest capital appreciation in the
Irish market. In de Vere's most recent sale (30 March
2004), 136 lots (an overwhelming 53%) were by living artists,
although only eighteen lots (7%) were by artists under
fifty.
Ian Whyte of Whyte and Sons sees
artists such Robert Ballagh, Michael Farrell and Patrick
Scott, who were building their reputations in the 1960s
and '70s, as the ones whose works are now returning the
greatest profits. For more than two centuries Whyte's
were well-known glass and china merchants, with premises
in Marlborough Street and South Great George's Street.12
They also encompassed at various times such diverse activities
as running an English Grammar School (Whyte's Academy),
dealing in antiques and antiquities and auctioneering.
With the demise of the glass and china business in the
mid-1960s, Ian Whyte turned to the business of dealing
in small collectables such as stamps and coins, and in
the mid 1970s began holding public auctions. These sales
expanded in the 1980s and '90s to include Irish books
and manuscripts, ephemera, sports and entertainment memorabilia,
militaria and antique toys, run from auction rooms in
Marlborough Street, a few doors down from the former family
emporium. Throughout this period Whyte kept a close eye
on the burgeoning local art market, eventually staging
an auction of Irish art in March 2000. Since then the
business has changed rapidly, with the enterprise moving
south-side to Molesworth Street, and the company's full
energies now going into quarterly sales of Irish art held
in the RDS. In their most recent sale (24 April 2004),
ninety-five lots (37%) were by living artists, with twelve
of these (5%) in the artists-under-fifty bracket.
Is the increasing amount
of contemporary art seen at auction a result of expediency
in the face of an ever-dwindling source of good quality
older pictures? Certainly, an increased range of works
on offer is a wise policy; to paraphrase Oscar Wilde,
an auctioneer should admire all schools of art.
Yet prices for these works are undeniably escalating -
£1.15m sterling paid for le Brocquy's Tinker woman
with newspaper (Sotheby's, May 2000), 45,700 euro
for John Shinnors' Badger and young overland (de
Vere's, June 2000), £55,000 sterling for Basil
Blackshaw's Race horses on beach (Anderson's, November
2000), 96,000 euro for Robert Ballagh's My studio,
1969 (Whyte's, February 2004) - suggesting a growing
demand for works by living artists. Perhaps this is symptomatic
of the changing profile of auction-house clientèle. Once
the domain of a small number of silver-haired connoisseurs
and curators, auction houses are now attracting a broader
cross-section of collectors. This is not to say that connoisseurship
does not come into play (no amount of postmodernist theory
will ever strip the auction of its discourse of quality,
authenticity and so on), but more people view collecting
Irish art - contemporary or otherwise - as a sign of maturity
and new-found confidence as a nation.
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Christina Ryall, Christie's:
Basil Blackshaw, John Shinnors, Kathy Prendergast,
Camille Souter, Corban Walker, Rowan Gillespie
John de Vere White, de Vere White & Smyth:
Hughie O'Donoghue, Martin Gale, Charles Tyrrell,
Brian Bourke, Colin Harrison, Pat Harris
Jane Beattie, James Adam Salesrooms:
Cecil King, Charles Tyrrell, Theo McNab, Michael
Wann
Joanna Doidge-Harrison, Sotheby's:
Richard Kingston, Robert Ballagh, Basil Blackshaw,
Patrick Scott, Hector McDonnell, John Behan
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Whilst this evokes in some a certain
nostalgic overcompensation for a disrupted and dislocated
past (one Irish collector described her desire "to compose
and construct the semblance of a heritage, the aggregations
that undisturbed or un-vexed families had passed down
through generations"13),
it is also producing an aggressively forward-looking breed
of collector. John de Vere White describes the sort of
collector bidding at his auctions: "invariably it's a
slightly younger clientèle who have now risen up the ranks,
have more money to spend and have remained loyal to us."
The biggest collectors are a handful of top businessmen
such as Michael Smurfit, Tony O'Reilly and Lochlann Quinn,
whose collecting habits differ from the main public and
corporate collections in that they are not averse to buying
on the secondary market, whether that be in the galleries
or at auction.14
If the 'Celtic Tiger' brought unforeseen
wealth to these shores, it has also brought increased
commercialism and competitiveness, which plays a significant
factor in the auction room. New York dealer Andre Emmerich
sees competition as a key feature of any high-profile
auction. "The reason auction rooms explode is not because
someone just paid a huge price. It's because someone won
an exciting event. Bravo! You're the winner! That's the
meaning of the applause."15
Fortunately for Ireland's contemporary artists, that competition
is currently over choice examples of their own making.
Nationalism may be passé, but collecting the art
of the nation is still the rage, and contemporary artists
in Ireland are in the happy position of being there to
stoke the fire.
Jane Eckett is an Associate
Director of Whyte's, and currently completing an M.Litt.
at Trinity College Dublin.
