The Irishman who turned down Led Zeppelin to transform the art world
How Frank Dunphy helped make Damien Hirst the world’s richest living artist
He looked after Europe’s top jugglers
‘I thought he was just this drunk guy’
IN the 1950s, a young Irishman is trawling the dressing rooms of theatres in Soho and the West End, searching among the cigarette smoke and red velvet for clowns and jugglers, strippers and exotic dancers.
On the face of it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there was something unsavoury in Frank Dunphy’s frequenting of such nightclubs and theatres. But this is far from the truth — in actual fact Dunphy, newly qualified as an accountant, was showing true grit to his new bosses by landing clients of his own.
The firm he worked for had already amassed a number of showbiz personalities as clients — the likes of Harry Worth and Roy Castle — and young Dunphy had been given the go-ahead to look for his own after working his way up through the firm.
It was, granted, an unconventional way into the world of accounting but the clients Dunphy was scouting likely didn’t get paid in the traditional way, and needed a guiding hand with their finances.
And, rather than falling prey to the slings and arrows of Soho’s nightlife, this was to become the start of an astonishing career that would see Dunphy become a veritable giant in the art and business world, including being credited as the man who helped Damien Hirst become the richest living artist in history.
When Frank Dunphy arrived to London from his home in Portrane in the 1950s, his new life wasn’t immediately glamorous; far from it. Rather, he was met off the train by the Legion of Mary, a religious organisation who kept an eye out for Irish émigrés and made sure they didn’t stray too far from their spiritual path.
Initially, things got worse for Dunphy before they got better.
‘When I was in my first job after arriving in London, I couldn’t afford to go home for Christmas,’ he has said.
‘All the time I was writing back to my parents enthusiastically, saying I was too busy to make it back. They were crap times, but that’s how it was starting out on £7 and 10 shillings a week — before tax and then minus your rent.’
A solid, pensionable life in the Navy was evidently in the young Dunphy’s crosshairs. After moving into a boarding house in Highgate in North London however, he married the landlady’s daughter, and had two children (they later divorced, and he has been married to his second wife, Lorna, for 30 years).
But his hard work and determination, coupled with that affable personality, led to him becoming one of the leading accountants for any speciality acts that happened to perform in London’s theatres.
‘It was the early Sixties, but it was still a Victorian world in many ways,’ he has said.
‘I had Coco the Clown and all the top jugglers in Europe on my books. I’d go round the circus tents with my interpreter, a wee, small fella who spoke seven or eight languages. I’d have to lift him up onto a chair so he could translate for me.
‘Next thing you know, I was knee deep in dwarfs all looking for their tax returns to be done.’
Eventually Dunphy had enough of a reputation to set up on his own and increased his roster to include rock’n’roll stars, among them Gene Pitney and Billy Furey. In 1968, he famously turned down the chance to co-manage Led Zeppelin, when a client, Peter Grant, asked him to go into business together.
As word spread of Dunphy’s skills, he moved from cabaret acts to big-name actors like James Nesbitt and Ray Winstone. And it was this that led to the meeting which would undoubtedly make Dunphy the right-hand man of one of the biggest names in the art world.
A regular in members-only haunts like the Groucho Club — a celebrity-soaked den of iniquity if ever there was one — and Soho House, Dunphy started to see Damien Hirst out and about.
At that point, Hirst was something of an enfant terrible in the Young British Artists scene, and had at that point just won the Turner Prize. The Young British Artists were known for frequenting the place and rubbing shoulders with rockstars, actors and TV presenters, and Hirst was often with his pal Keith Allen, raising hell in what Dunphy calls the ‘good old bad old days.’
As legend would have it, it was in the Groucho that Dunphy first encountered Hirst’s mother.
‘I’m sitting there having a few drinks one night and this woman sits down beside me, we got talking, and she says, “I hear you’re an accountant. Well, my lad needs sorting out”,’ Dunphy is quoted as saying. ‘It’s Damien’s mother, God bless her, that I have to thank for all this.’
Days earlier, the taxman had reportedly arrived at White Cube, the gallery where Hirst exhibited his work, and demanded a tax cheque there and then for £32,000.
Hirst’s telling of their meeting, for what it’s worth, makes no mention of his mother.
‘Nobody knew what (the £32,000) was for,’ Hirst has recalled. ‘Not Jay (Jopling, art dealer and owner of White Cube), not me, not my accountant.
‘I asked Keith Allen’s then wife, Nira Park, if she knew anyone who could sort the situation out, and she said, “What about that Irish guy, Frank, you play snooker with?” I thought he was just this drunk guy who talked sh**e. But he wasn’t. A few days later, I took a bin bag of my stuff around to him, and that’s how it started.’
It was a formidable meeting of minds, and with Dunphy’s guiding hand, Hirst became one of the highest earners in the history of British art. All the while, Dunphy was behind the scenes, helping Hirst build his megabucks empire and acting as a father figure of sorts (Hirst never knew his biological father, while his stepfather left his mother when he was 12).
Dunphy also managed the artist’s substantial personal assets, which at one point included a $400 million (€340 million) art collection and at least 50 properties in England and Mexico.
Through his connection to the young artist, Dunphy also managed to amass his own considerable fortune, including some very expensive pieces of art which are soon to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s.
But as a working class boy himself, Dunphy is credited with helping Hirst understand, and not feel intimidated by, the upper echelons in the art dealing world.
Born and raised in Portrane, Dunphy’s father was a nurse, while his mother was a political activist. For much of his very early life, his Tipperary-born mother was active in Cumann na mBan, a wing of the old IRA — in fact, she fought the British alongside legendary Republican military leader Dan Breen. Dunphy and his brother Paddy often got involved, dropping pamphlets door to door and even serving as an altar boy in IRA military funerals.
Yet the lure of the military life was not for him. He went to the local Christian Brothers school, where his head for figures was evident from an early age.
Referring to the secret of his considerable success, Dunphy said in an interview in 2015: ‘I wasn’t fazed by anyone. I managed to get things done with a smile. My early years gave me a good grounding in dealing with showbiz types and I probably spent a lot of my life massaging their egos.
‘At the same time, I didn’t have to disclose absolutely all my cards at one time, and I admit I was shrewd in that respect. A lot of my success I attribute to my wife Lorna, a former stockbroker from Liverpool. She’s been a tremendous driving force and a calming influence too, and I’d often seek her advice.’
In 2007, Dunphy oversaw one of the biggest art deals in history, when he brokered the sale of For The Love Of God, the iconic diamond-encrusted skull, for over
£50 million (€56 million). Some reports hinted that he and Hirst were in fact mystery investors.
A year later, Dunphy then masterminded Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, an auction of 223 works that made the artist £111 million (€124 million). Hirst’s formaldehyde-pickled shark and polka-dotted canvases were among the biggest lots in the auction.
It was one of the first times an artist had bypassed the galleries in favour of a big art auction, and the idea was largely Dunphy’s. And given that the world was in the middle of an economic downturn, it was a massive risk. But one that paid off.
Dunphy’s overall modus operandi was simple, but certainly got him and Hirst noticed: he negotiated with galleries so Hirst earned between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of any sale proceeds, rather than the standard 50 per cent. Dunphy, for his part, reportedly bagged 10 per cent of whatever Hirst earned.
The two parted ways in 2010, though it wasn’t an acrimonious parting; Dunphy had retired, although continued to collect Hirst’s work. He stayed on as a member of the board of directors of Hirst’s company.
‘I like to think I left Damien and his family very secure and looked after them as a good manager should, and we remain friends,’ Dunphy is quoted as saying.
For yet more evidence of his influence, look no further than his 70th birthday celebrations, where Bono gifted him one of his guitars, after he’d helped to raise €40 million in the RED auction in 2008.
This September, Dunphy puts his considerable art collection up for auction at Sotheby’s in London. And this will be no commonor-garden art auction. In the mix are personal pieces gifted to Dunphy by Hirst, such as a bespoke pill cabinet given to him when he was ill in 1997, and a paint-splattered bust created in 2008 for Dunphy’s 70th birthday.
Every time Dunphy and Hirst met for breakfast meetings at their favourite haunt, the Wolseley Hotel in London, Hirst would give Dunphy a small portrait drawn by him during the meeting; some of these are expected to feature in the auction, too.
The collection is naturally causing plenty of noise in London social circles and valuers expect it to fetch over €9 million when it goes under the hammer.
‘The art scene has been our life for the past 30 years,’ Dunphy said in a joint statement with his wife, Lorna. ‘Living with the art has been like living with our friends.
‘Much of it is steeped in happy memories, and so much of it we bought ourselves simply because we loved it. But time waits for no man, and the time has come to say goodbye to some of the art, though not the memories nor the friendships.’
In addition to the upcoming Sotheby’s auction, Dunphy and his wife have reportedly donated works from their Hyde Park home by artists like Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin and Peter Blake, to the tiny Pallant House Gallery in south-west England.
All the while, Dunphy appears to keenly remember where he came from, even amid his myriad successes.
‘They can’t place you, these posh English fellas,’ he is quoted as saying. ‘You come up against people in the art world who never let slip a chance to remind you where they come from, class-wise. I’m coming from a different place. The Christian Brothers for a start. You have to use what you’ve got.’
Dunphy, now 80, has enjoyed a life that’s been a carousel of glamour, rock’n’roll and adventure; not bad for someone who started his career as a sensible accountant. You could say his days have been every bit as colourful as his beloved art collection.
‘I left Damien and his family very secure’