In the SALEROOMS
ANTIQUES AND VINTAGE FAIRS
There’s a great round of Antiques & Vintage Fairs around the country this bank holiday weekend. The largest of these is the National Antiques Fair, organised by Hibernian Antique Fairs, which takes place in the South Court Hotel, Limerick City, on Sunday 18 and Monday 19 March. Expect around 100 antique shops and dealers, including the Hunt Museum and at least ten members of the IADA. The fair runs from 11am to
6pm on both days and adult admission is €5.
On Sunday, 18 March, Antiques Fairs Ireland/Vintage Ireland will run an Antiques & Vintage Fair at Clontarf Castle Hotel, Dublin 3. The fair runs from 11am to 6pm and admission is €3.50.
Meanwhile, Ava Antique Fairs will run two events over the weekend: their annual Saint Patrick’s Day Fair takes place in the Hilton Hotel, Templepatrick, on Saturday,
17 March, while another fair will run in Glenavon House Hotel, Cookstown, on Monday.
Both fairs run from 11am to
5pm and admission is £2.
FONSIE MEALY
A watercolour, believed to be a preparatory study for The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Sir Frederic William Burton (1816–1900), sold for
€24,000 at Fonsie Mealy’s Chatsworth Spring Fine Art Sale on Wednesday, 7 March. This more than doubled the painting’s upper estimate of
€10,000. A small model of a group of figures, showing Daniel O’Connell surrounded by country folk (pictured) sold for €2,500. Other interesting results included a late 19th-century knobkerrie, around 70cm long, and made from African rhinoceros’ horn. The stick, which is of a type used as a hunting weapon, carried an estimate of
€800 to €1,200, but sold for
€6,500. More predictably, a
16th or 17th century Flemish School painting of the crucifixion in the style of Louis de Caullery (1580-1621) sold for €12,000.
The top lot in the sale was a round brilliant cut solitaire diamond ring with fluorescence, set in platinum, which sold for
€42,000. See fonsiemealy.ie.
ADAM’S
Eighteenth-century portraits can be stilted to the point that you don’t really get an impression of the sitter’s personality at all. Not so the work of Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1734-1808), whose dynamic portrait of Maria Susanna Ormsby (est.
€25,000 to 35,000) is going under the hammer at Adam’s sale of Important Irish Art on Tuesday, 27 March. The auction also includes the atmospheric Two Figures in a Moonlit Landscape (est.
€4,000 to €6,000) by James Arthur O’Connor (1792-1841). This, as auctioneer James O’Halloran points out, is very similar to O’Connor’s muchloved painting The Poachers, which can be seen in the National Gallery of Ireland. There is also an archetypical
1930s painting The Apple (est. €4,000 to
€6,000) by Beatrice, Lady Glenavy (18811970), which shows a couple with their baby and their dog under an apple tree (see adams.ie)