Paintings that once graced the halls of John Huston’s Irish retreat to go on sale

● Hollywood film director decorated his Galway mansion with remarkable array of objects and artworks

When Hollywood film director John Huston sold his Galway mansion, St Clerans, the new owner also bought 30 paintings from his vast collection, some for just hundreds of pounds. Forty years later, seven of the artworks are being sold by Dublin auctioneers Adam’s in their “mid-century modern sale”, with one painting from the collection carrying a price tag of between €40,000 and €60,000.

As well as making Hollywood classics like The African Queen and The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, Huston directed Prizzi’s Honor and Casino Royale among many others. He was also a talented artist and an avid collector. In his bedroom he had a Matisse, and a Paul Klee hung in his bathroom.

St Clerans, which was Huston’s retreat when he was not travelling the world making films and collecting awards — including two Oscars — was also decorated with gifts of paintings from film producer Dino de Laurentiis and a nude given to him by Limerick actor Richard Harris.

“Huston had initially visited Ireland in 1951 at the invitation of Oonagh Guinness to stay at Luggala, Co Wicklow, and attend a hunt ball in the Gresham Hotel in Dublin,” writes Niamh Corcoran in the Adam’s sale catalogue. “During this trip he became enamoured with the scenic beauty of the countryside.”

Huston bought St Clerans, outside Craughwell, and his wife Ricki oversaw renovations to the 17-bedroom mansion and 110-acre estate. A limestone courtyard known as “the small house” became a museum for much of his collection.

“Each room was filled with an incredible array of objects, from a Monet Water Lilies and a Greek marble horse head in the main drawing room to a pair of Mexican mermaid candelabra sculptures in the hallway,” writes Corcoran.

But with an upkeep of £25,000 a year and his busy schedule, Huston put the estate on the market in 1973 for £100,000 and auctioned off most of his Irish art collection, which included works by Jack B Yeats, Austrian-born Wolfgang Paalen and Italian painter Giulio Turcato among others.

Paalen, who died by suicide in Mexico in 1959, was a friend of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, who have since gained international repute. His large work, Indian Summer, which is now being sold by a Dublin collector, is the star of the Adam’s sale, with a top estimate of €60,000 and stirring interest in the international art world.

Joe McGowan, the builder and developer and one half of Brennan and McGowan, recalls stopping in the Grasshopper Inn in Co Meath on his way home from the races with two businessmen friends, John Mulhern and Frank Dunne of the Dunnes Stores dynasty.

He was looking for a country cottage at the time, but Mulhern negotiated a deal with auctioneer Laurence McCabe for the three of them to buy St Clerans,

John Huston and his daughter Anjelica were very good to get on with, they were an interesting family

built by the Burke family around 1784 and originally known as Issercleran.

At the time, they were keen amateur riders, taking part in national hunt races, equestrian events and hunting.

McGowan went on to win a bronze medal with the Irish equestrian team in the European championship at Burghley, where he was presented with his medal by Princess Diana.

“We sold it pretty quickly,” recalled auctioneer Laurence McCabe. “John Huston and his daughter [Anjelica] were very good to get on with, they were a very interesting family.”

“The other two pulled out, but I went ahead with the deal,” said McGowan, who, with his wife Anne-Marie and family, used the mansion as their country retreat for three years, enjoying hunting with the Galway Blazers and entertaining their many friends.”

In his entertaining memoir, Clearing the Hurdles, McGowan wrote: “Moving to St Clerans was a huge challenge for me. During John Huston’s time, it had become a great gathering place for the big-house people of Galway and for poets and artists from the US, including such people as John Steinbeck and Arthur Miller, one of Marilyn Monroe’s husbands. And here was I from humble Charlestown about to become lord of the manor.”

McGowan recalled being in a pub packed with locals in Athenry after a Galway Blazers hunt, with Mulhern and Dunne ordering drinks for the house.

“After a while, one local thanked John and, winking at me, said to him, ‘Do you mind me saying to you, sir, that that thing in your hand would make a fine handle for a spade’, referring to John’s Havana cigar.

“Anne and I gained a lot from our time at St Clerans, things money couldn’t buy.”

The seven paintings that once graced the walls of St Clerans and a chair by revered modernist Eileen Gray, from a separate collection, will be offered for sale at a timed online auction that ends on May 21.

Ironically, the connection between Paalen and Huston continued when, after leaving Ireland, the director went to live in Mexico. His last film, The Dead, based on the James Joyce story of the same name, was made in Ireland in 1987 when he was seriously ill with emphysema. He died later that year.