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WHERE would Irish culture be without the Americans? In the 1960s, when Irish traditional music was struggling, they welcomed The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem with open arms. The Aran-clad folk group took America by storm and Ireland sat up and took notice. Soon, the Irish traditional music revival was in full swing. But we needed the Americans to pave the way.

The Irish-American business attorney and entrepreneur, Brian P Burns, took note. Was it possible that the Irish were as good at visual art was they were at music and literature? “I made a bet almost 40 years ago, that a people who could speak and write so brilliantly and compose music so lyrically, surely must also have painted,” he says. And so he began to collect.

In November 2018, 100 works from Brian P Burns’ collection went on sale at Sotheby’s in London. They sold for a collective €3,688,827, bringing Sotheby’s overall Irish art sales in 2018 to €6.7m, the highest amount that it has sold in a single year since 2008.

The usual suspects led the way. Roderic O’Conor’s Romeo and Juliet sold for €408,482, and Jack B. Yeats’ Misty Morning fetched €320,951. Sir John Lavery’s Armistice Day, November 11th 1918, Grosvenor Place, London, sold for €280,551 to the British Imperial War Museums, which seems like the right place for it.

Only one painting in the sale went to an Irish institution. Kathleen Fox’s Self-Portrait with Palette (€14,028) was purchased by the National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland at the University of Limerick, with the help of the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland. “It’s a particularly beautiful self-portrait and we’re delighted to have it,” says Yvonne Davis, curator of the collection.

The painting dates from around 1920 and shows the artist in a living