Salute/Farewell to Rosses Point was a 9 x 14in (23 x 36cm) oil on panel from 1946, painted when the artist was in his 70s. It shows a lone figure standing on the deck of a ship bidding farewell to the mainland.
Although a late picture, the subject harked back to his days when as a boy he often travelled on the pilot boats for merchant ships headed to Sligo.
With the artist’s trademark mix of swirling forms, areas mixing thick impasto and other parts of the composition being without paint and showing the white surface of the panel, it was estimated at €120,000-160,000 at the September 29 sale in Dublin.
Knocked down at €140,000 (£120,690), it made a decent price overall but an especially strong one per square inch.
Loggerheads in combination
'The Three Logger-heads' – €10,000 (£8620) at Adam’s.
Also sold at Adam’s – this time in the Country House Collections at Townley Hall Part 1 auction on October 18 – was this extraordinary work above.
The Three Logger-heads was a (62cm x 1.02m) oil on canvas catalogued as ‘Irish School (18th century)’.
It featured the inscription We are 3 Logger-heads & you are 1 more, & the great’st Pimp’ith Town, that just makes, So Read, look, gape, stare, we all are Brothers, So Rakes, Rogues & Drunkards, look one at another.
Estimated at €2000-4000, it took €10,000/£8620 (plus 25% buyer’s premium).
£1 = €1.16
