‘Red Rocks and Sea’ leads Irish art sale

THE Irish art market will be tested on the international stage in London next Thursday.

Sotheby’s will offer 30 works of Irish art, including a rediscovered seascape by Roderic O’Conor and an important tapestry by Louis le Brocquy. Together they are estimated to bring in around €1m. While this is a far cry from the heady days of the boom, it shows that the Irish art market, though down, is far from out.

There was a time in the not too far distant past when the best individual works by artists such as le Brocquy, Lavery, O’Conor, Orpen, Yeats, and William Scott made sums of over £1m each.