Buyers hold fire on world war wagon

A Silver Cross pram made double its guide, says Des O’Sullivan.

The top lot of the first day of the auction, The Long Walk, Galway, made €10,000.

Wild Poppies made €8,250 at hammer, Poppies in a Wildflower Meadow made €8,750 and other works sold for various sums above €5,000.

Classical mixed media works by Markey Robinson, Fishing Boats Return and The Road Home, sold for €3,300 and €3,200 respectively; A Galway Squall by James Humbert Craig made €7,000; September Evening, Tallow Fair by Arthur Maderson made €3,800; Dubliner by Harry Kernoff made €3,400; Buachaill Óg by Robert Taylor Carson made €3,500; Summer’s Day, Salthill by John Morris made €2,500; and The Summer Roses by Patrick Hennessy sold for €2,800.

Carrarroe, Connemara by Charles Lamb failed to find a buyer. It had been estimated at €7,500-€8,500.

A suprising casualty on the centenary of the start of the First World War was an album of photographs showing the building of a 54-tonne wagon gun for a rail gun at Gateshead in 1914. Estimated at €1,000-€1,500, it failed find a buyer.

Freud’s Irish work

August 1948, the artist Lucian Freud spent three weeks on holiday in Ireland. This drawing, entitled Boat Connemara, is one of two works he produced while here.

He used a masterly technique of calligraphic patterns and cross hatching with a hint of colour to highlight the subject.

The work was rediscovered and came up at Christie’s in London last February. It was estimated at £200,000-300,000 and sold for £657,250 (about €827,000).