All eyes on Lowry at new auction rooms

Art coup points to promising future for new auction house says Des O’Sullivan

Industrial Scene by LS Lowry to be sold at Cork Auction Rooms. Kinsale is the title of this oil on board by William Cunningham from the Morgan O’Driscoll online art sale.

A diamond necklace with a weight of 19 carats (approx.) at O’Reilly’s auction next Wednesday.

Victorian rosewood card table, on lion-pad feet at Hegarty’s Auction. It is estimated at €1,500/2,000.

A classical painting by Laurence Stephen Lowry entitled Industrial Scene brings the new Cork Auction Rooms bursting on to the scene next Monday. It would be a coup for any Irish auction house to have a Lowry. The value of the work of this most popular English artist born of Irish parents near Manchester in 1887 has soared. The Football Match made a new world record for £5.6m (€6.7m) at Christie’s in London last May and Bonhams set a record for a work on paper by Lowry in November when Swinbury Station made £121,250. Industrial Scene, signed and dated 1959, is modestly estimated at €60,000-€100,000. An oil on canvas, it measures 52 x 65 cms. There is a small horizontal tear on the lower left hand side. It is from a Co Limerick collection and is among 900 lots to be sold at an auction which gets underway at 10 am on Monday. The sale features art, silver, furniture and collectibles including a Faberge cigarette box with Imperial Russian Eagle mark (€1,000-€1,500), a c1680 small oak tavern table, a framed pencil sketch of Madame Ramie by Picasso, Irish art, a burr walnut vanity case and a pair of Kashmiri tea flasks. Viewing is from 10am to 6pm today and tomorrow. Cork Auction Rooms, Southlink Business Park, Ballycurreen Road, is a new venture by Tom O’Connell of Kerry Auction Rooms, Moyderwell, Tralee and Michael Watson of Lissardagh Antiques in Cork.