Des O'Sullivan: While Francis Bacon and Sean Scully are to the fore abroad but the Irish art market must evolve

'Paintings by Irish turn-of-the-20th-century and later artists are in short supply. The best are in public and private collections from which they emerge only rarely'

Sat, 13 Dec, 2025 - 01:23

Des O’Sullivan

The innate conservatism of the Irish art market was apparent at the big winter sales in Dublin, where the dominant artists were the bankable Roderic O'Conor and Paul Henry.

Yes, the market is developing and making room for modern, postmodern and contemporary Irish artists. Yet while Francis Bacon and Sean Scully will cut it abroad, it is the old reliables like Yeats, Orpen, Lavery and Osborne who dominate at home. Who will bring home the Bacon?

Paintings by Irish turn-of-the-20th-century and later artists are in short supply. The best are in public and private collections from which they emerge only rarely.

'Landscape with Trees' by Roderic O'Conor made €340,000 at hammer at deVeres.

The home market must evolve. At times like this, it sometimes seems as if it is being dragged kicking and screaming towards essential evolution. The greatest Irish artists of the last hundred years are still mostly overlooked at the highest levels of the auction market on the home front.

A landscape by Roderic O'Conor topped the bill at the big winter auctions of Irish art in Dublin. His work Paysage aux Arbres or Landscape with Trees, 1890, made a hammer price of €340,000 at deVeres.

Paul Henry's The Great Sugar Loaf (1929-30) was the top lot at Whyte's, making €235,000 at hammer. Another work by Henry, A Coastal Landscape with Galway Hookers, from the 1930s, was the most expensive artwork at James Adam, making a hammer price of €170,000.

In October, Francis Bacon's Portrait of a Dwarf made £13.1 million (€14.88 million) at Sotheby's in London.