A record-breaking year to remember in the art market and auction business
Tea Party (1955) by Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) made €1.1 million at hammer at Adams, a highlights from the antiques market in a busy 2026.
reflects on a positive 2026 for Irish antiques and looks ahead to a very promising year ahead for the market
This will be a record year to remember in the art and antique businesses. The market has boomed in a controlled way that strongly suggests this is no mere temporary bubble.
In 2026 Gerard Dillon and Paul Henry joined the elite list of artists in Ireland whose work has sold for more than a million euro. On the international side the art market broke all sorts of records. The most expensive painting auctioned so far is No. 7A 1948 by the American abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock which sold for $181.2 million (€161.81 million) at Christie's in New York.
Increasingly in Ireland auction totals are boosted by art, jewellery and collectibles, sometimes spectacularly. At a jewellery sale at Adams in May a pair of early 20th century pearl and diamond pendant earrings made €340,000 at hammer. A yellow diamond pendant made €190,000, a c1970 diamond parure attributed to Harry Winston made €150,000, a 12.48 carat diamond ring made €115,000 and a Kashmir sapphire and diamond cluster ring made €102,000.
From celebrity guitars to dinosaurs to pub mirrors, architectural salvage, garden statuary and old road signs the market for collectibles at all price points is booming at home and abroad. It sometimes seems as if there is not anything anywhere that someone desperately wants.
All of which is very good news in the streamlined and streaming auction markets of today. Armed with a laptop these sales are available to anyone, anywhere.
The market always keeps you guessing. Not everything sells. Results can be surprising. The year so far has been deeply characterised by strength and depth of bidding in Europe, America and Asia. This will no doubt fuel positive expectations for the big winter art sales of global and Irish art which get underway next week in New York and in Dublin.
Online auctions are drawing more people and delivering more bidders to salerooms everywhere. Art shows like Gormley's annual summer event at Castlemartyr resort in Cork draw big numbers of visitors. For the third year in a row the National Gallery of Ireland welcomed more than a million visitors last year. Interest in fairs, exhibitions and viewings is undiminished.
