FROM Roderic O’Conor to David Hockney and Paul Henry to Ciaran Clear, the Irish and International art sale at Whyte’s on March 9 offers many exciting opportunities for collectors.
The museum-quality by O’Conor leads an auction of 129 lots with a combined estimate of in excess of a million euro. Painted around 1902, it is the catalogue cover lot and carries an estimate of €150,000-€200,000.
O’Conor revisited Montigny, a small town on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, in the autumn of 1902, where he captured the mysterious half-light with the sun setting low on the horizon. The art historian Jonathan Benington recounts how the works executed at this time were “characterised by a highly painterly handling of the oil medium, from translucent…