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Prints: auction records
First and only living Irish artist to break the £ million barrier
Image of Picasso, 1989
Lithograph on Japanese paper, 67.5 x 51 cm, ed. 29, 26.5 by 20in.
Whyte's Irish Art Auctioneers and Valuers, Dublin, 28 November 2006/8
Sold €10.997In the summer of 1983, the artist is commissioned by the Musée Picasso, Antibes, to paint an image of Picasso for their collection Hommages a Pablo Picasso. Daniele Giraudy, Director of the Picasso Museum, recounts: 'Between the several versions he offered, all of them of equal intensity, it was not possible for me to choose at first sight, so I asked him if I might spend a few days with them. Their first stay in the Musée Picasso was thus passed in the intimacy of daily life when by evening, I suddenly found it impossible to sleep, opposite these watchmen, such was the unbearable scrutiny of Picasso, fixed and still, seeming to challenge me from beyond ... Next morning I had to win over these related phantoms, when the gaze of one of them, bluer and more tender than the others, magisterially incorporated within a square format (compositionally the most difficult), seemed to me to be destined for the luminous galleries of the chateau d'Antibes [Image Ultérieure de Picasso (1983; A.R. 489, Musée Picasso, Antibes)] ... Pablo Picasso's face seems to approach us across time in a few lightly-charged white brushstrokes over diluted touches of ultramarine and madder, traces of an intensive combat. However, if you step back from the painting suddenly all falls quietly into place and the features appear in clearly recognisable form, organised around that fascinating penetrating eye which so impressed all the contemporaries of Picasso.' Five year later the artist will show at the Musée Picasso, Antibes (July 1989): Louis le Brocquy, Images, 1975-1988. On this occasion the artist will produce a series of lithographs of Picasso with Pierre Chave at the renouned Atelier Chave in Vence.
The Táin - complete set, 1969
Three boxed sets of twelve lithographs (36 total) on Swiftbrook paper, 54 x 38 cm
Limited edition of 70 proofs (1 artist's proof)
Whyte's Irish Art Auctioneers and Valuers, Dublin, 25 April 2006/138
Sold €141,750The Táin. PORTFOLIO EDITION, consisting of three different sets of twelve black and white lithographic brush drawings. Five 'Individual Subjects' and four chromo-lithographic 'Epic Shields' separate. Limited edition of 70 proofs (1 artist's proof), each sheet individually signed, dated and numbered by the artist - including portfolio numbers (I, II, & III). Printed by Frank O'Reilly, Dublin, on Swiftbrook paper, each sheet 54 x 38 cm. Large folio, unbound with title pages and black interleaves. Boxed by Museum Bookbinders, Dublin, black boards stamped in white in a design by the artist.
Noisiu, 1969
Lithograph on Swiftbrook paper, 54 x 38 cm
Limited edition of 70 proofs (1 artist's proof)
Whyte's Irish Art Auctioneers and Valuers, Dublin, 9 December 2006/65
Sold €10.997
Image of Picasso, 1989
Lithograph on Japanese paper, 67.5 x 51 cm, ed. 29
James Adam & Sons, Dublin, Irish Art, 2005
Sold €9,200
Riverrun. Procession with Lilies II, 1991
Lithograph on handmade Japan paper, 57 x 77 cm. Ed. 75 (H.C.15, A.P. 15)
Whyte's Irish Art Auctioneers and Valuers, Dublin, 21 February 2006
Sold €6,916
Study Towards an Image of WB Yeats, 1975
Aquatint with drypoint (no. 90 from an edition of 100) , 50 by 44cm., 19.5 by 17.5in.
Whyte's Irish Art Auctioneers and Valuers, Dublin, 19 February 2007
Sold €6,410