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Lot 47
Louis le Brocquy HRHA (1916-2012) THE TÁIN COLLECTION Aubusson tapestry; Atelier René Duché (each no. 4 from an edition of 9) signed with initials in the weave on reverse by maître-lissier, René Duché and numbered lower right; with certificate of authenticity sewn on reverse, signed, numbered, titled and dated by le Brocquy and Duché 72.50 by 110in. (184.15 by 279.40cm) Provenance: Agnew`s, London; Where purchased by the current owner Exhibited: `Louis le Brocquy Aubusson Tapestries`, Agnew`s, London, 3-29 May 2001, The Táin Tapestries Louis le Brocquy was living in France with his young family when he received a life-changing invitation, in December 1966. Publisher Liam Miller wanted him to collaborate with Thomas Kinsella on a new translation of Ireland`s oldest saga. Le Brocquy penned an enthusiastic affirmative that Christmas Eve and spent much of the next three years visualising An Táin Bó Cúailgne. In September 1969, Dolmen Press published it as The Táin. The Táin was born of some eighty stories about the Ulaidh, a prehistoric people who lived in the north and north-western regions of what is now called Ireland. Part epic, part soap opera, the tales were vivid, vicious, inconsistent and often rather rude. Oral versions survived for long enough to be collected by scribes, whose fragmentary manuscripts are now in Trinity College and the Royal Irish Academy. Translators and writers such as Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats had retold some of the Cúchulainn tales - and Joyce`s Finnegans Wake drew on its meandering style - but Thomas Kinsella`s Táin was the first widely-accessible version, especially when Oxford University Press` 1970 paperback followed the de luxe and limited editions produced by Dolmen Press. The Táin marked a unique cultural moment, for Ireland and the world. The State had just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising and was driving ahead with Seán Lemass` Second Programme for Economic Expansion. By 1969 when it was published, Northern Ireland was in conflict, and global events such as the Prague Spring, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, as well as wars in Vietnam, Angola and elsewhere, underlined its themes of invasion and carnage. Meanwhile, The Beatles sang "All You Need is Love." Its impact was instant. Although characters like Cúchulainn and Ferdia, Medb and Aillil, were local, the collaborators translated them into a crisply contemporaneous style that resonated through the cultural hierarchy. It engaged lovers of art, language, music and Celtic studies, as well as popular culture. The Táin became an Irish Iliad, with Cúchulainn as a Superhero reincarnating to a new age of rock, cartoons and animation. The images le Brocquy called `shadows thrown by the text` became so iconic that it is almost impossible now to imagine The Táin differently. Yet no one had visualised the full saga previously and no artist from Ireland had engaged so thoroughly with pieces of writing in so collaborative a way. Le Brocquy made hundreds of drawings, many of which appear in the de luxe and limited editions, with a handful printed in the paperback and a precious twenty in these tapestries. Communication was difficult in those pre-digital days because he was in France and Miller was in Dublin, so that many key design decisions relied on sending letters through the post. Le Brocquy`s innovative, daring approach cast the saga as a virtual alphabet composed of spontaneous, inky letters. This shows immediately in Army Massing, where marks cascade in rivulets that resemble both chain mail and hand-writing, and in the H-shaped Cúchulainn confronting Ferdia. Different ages and cultures whisper through the images - and through these twenty tapestries made during 1998-2000, when le Brocquy collaborated with maître-lissier René Duché, whose firm had recently been awarded the honour Meilleur Ouvrier de France. Cuchulainn`s Warp Spasm, for example, speaks both of calligraphic marks from Sun Tzu`s The Art of War and Yves Klein`s bodily-marked Anthropometries, as well as cave paintings traced by prehistoric peoples. The translation into tapestry, via le Brocquy`s Táin lithographs, crested on the momentum from oral to written traditions, from drama to poetry and from visual culture to music. Duché`s subtly-textured cottons and wools freed le Brocquy`s black-on-white marks into a textured, sensual material that illuminates the sense of a blot or stain without definite edges, which is what he wanted. Here, the statuesque shapes let le Brocquy grow the book`s relatively modest scale into a life-affirming series of interconnected images that speak to each other like letters in a phrase or sentence. They belong together. The tapestries were last seen at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2003, when they were acquired under the Heritage Tax Scheme. It is profoundly moving to see them together in these weeks after the artist`s passing on 25 April 2012. Le Brocquy`s hand reaches out through them. Medb Ruane April 2012 (£202,510-£243,010 approx)
Lot 448
A George II mahogany dining chair the shaped back with a solid vase form splat carved with paper scrolls, over a drop in tapestry seat depicting a lion and unicorn beneath an oak tree with pennant, within a moulded seat rail, raised on foliate capped cabriole front legs with pad feet, united by turned side and rear stretchers. See Illustration.
Lot 1225
A 20th century mahogany stool, with tapestry drop-in seat, raised on cabriole legs, 48 cm high x 65 cm wide x 55 cm deep, A Georgian style mahogany oval dressing table mirror, 57 cm high x 40 cm wide x 25 cm deep, A pair of brass gallery mahogany side tables, 55 cm high x 40 cm wide x 30 cm deep, also with a mahogany tripod table (alterations), 71 cm high x 57 cm wide x 58 cm deep, and 20th century drop-leaf side table, 63 cm high x 78 cm wide x 46 cm deep. (6)
Lot 164
Pair of Nimschke-Style Engraved Smith & Wesson Model No.2 Revolvers Inscribed to D.B. Dyer.32 caliber RF, 6" octagonal barrels, S/N 19189, S/N 17780. Nimschke-style engraving with nickel finish and pearl grips; both with custom pearl grips and contemporary hand-tooled Slim-Jim-style leather holsters. One gun originally cased in fancy rosewood box with brass corners and lined in maroon velvet lining.A near matching pair of the acclaimed rimfire No. 2 Army Smith & Wesson revolvers that first saw widespread service during the Civil War as a reliable personal weapon and later carried on the Western frontier by the likes of George Armstrong Custer and “Wild Bill” Hickok.These guns were exquisitely engraved by the shop of superlative firearms engraver Louis D. Nimschke (1832-1904) and illustrate the perfect symmetry of his distinctive scrollwork design, harmonious and masterfully executed albeit on the Smith and Wessons. Both pistols were originally cased in rosewood boxes and are identically inscribed “D.B. Dyer” on the back strap. One gun bears the serial number 17780 and is confirmed by Jinks as having been made in 1864 and retailed by Smith & Wesson’s exclusive agent, J.S. Storrs of New York City. The other pistol numbered 19189 was made slightly later and shows a variant pattern of Nimschke’s work on the frame, barrel, cylinder, and butt strap. That both handsome pistols were once carried by Daniel B. Dyer (1849-1912) as a pair is evidenced by the matching black leather "Slim Jim" holsters, custom-made with an identical flower-over-star pattern tooled into the leather with aesthetic reverse hook trigger guard. The right holster shows more wear than the left.Family recollection says that the Smith & Wessons were purchased by patriarch Captain George Randolph Dyer, then serving as Quartermaster at Pilot Knob, Missouri, as a gift — possibly a birthday present — for his second son Daniel B. Dyer sometime after 1864. Parenthetically, the family retains a gold cased pocket watch inscribed and presented to the older brother, Captain George Dallas Dyer, on the occasion of his 18th birthday in 1862, lending substance to gift story. Even though Daniel Dyer was a fifteen-year-old civilian, he had been present at Fort Davidson — staying with his father — during the battle of Pilot Knob on September 27, 1864 where Sterling Price sought to overwhelm the thin Federal defenses en route to St. Louis. Family history relates that young Daniel was captured at Pilot Knob and managed to escape after a few weeks. A plausible supposition is that Captain Dyer purchased the guns for his young son in recognition of that harrowing occasion.The pistols must certainly have accompanied Daniel Dyer to Baxter Springs, Kansas in 1870 where he built a successful hardware and dry goods business in the sprawling cattle town. In 1880 Dyer took up a Federal appointment as Indian Agent at the newly created Quapaw Agency in the nearby Indian Territory. He had earlier accompanied General Sherman with William Cody as their scout to the Klamath Reservation in the Oregon Territory to relocate the remnants of the defeated Modoc tribe--about 165 men, women, and children held as prisoners of war--to the distant Oklahoma reservation. It is thought that during this time D. B. Dyer and the flamboyant plainsman who would be regaled as "Buffalo Bill" became lifelong friends and business associates. The Dyers moved to the Darlington Agency in 1884 near the newly constructed Fort Reno and walked into the middle of a simmering dispute between the restive Cheyenne and Arapaho bands and local cattlemen. The ranchers had purchased limited and cheap grazing rights on the reservation that provided income for the tribes but now began to encroach directly on Indian camps. Rejecting Dyer’s officious demands that they take up farming, the hungry Indians began to steal cattle, causing the angry ranchers to clamor for army intervention. Brow-beaten by the whites arrayed against them, the Cheyenne led by the Dog Soldier faction grew surely and aggressive and “threatened to go on the warpath.” The whites at the Darlington Agency immediately fled to safety of nearby Fort Reno while the Indians watched the darkened Dyer homestead for signs of the despised Indian Agent. Dyer only survived the incident thanks to a friendly half-breed who had convinced the cautious warriors that Dyer had “already gone to the fort.” Unquestionably the pair of Smith and Wesson’s were cocked and ready as the Dyer family remained secreted until the cavalry came to the rescue. By the summer of 1885 Dyer’s days as an government Indian Agent were over.Dyer moved to Kansas City, Missouri where he and a partner engaged in the real estate business reaping significant wealth and social status in relatively short order. The Dyers had brought with them a massive collection of Indian artifacts from the Darlington Agency — then regarded as little more than curiosities — which was displayed at the National Agricultural Exhibition in Kansas City in 1887. Today, the Dyer collection is held — but not displayed — by the Kansas City Museum and is said to be the largest collection of period Cheyenne-Arapaho artifacts in the world.Lured to the newly opened Oklahoma Territory in 1887 by the prospect of fresh business opportunities, Dyer dabbled briefly in territorial politics and was elected the first mayor of Guthrie, Oklahoma before abruptly returning to Kansas City. Dyer had caught wind of a more promising venture in Augusta, Georgia. Having lined up investors and secured capital, he moved to Augusta in 1890 and quickly chartered the Augusta Street Railway Company. Financial reward was immediate and Dyer would go on to successfully parlay his railroad company into a multitude of holdings that included utilities, real estate, and the venerable Augusta Chronicle newspaper. Dyer soon commissioned an opulent twenty-seven room mansion in Augusta he named “Château Le Vert” and thereafter alternated between his Georgia estate and the 41 acre river front manor in Kansas City called “Clarendon.”In 1911 Dyer sold all of his Augusta interests and returned to Kansas City, Missouri. On December 23, 1912 at age sixty-two Daniel Dyer died of pneumonia. Woven into the rich tapestry draping the Gilded Age of Industrialists is the illustrious Daniel B. Dyer — a Captain of Industry. In describing his life’s success Dyer preferred a baseball metaphor stating matter-of-factly: “Business is like playing baseball. I’ve been lucky in hitting the ball.” He was brought back to the home of his father in Joliet, Illinois where he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, the pair of Smith and Wesson’s a lasting legacy of his frontier roots and successful ascendancy in the West.Along with the pistols is a large cross section of intriguing ephemera —newspaper clippings, letters, pamphlets, genealogy, and photography—relating to D.B. Dyer’s eminent life as a business mogul and respected philanthropist during the Gilded Age. The paper reflects Dyer’s privileged status during the last decade of his life and touches upon some of personal relationships he cemented with similarly high profile individuals including the American icon “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Born on his father`s rustic farm near Plainfield, Illinois on March 21, 1849, Dyer as a successful man expended considerable energy in documenting the extensive genealogy of his long and illustrious family tree, an impulse not lost on his survivors who likewise compiled several files of
Lot 388
A framed 20th C tapestry panel depicting a lady and her beau with pet dog at her feet, sat on a garden bench within a landscape setting. Panel and frame approximately 140cm long by 53cm height. And another tapestry panel with design of 18th C revellers with stage coach and castle background, 60cm square approx (2).
Lot 105
A PAINTED AND PARCEL GILT BERGERE WITH OTTOMANFrance, 19th CenturyThe humpback crest with delicate acanthus carving and beading, features expressed shoulders with hand-carved finials above a curved back with downswept arms, arm pads and worry knob handles. Supported by a crescent form rail with carved laurel leaf garland and raised on fluted tapering legs and toupe feet. Upholstered with a floral tapestry style chenille. The back of the bergere features an exposed painted frame with center rail. The hour glass ottoman fits the crescent front of the bergere and features a semi-attached cushion.Condition: Rub though on gilded finish commensurate with age. Stable frame. Upholstery and down cushions in very good condition.Chair: 39 x 28 x 32 inches (99.1 x 71.1 x 81.3 cm). Ottoman: 18 x 30 x 21 inches (45.7 x 76.2 x 53.3 cm).Two pieces total. Starting Price: $500.00
Lot 118
A PAIR OF DUTCH MARQUETRY WALNUT SIDE CHAIRS IN THE QUEEN ANNE STYLEHolland, Early 19th CenturyThe tall shaped back with inlaid, all over floral marquetry is highlighted by small Mother of Pearl florettes. The pierced heart at the top of the vase-form splat is supported by a small plinth and a slip seat covered with floral tapestry upholstery within a shaped frame and raised on anthropomorphic cabriole legs with goat hoof feet and stabilized serpentine H-stretcher.Condition: minor veneer losses and, stable frame and beautiful patina.43½ x 21 x 18 inches (110.5 x 53.3 x 45.7 cm).Two pieces total. Starting Price: $750.00
Lot 129
A LOUIS XIV STYLE HAND-CARVED GILTWOOD BENCH WITH TAPESTRY UPHOLSTERYEarly 20th CenturyThe rectangular muted tapestry covers a seat with brush fringe, is supported by a hand-carved reticulated giltwood apron of scrolls and shells; raised on exuberantly carved stylized paw form feet.Condition: tapestry in good condition and frame stable with areas of gilding touched up. Overall condition is very good.20 x 29 x 27 inches (50.8 x 70.8 x 68.6 cm). Starting Price: $300.00
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39443 item(s)/page