Restaurateur Peter White’s lifetime collection sale to include notable artworks

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Published date: 19 December 2020
• Author: Elizabeth Birdthistle
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Located at 119 St Stephen's Green, the building, designed by Richard Castells - one of the greatest architects working in Ireland in the 18th century - played host to many dignitaries and was at one point the place to be seen and dine in the capital.

The brainchild of restaurateur Peter White who purchased the fine Georgian townhouse in 1985 - and whose son Trevor is now director of the Little Museum of Dublin - the restaurant, which later became Shanahan's on the Green, has since been purchased by the Royal College of Surgeons for a sum of around €5 million.

After the off-market sale of his home on Wellington Road, and the recent death of his wife Alicia, Peter White is placing a lifetime's collection of art and antiques for sale.

Adam's on St Stephen's Green will host a timed online auction that will kick off the 2021 auction house selling season in some style. The sale opens on December 20th via online bidding only and will finish on Monday January 11th 2021.

Limited in-person viewing

With the threat of further COVID-19 restrictions being imposed in January, Adam's hopes to provide very limited in-person viewing at number 1 Wellington Road, all of which will be strictly by appointment.

The sale of about 350 lots comprises Irish, British and Continental paintings from the early 19th century to the present day along with some fine bronzes and prints, as well as antique furniture, china, silver and garden furniture.

Some domestic furniture and effects are also included such as comfortable sofas and kitchenalia, in the form of crockery, glassware, implements and dressers.

Leading the sale's artworks is Louis le Brocquy's Red Roses for Me, a pen, ink and watercolour from 1946, inspired by the eponymous Sean O'Casey play about a Dublin Protestant family against the backdrop of the 1913 Lockout. Estimated at €8,000 to €12,000, the painting illustrated the frontispiece of Frank O'Connor's 1947 book, The Art of the Theatre which was published by Maurice Fridberg in London.

Next up from the dining room at 1 Wellington Road, and from an earlier era is the monumental and impressive oil painting by Dutch artist Remigius Van Haanen (1812-1894) which depicts an extensive landscape with a man and his dog on a road.

Works by Van Haanen, whose work features in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, rarely appear at auction in this part of the world, with most of them selling at German and Dutch auction...