An Andy Warhol “Dollar Sign” is among artworks worth as much as $3 million being sold by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to recoup some of the debts of real-estate investor Derek Quinlan.
Christie’s International, on the instructions of NAMA, will offer 14 works from an unidentified private collection at auctions in New York and London in November, the auction house said in an e-mail. The collector was named yesterday as Quinlan by four dealers with knowledge of the matter.
Quinlan, a former tax inspector, was one of Ireland’s biggest real estate investors during the “Celtic Tiger” property boom. NAMA is an Irish government agency created to buy risky commercial loans from the country’s beleaguered banks. It took control of some of Quinlan assets in April after the investor failed to present and agree a debt repayment plan.
“These artworks were given to NAMA as security for various loans,” the agency’s spokesman, Ray Gordon, managing director of Gordon MRM media relations, said in an interview. “It has now moved to realize their value.”
The blue and pink Warhol canvas will be included in Christie’s Nov. 9 contemporary-art sale in New York with an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. Alex Katz’s “Ace Airport” is valued at $150,000 to $200,000.
Christie’s Nov. 17 auction of 20th century British art in London will feature 11 ex-Quinlan works.
‘Still Life’
William Scott’s 1969 abstract “Still Life Variations 2” is priced at as much as 300,000 pounds ($471,000), while “Man Doing Accounts” by Jack B. Yeats -- a long-standing favorite artist with wealthy Irish collectors -- is tagged at 120,000 pounds to 180,000 pounds. The latter sold for 300,000 pounds at Christie’s in 2007. The collection’s works are estimated at as much as 1.9 million pounds.
Quinlan sold some more valuable paintings before NAMA took control of his assets, said dealers. He bought the figure-packed 1946 L.S. Lowry fairground scene “Good Friday, Daisy Nook” from the London-based dealer Richard Green, who’d paid a record 3.8 million pounds for it at Christie’s in June 2007. The work was subsequently sold for an undisclosed loss to another gallery, said dealers. Green also sold the Irish collector the Scott abstract offered by NAMA.
A telephone call to Coroin Limited, the Mayfair-based holding company for Quinlan’s Maybourne Hotel Group, produced no contact details for the Irish businessman. The Maybourne Hotel Group had no contact details.
