CHATSWORTH FINE ART SALE April 29th, 30th & May 1st 2026

88 IMPERFECTIONS NOT STATED Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 820. A fine quality Georgian period Irish mahogany demi-lune Table, the top with shell and sunburst inlay, the frieze with inlaid oval oak leaf, on conforming block legs, approx. 132cms wide x 56cms deep x 73cms high (52” x 22” x 29”). (1) €400 - €600 822. A 19th Century ‘Oyster’ Bucket, of latted design and urn shape with liner, on turned base, with inlay, approx. 36cms (14”) high. (1) €250 - €320 818. Jerome Connor, Irish (1874-1943) Design for a Coin -1926 "Child’s Head for obverse of Penny," the currency of childhood approx. 14cms diameter, (5½") in a circular wooden frame. (1) * Designed and sculpted by Jerome Connor, this lively and engaging model for a penny coin was the artist’s response to a call for designs for a new coinage for the Irish Free State. Although the relief sculpture is dated 1927, the work was carried out the previous year. Depicted in profile, the head was a portrait of a grand-nephew of the artist, named John. However, Connor was not awarded the commission, and the selection committee, chaired by W. B. Yeats, out of six entrants chose instead the artist Percy Metcalfe. The rejection of Connor’s design was one of several setbacks encountered by the artist as he struggled to establish his sculpture practice in Dublin. Born in 1874 in Annascaul, Co. Kerry, at the age of fourteen Jerome Connor emigrated with his family to the United States. In New York he found employment as a sign painter and stonecutter before finally establishing himself as a sculptor. Having worked for a time at the Roycroft Institution in East Aurora, founded by Elbert Hubbard in 1895 to promote the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States, Connor moved to Syracuse, and then to Washington DC. His early sculptures include the 1904 Kirkpatrick Memorial Fountain, commemorating the Onondagas tribe of Syracuse, and a memorial to the poet Walt Whitman. In Washington, he received commissions for memorials to Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore, Robert Emmet and The Angels of the Battlefield. The latter, a memorial to Catholic nuns of the Civil War, shows the influence of the older Irish-American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens, and also clearly prefigures Connor’s Lusitania Memorial in Cobh, Co. Cork. In 1915, when the liner ‘Lusitania’ was torpedoed off Kinsale, Elbert and Alice Hubbard were among those lost. A decade later, having been commissioned to produce a memorial to those lost in that tragedy, Connor returned to Ireland and established a studio in Dublin. Several commissions he received came to nothing, and this model for a coin, rejected by the committee, serves to underline his struggle to maintain a sculpture practice in Ireland. Connor persevered with the Lusitania Memorial, and eventually an impressive version of this was erected in Cobh. Peter Murray 2026 €800 - €1200 821. A fine quality French Louis XVI Neo- classical marble top and painted Side Table, the top with inset Greek key design, above a frieze with central urn inlaid marble panel and carved corners, on painted tapering legs, approx. 89cms wide x 83cms high x 44cms deep (35” x 32½” x 17½”). (1) Provenance : The Sybil Connolly Contents Sale - Adams 1998. €1500 - €2000 823. A fine quality Georgian English mahogany cased Bracket Clock, the domed top with brass carrying handle, and brass pine cone finials above glazed sides and front door housing a brass and silvered dial with date aperture and subsidiary dial, also floral etched pattern by John Stillas, London, with gilded floral etched back plate, on a shaped moulded base with ogee bracket feet, approx. 51cms (20”) high. (1) Provenance : Fortwilliam, Lismore, Co. Waterford. €1500 - €2000