Twenty-one years ago this month, picture dealer and collector Leo Smith died. Born in 1910, he had been co-director with Victor Waddington of the Waddington Gallery in Dublin before setting up the Dawson Gallery in 1944. After his death, the artist Norah McGuinness wrote that the gallery "for painters and sculptors and those interested in the arts became a `must' when one was in Dublin". She also commented that Smith "had a quick eye for the good quality in a painting and invariable good taste in framing".
Now those qualities can be seen once again, since Leo Smith's private collection of art comes up for sale later this month. Auctioneer John de Vere White will be disposing of the paintings, drawings and sculpture on Wednesday, April 22nd at the National Concert Hall, where a number of other items will be added.
However, the core of the sale reflects Smith's fondness for Irish art. Curiously, the picture likely to command the highest figure is probably the last he acquired, bought at the James Adam salerooms barely a month before his death. Walter Osborne's Piping Times, which dates from 1893, is a particularly charming and elegiac work showing two children in a garden, the smocked girl sitting on grass while behind her stands a boy playing a whistle. It is expected to sell for £150,000-£200,000.
Although there are three oils by Leech in the sale - the principal one Aloes, St Martiques (£20,000-£30,000), is a typical south-of-France landscape in which cacti dominate the foreground - more interesting are two canvases by his first wife, Saurin Elizabeth, who married the artist in 1912.
Her powerful self-portrait dating from the following year was given by Leech to Leo Smith; she wears an orange turban and brilliant yellow and green shirts. An almost contemporaneous French street scene (£1,500-£2,500) is more sombre in tone, with a murky taupe tone predominating to give a sense of grey, rainy light. Grace Henry is another woman painter evidently admired by Leo Smith; her Boulders of the West (£6,000-£9,000) is a boldly-finished work in the manner of Roderic O'Conor, in contrast to the modestly-sized Mail Boat, Dun Laoire (£1,000-£2,000), which shows the ship at night, its lights reflected in the sea.
Camille Souter and Moyra Barry are also represented, the former by a dazzling study in canary yellow and green, titled Winter Heliotrope (£6,000-£9,000). And then there is John Butler Yeats's portrait of Abbey Theatre actress, Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, showing her leaning forward in an armchair and wearing a fetching hat (£10,000-£15,000). Two delightful pencil drawings by Jack B. Yeats are on offer here as well, with pre-sale estimates of £800-£1,200 each. The only non-Irish work is a small, beautifully sharp-edged floral still life by Bernard Buffet (£8,000-£12,000).
Together with the other items in the sale, Leo Smith's collection will be on view for several days prior to the auction in the successor to the dealer's own gallery, the Taylor Galleries on Kildare Street.
