A recently repatriated collection of Irish art that has been hidden away in the United States for decades will go on sale next week.
The collection of eight paintings by Jack B Yeats, Louis Le Brocquy and Gerard Dillon will be put on display in Dublin and Belfast before they are offered for sale through sealed bids.
One of the dealers involved in acquiring the paintings and organising the exhibition, Martin Donnelly of the Coloured Rain Gallery in Templepatrick, Co Antrim, said the paintings were taken from Ireland to the US by Malcolm and Meg Brush, who emigrated from Dundalk to North Carolina in the 1950s.
"Mr Brush's wife died some years back and he is now in a home battling Alzheimer's. His guardians needed to gather some money to pay his medical costs," Mr Donnelly said. "They went through the contents of his house and found a key to a storage unit where they found this collection of art, which had been tucked away since about 1972."
The family was seeking to raise about $50,000 from the sale but Mr Donnelly and his partner, Michael Flanagan of the Emer Gallery in Belfast, paid closer to $1.5 million (€1.1 million).
The exhibition, titled Coming Home, features two paintings by Yeats, four by Le Brocquy and two from Dillon. Reserve prices for the works range from £28,000 up to £225,000 sterling.
Mr Donnelly said most of the works were painted in the 1940s or early 1950s. "This is the first opportunity to see them since they were taken to the States."
The exhibition will be held in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on Sunday and in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Monday.
