A lithograph by Britain's Prince Charles, signed and donated by him, was last night sold for £53,000 at a charity auction in Dublin in aid of the victims of the Omagh bombing.
The work, a reproduction of a 1995 watercolour, is called Windsor Castle, North Aspect. The prince donated it after the British embassy in Dublin was approached to make the request to him.
The organisers of the auction, Mr John de Vere White and Mr Fergus Ahern, were delighted with the sale and say they had expected in the region of £10,000 for the work.
The purchaser, Ms Agnes McCourt, the founder and managing director of the Unislim company in Northern Ireland, said that originally she had no intention of going to the auction. She had been playing golf during the day and her sister had said she was going. "So I thought I would just call by," Ms McCourt said.
Ms McCourt (55), a widow with three children, said she just wanted to support the people of Omagh. She said her staff often went to Omagh and it could have been one of them or herself who were there that day. "The mother-in-law of a very good friend of mine was killed in the bombing," she said.
The sale of the lithograph came at the end of the auction held at the National Concert Hall, where nearly 250 works were auctioned for the charity.
The event brought in between £150,000 and £160,000, which will be donated mainly to the Omagh Hospital physiotherapy department.
The bidding for Prince Charles's work opened at £2,000, but then went up in leaps and bounds. When it reached the higher figures, just Ms McCourt and a Dublin collector continued in the race. The Dublin collector dropped out when he saw the television cameras trained on him.
Ms McCourt was delighted but still rather surprised at what she had done. "I can't imagine what my children are going to say. They'll be quite flabbergasted."
She intends to hang the work in the head office of the health company in Newry so that everyone can see it and enjoy it.
Of the other works at the auction a Louis le Brocquy painting went for £21,000. Another, entitled Summer Garden, was painted by the British ambassador, Dame Veronica Sutherland, and it went for £260. A Jack B. Yeats painting entitled A Shop in a Sailor Town went for £620. An offer by Derek Hill to paint a portrait for the highest bidder went for £6,000.