A PAINTING of Michael Collins' funeral by Belfast-born artist Sir John Lavery is among the collection of works being sold by former supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne and his wife Mary.
The Mary and Ben Dunne Collection, featuring 39 paintings from artists such as Jack B Yeats, Roderic O'Conor, Mary Swanzy and Walter Osborne, will be displayed at Gormleys in Dublin from September 8-22, before moving to Belfast for two weeks.
Mr Dunne (73) who runs a chain of six gyms in the Republic said: "We are at a stage where we are downsizing and we haven't got the space to display the full collection, so we are happy to bring part of it to exhibition and sale."
The depiction of the 1922 funeral of revolutionary hero Collins is one of two works inspired by momentous events in 20th century Ireland which experts believe will attract enormous interest from collectors – the second is the Bloody Sunday massacre in Croke Park in 1920, which was the inspiration for Yeats's Singing The Dark Rosaleen (1921).
In Sketch For Pro-Cathedral, Dublin 1922, Lavery captured the view he had of Collins' memorial service from his vantage point in the organ balcony at the Pro-Cathedral.
His epic work - one of three featured in the Dunnes' collection - is widely regarded as an authentic snapshot of the funeral and was painted during the service.
Art expert Mark Adams said: "A great collection is more than a group of pictures - it is a work of art in its own right in which the works of art that form it, and the conversation between them, become more than the sum of their parts."
Yeats's Singing The Dark Rosaleen (1921) will be offered for sale in the region of €1 million euro and depicts an impromptu performance of the patriotic poem My Dark Rosaleen by two middle-aged men and a fiddle player in the middle of the crowd at Croke Park.
