IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MAY 2026

63 IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 25 MAY 2026 AT 6PM 36 Patrick Hennessy RHA (1915-1980) PORTRAIT OF EVA HEMPEL (WIFE OF THE GERMAN AMBASSADOR), 1940 oil on board signed and dated upper right 17.75 by 15in. (45.1 by 38.1cm) Frame Size: 24.25 by 21in. (61.6 by 53.3cm) Provenance: Collection of the Hempel family; Their estate sale, Kunst Alter Und Nueur Meister, Munich, 7 June 1994, lot 751; Private collection Dr Eduard Hempel was appointed as ‘Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the German Reich’ in Dublin by Adolf Hitler in 1937 and he continued to represent the Third Reich in Ireland until 1945. Dr Hempel commissioned portraits of each of his family members by the then emerging Cork artist Patrick Hennessy. The portraits were made at Dr Hempel’s official residence on Sloperton Road, Dún Laoghaire and it was to this address that then Taoiseach Éamon de Valera famously called to express the Free State’s condolences following Hitler’s death in 1945. It was destroyed in an arson attack in the early 1950s and the remains demolished in 1955. Portraits of Liv and Berthold Hempel sold through Whyte’s in March and May 2011 respectively. After the War, Dr Hempel resigned his diplomatic post and the family was granted asylum in Ireland. Berthold, Dr Hempel’s son, died in Dublin in 1948 from a brain tumour and the family returned to German in 1950 where Hempel helped set up a diplomatic service for the new Federal Republic. €4,000-€6,000 (£3,480-£5,220 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot36