A world-record price of €1.375 million, almost seven times its estimate, has been made for a painting by renowned Belfast-born artist Gerard Dillon at auction in Dublin.Tea Party, an oil on board, was bought by an unknown online bidder after frantic bids from those present at Adam’s auction house in Dublin on Wednesday night, as well as by phone and online. The original estimate was between €100,00 and €200,000.The 34 x 39-inch painting, set in a cottage in Roundstone, Co Galway, detailing six people around a table, was first exhibited in 1955 at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in Dublin. Decades later, interest in Tea Party broadened following a retrospective in Belfast in 2003.Karen Reihll, writing in the Adam’s Important Irish Art sales catalogue, outlined that in 1993, Tea Party was included in a list of works that went for sale at Sotheby’s in London. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s decision to sell 31 works from its collection sparked considerable controversy when it emerged that all of its paintings by Gerard Dillon were to be sold. The painting subsequently entered the collection of Reeta and Frank Hughes from Warrenpoint.[ Co Down bookmakers’ art collection, ‘one of the finest in Ireland’, on sale at Adam’sOpens in new window ]James O’Halloran, managing director of Adam’s, explained that to “see this world-record price paid” for a Dillion piece is “amazingly fantastic”.According to the auction house, Dillon was a mostly self-taught artist, who began painting full time in the late 1930s. He had left school at the age of 14 to pursue a career as a painter and decorator and studied at the Belfast Technical School before moving to London in 1934.His first solo exhibition, at the Country Shop in Dublin in 1942, was opened by the Dublin artist Mainie Jellett. Dillon received international recognition in 1958 when he had the double honour of representing Ireland at the Guggenheim International Show in New York and Britain at the Pittsburgh International Exhibition. During his career he continually exhibited at the Victor Waddington Gallery, the Dawson Gallery and with the RHA. In 1972 a major retrospective of his work was mounted by the Ulster Museum and travelled to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. In 2020 another painting by Dillon, The Dreamer, was sold at Sotheby’s in London for £378,000 (€413,815), at that time the most that had been paid for one of his works.Adam’s hosted a retrospective of his work “Gerard Dillon: Art and Friendships” in Dublin and at the Ava Gallery, at the Clandeboye Estate in Co Down, in 2013.