Rory Guthrie of de Veres is "optimistic" ahead of the company's art auction in Dublin on November 27th . " The increase in Dirt tax on savings," he said "has caused people to seek alternatives to leaving cash on deposit."

Collectors would need quite a nest egg to bid for the top lot, The Ferry by Walter Frederick Osborne (€400,000- €600,000), but there are many more affordable paintings on offer. Two are by Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006) a Dutch artist whose Dublin-born grandmother, Emily MacDonnell, married into a prominent Amsterdam newspaper family. During her time in Ireland (1927-1932) Hilda lived on Fitzwilliam Square and attended the Dublin School of Art. She married an American student at Trinity College, Ervin Ross ('Spike') Marlin. The couple later moved to New York, where he joined the secret service and spied in London and Dublin during the second World War. She became a writer and illustrator of children's books and a painter of some note. She is best remembered for the children's book, The Winged Watchman, the story of two boys living in a windmill who help the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Two of her oil paintings will go under the hammer at de Veres: Pears In Window (€3,000-€5,000); and Grecian Still Life (€2,500-€3,500).

Viewing from Sunday, November 24th at the Thomas Prior House in the grounds of Bewleys Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.