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£53,000 thank you
Agnes' tribute to bomb victims

A NEWRY businesswoman and mother-of-three who paid £53,000 for a work of art by the Prince of Wales at an auction in aid of victims of the Omagh bombing showed off her new acquisition yesterday.
The signed lithograph now takes pride of place in Unislim founder Agnes McCourt's office in the Co Down town.
Agnes paid 18 times the recommended retail price for the painting, entitled Windsor Castle, North Aspect, which is one of 15 reproductions of a 1995 water-colour.
The slimming company boss paid the £53,000 out of her private funds as a thank you and a tribute to her Omagh customers, and issued an open invitation to the Prince to drop in and see his work of art at any time.
Agnes bought the painting on an impulse. She said: "You could have heard a pin drop as the bidding increased. Every now and then my sister gasped and tried to get me to stop. She was having palpitations but I found it fabulously exciting. Something drew me to the auction and I had a vision of this painting on my office wall."
The royal painting fetched more than double the sum bid for a work by Ireland's leading artist Louis le Brocquy, at £21,000.
More than £150,000 was raised in the event at the National Concert Hall.
The Prince donated the picture to the sale after being approached through the British embassy in Dublin by auction organiser John De Vere White, and Roscommon accountant Fergus Ahern.