A Yeats painting that was a birthday gift for a 12 year-old Dublin boy is expected to sell for over €100,000 at Adam’s
GIVE A CHILD, these days, a birthday present of an abstract painting and you’d likely receive a gobful of abuse. Children of the 21st century would, apparently, rather have the Xbox game Mortal Kombat or tickets to a concert given by One Direction. Imagine!
In the rather more genteel era of 1950s Dublin, a boy received a Jack B Yeats painting titled The Novelist as a 12th birthday present from his father. The evidently grateful son held on to the gift and will have the last laugh. Now a man in his 70s, and living overseas, he has decided to sell it. The oil-on-canvas, measuring 14 by 21 inches, has been assigned a pre-sale estimate of €100,000–€150,000 and goes on public view tomorrow afternoon at Adam’s before going under the hammer next Wednesday evening.
Yeats painted The Novelist in 1944 and, according to a catalogue note, “there is a suggestion that this is a self-portrait, with a seated figure holding a sheaf of paper and pen facing a dramatic and exhilarating view of an open sea and blustery sky”.
A second Yeats painting also features in the sale: Downpatrick Head, Co Mayo which is estimated at €25,000–€35,000. Fifty-five years after his death, Yeats continues to dominate the Irish art market.
Last year, Adam’s achieved the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction in Ireland when the artist’s A Fair Day Mayo sold for €1 million.
Besides the two paintings by Yeats, Paul Henry’s Sunset on a Connemara Bog is also likely to attract interest. Adam’s said the painting “displays the artist’s unparalleled ability in painting the subtlety of the fading western sky”. It has an estimate of €30,000–€50,000.
Patrick Hennessy’s large painting Horseman, Pass By (€10,000-€15,000), which features classical imagery beneath a dazzling blue sky, was the centrepiece of Adams St Stephens’ Green saleroom during the week and attracted much attention from passersby.
Among the more affordable lots, Organ Grinders is a Hopper-esque picture by a little-known Irish painter Cecil Galbally, estimated at €2,000-€3,000. Galbally (1911-1955), who worked initially as a bank official, began exhibiting at the RHA in 1940 from an address in Ranelagh, Dublin but then moved to Spain.
A pastel view of Killiney Hill by Peter Collis has the modest estimate of €1,500–€2,500 – small beer for some residents of the affluent south Dublin seaside village.
Viewing of the over 200 lots commences tomorrow at 2pm until the sale at 6pm on Wednesday in the salesroom at Adam’s, 26 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
