Jack B Yeats painting nets €412,000 at sale

TWO PAINTINGS by Jack B Yeats, which were in the collection of British novelist Graham Greene, were sold at auction yesterday.

At a Christie's auction of 20th century British and Irish Art, A Horseman Enters a Town at Nightfetched £349,250 (€412,000).

The oil-on-canvas measuring 24in x 36in (61cm x 91cm) was painted by Yeats, then aged 77, in 1948 and acquired by Greene for his Paris apartment 60 years ago. It had never been seen in public.

A spokeswoman for Christie’s said it had been acquired by a European private buyer on the phone.

It had a pre-sale estimate of £300,000-£500,000.

A second smaller painting titled Man In A Room Thinkingsold for £66,050 – above its estimate of £30,000-£50,000. The painting was bought anonymously.

Commenting on the sales, James O’Halloran, a director of Dublin fine art auctioneers, Adam’s said: “Both prices confirm the consistent demand for fresh, well-provenanced, new-to-the- market paintings by blue-chip, well-established painters like Yeats.”

The highest price paid for a Yeats painting was in 1999 when Sotheby's in London sold The Wild Onesfor over £1.2 million.

The paintings at Christie's yesterday were sold by descendants of Greene, who died in 1991. He was one of Britain's best-known novelists, with best-sellers including Brighton Rockand Our Man in Havana.

Des Lally (49), an Irish Timesreader in Ballynahinch, Co Galway, said he knew the author had the Yeats paintings.

As a teenager, he had conducted correspondence with the writer, and Greene “mentioned having them on the wall in his flat in Paris” in a letter written from Antibes in 1978.

A painting by Sir William Orpen, Portrait of Gertrude Sanford, which had an estimate of £250,000-£350,000, failed to sell. However, works by other Irish artists, including Sir John Lavery, Sean Scully and Markey Robinson were among those sold.