'Lost' Yeats paintings fetch €230,000 at auction

Two Jack B. Yeats paintings discovered in a barn in Canada  have fetched €230,000 at auction.

The two nine-by-fourteen-inch oil on panel paintings, one of which depicts the playwright J.M. Synge on a journey he and the artist made to the west of Ireland, were originally bought in Ireland by Canadian-based academic, Mr Alfred Tennyson DeLury, in 1923.

The existence of the paintings came to light in the late 1980s, when art dealers Mr David and Mr Robert Heffel, discovered a reference to them in a 1930 art gallery catalogue and made contact with the DeLury family.

Mr DeLury's relatives, unaware of their value, had kept them in storage in a barn at the family farm, north of Toronto.

The paintings, entitled The Boat Builderand The Mail Car, Early Morningwere sold last night along with eight other pieces of Irish art by the Heffel Fine Art Auction House.

The Mail Car, Early Morningwhich depicts the artist's memory of a visit to Ballina in Co  Mayo in 1905, in the company of Synge, drew the highest price of the night at €128,000.

The Boat Builderdepicts two men working at a boat watched by an old man sitting in a chair at Carna and was purchased for  €103,000 by an absentee bidder from the United States.

A direct descendant of the paintings' original buyer Mr Alfred Tennyson DeLury attended the Heffels' Toronto-based auction.  Mr Robert DeLury said: "We are elated at the interest and strong prices that my great uncle's paintings attracted".