AN account book belonging to Jack B. Yeats was presented last Wednesday by James Adam & Sons to the National Gallery of Ireland, where it will form part of the permanent collection of the Yeats museum planned for next year. The new chairman of Adam, Brian Coyle, who made the presentation, noted the long association between James Adam, also present for the occasion, and Jack Yeats. The artist's niece, Anne Yeats, who has already donated Yeats's archive to the planned museum, was another guest at the presentation.
The meticulously-kept account book records all - or at least certainly the great majority - of Jack B. Yeats's output from 1943 to 1951, with each painting described and priced, usually together with the name of the purchaser. So Harvest Moon, which made £300,000 in the Adam salesrooms in 1989, was originally priced at £300 in 1947 and sold for £600 four years later. In 1973, soon after James Adam & Sons began holding sales devoted to Irish art, Yeats's A Palace, which had hung for many years in Jammets restaurant, was included in an auction, where it made £15,000, starting a steady rise in prices for the artist's work.
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