AFTER last week's results from Christie's, the outcome of the Sotheby's auction of Irish works last Thursday really should not have been a surprise. Even so, the top price of £730,000 (excluding premium) paid for Jack B. Yeats's A Farewell To Mayo, which established a new world record, was unexpected.

Even though the painting's romantic provenance (it had been bought as a gift by Laurence Olivier for his wife, Vivien Leigh, in 1942) was obviously going to increase its appeal, the estimate was only £150,000-£250,000.

However, even before this painting came on the stand another Yeats painting had already broken the previous record for the artist, which dated back to a Dublin sale at de Vere's two years ago. Leaving the Raft, which dates from 1949 and is a larger canvas than A Farewell To Mayo, made an impressive £600,000, which was exactly double its top estimate.

Yeats had been the best seller in Sotheby's previous Irish art sale last year, where one of his pictures, Singing The Dark Rosaleen, again fetched the day's highest price in a sale which totalled £3.6 million.

This week's sale of 573 lots made £4,240,914, with the two Yeats paintings already mentioned being the day's best prices. Another earlier Yeats work, Tinkers, Early Morning, went for £155,000 (well above its estimate of £50,000-£60,000), while an attractive Osborne painting called Temptation again comfortably surpassed its top estimate of £150,000 to reach £225,000.

After that, the highest prices were as follows: Japanese Switzerland by Sir John Lavery, £150,000; The Rushing Stream by Roderic O'Conor, £125,000; Self Portrait by Sir William Orpen, £120,000; The Villa Sylvia, Cap Ferrat by Sir John Lnvery, £80,000; Orchard With Mountain by Roderic O'Conor, £78,000; The Bog Road by Jack B Yeats, £72,000.