Treats for Yeats fans at Adams

ALL EYES WILL be on the Jack B Yeats painting A Fair Day, Mayo (€500,000–€800,000) next Wednesday at 6pm when over 200 lots go under the hammer at Adam’s Important Irish Art Auction. The 1925 painting which once hung in Éamon de Valera’s office is being sold by a Dublin family who bought it for £250 back in the 1940s.

But the sale also features a second important work by Yeats, The Dawn dating from 1946 which has an estimate of €80,000-€120,000. The subject is an old man in a West of Ireland landscape, with the sea and the sky behind him. In a catalogue note, Dr Róisín Kennedy explains that “his mask-like face is sculpted out of paint in a poignant representation of old age”.

Yeats was in his 70s when he painted The Dawn and would have been increasingly aware of his own mortality.

Fans of the artist may also be interested in a collectable copy of Hilary Pyle’s Jack B Yeats — A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings in three volumes, published in London by André Deutsch in 1992. This is number 289 of an edition of 1,500 copies and the estimate is €500-€700.

A complete bound edition, dated 1807, of James Malton’s Views of Dublin, containing 25 hand-coloured plates and various maps, is €6,000-€8,000.

Farmers who didn’t spend all their loot on a new tractor at “the ploughing” in Athy this week might be tempted by two attractive oil paintings featuring livestock, both by Frank McKelvey: Cattle by a Wooded River (€12,000-€15,000); and, A Woman Herding Cattle by Cottages (€7,000-€10,000).

An evocative painting titled Rain at Kilkee, Co Clare, which perfectly captures the drama and washed-out colour of an Irish seaside town on a wet day, by Letitia Marion Hamilton (1878-1964) has an estimate of €7,000-€10,000.

While the two paintings by Yeats will attract the big spenders there is a good selection of much more affordable art. Among the highlights is a recent painting by John A Blakey of a countrywoman in Co Cavan. Sunny Days, Shercock (€3,000-€5,000) is the perfect antidote to the grim horror of much contemporary art and is surely the most cheerful image of Ireland for sale today.

A selection of sculpture includes pieces by John Behan and Edward Delaney.

Viewing begins tomorrow (Sunday) at 2pm in Adams salerooms, St Stephen’s Green.