Rare Yeats painting sells for just €88,000
Jack Butler Yeats' painting 'Seek No Further II' was part of a major sale of Irish and British art at the RDS last night
A rarely seen oil painting by legendary artist Jack Butler Yeats was sold at auction for €88,000 at a major sale of Irish and British art in Dublin last night.
'Seek No Further II', which was produced during the 1940s, had been valued at between €90,000 and €120,000 at the Whyte's auction in the RDS.
However, it seems that art buyers like everyone else are tightening their belts -- as it scraped in at just under its minimum value.
Painted in the same year as his beloved wife Cottie died, art experts say it reflects a feeling of isolation and the artist's sense of his own mortality.
Other auction gems included 'Martha', a brooding portrait by Belfast-born artist Daniel O'Neill.
A painting of playwright John B Keane by Robert Ballagh sold for €36,000. It was commissioned in 1993 by a company that produced many of Keane's plays and was intended to be permanently exhibited. However when the theatre was a sold a number of years ago, the painting also fell into private ownership.
- Breda Heffernan
