A Treasure Trove of Works from the Yeats Family Collection

John Butler Yeats, Self Portrait, New York.
Estimate £30,000–50,000.

As the father of such celebrated children, John Butler Yeats is often overlooked. A gifted speaker, writer and thinker, he was a decisive influence on each of his children and a talented artist in his own right. This self-portrait depicts him in his studio in New York, where he moved to from Dublin in 1907 at the age of 68. It was commissioned by the New York art patron and collector John Quinn and famously occupied the artist for 11 years until his death in 1922.

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Portraits of the Yeats children by John Butler Yeats. Estimates from £2,000–5,000.

The Yeats children (clockwise from top left: W.B. Yeats , Susan Mary "Lily" Yeats , Jack B. Yeats , Elizabeth Corbet 'Lolly' Yeats ) had an incredible impact on Irish culture at the turn of the 20th century, being central figures in the Celtic Revival. W.B. Yeats, the Nobel-Prize-winning poet, was so pleased with the sketch of him here that he used it for the second English edition of his Poems (London, 1899). Lily and Lolly Yeats were both pioneers in the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland establishing Cuala Press which specialised in printing, embroidery and tapestry making. Jack B. Yeats often supplied illustrations for his sisters’ at Cuala Press and later developed a unique expressionist style of painting and is considered one of Ireland’s greatest ever painters.

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W.B. Yeats, Series of autograph letters signed to Olivia Shakespear, 1894–1936 (portion of lot shown).
Estimate: £250,000–350,000.

Olivia Shakespear was W.B. Yeats’s first lover, and the two went on to have a deep friendship that lasted more than forty years. In these letters – which span nearly the entire length of their friendship – Yeats writes of his work and inspirations, his reading, family, friends, and the changing face of Ireland, and sends early drafts of poems.

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W. B. Yeats’ writing bureau, 18th century.
Estimate £20,000–30,000.

The sale includes numerous items of furniture that have descended through generations of the Yeats family. This desk was used by W.B. Yeats for writing correspondence during his final decades of married life in Dublin.

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Jack Butler Yeats, The Runaway Horse.
Estimate £150,000–250,000.

Bold, colourful and energetic, this painting exemplifies the style for which Yeats is most celebrated. It depicts a young golden-haired child playing at being a runaway horse. Children, like animals, are privileged entities in Yeats’ work. Their intuitiveness, innocence and sensitivity heighten their perception of the world, an idea that Yeats has emphasised in the exuberant way in which he has painted the child.

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John Butler Yeats, W.B. Yeats Reading in the Garden.
Estimate £8,000–12,000.

John Butler Yeats captures a quiet moment of his son W. B. Yeats reading in the garden. It was painted when the poet was in his early 20s and living with his family at Bedford Park in Chiswick, London.

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W.B. Yeats, The Library, Coole.
Estimate £8,000–12,000.

W.B. Yeats did also try his hand at drawing and had originally attended art school in Dublin. This of course was to give way to his writing and as such his pictures are rare. Here he depicts the library at Coole House , home to Lady Gregory, which became a central hub for many of the leading lights of the Irish Renaissance.

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John Butler Yeats, Portrait of Susan Mary ‘Lily’ Yeats.
Estimate £20,000–30,000.

John Butler Yeats’ eldest daughter Lily was his favourite model and the two shared a particularly close bond. The present work is one of two major oils he did of her, the other being in the National Gallery of Ireland collection. It is painted in the fluid style that he had begun to make his own, and is full of the warmth of Lily's personality.

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Susan Mary ‘Lily’ Yeats, Lake Isle of Innisfree.
Estimate £1,500–2,500

Lily Yeats trained under May Morris, daughter of William Morris, at Kelmscott Manor while she lived in London. There she learnt embroidery, which she went on to develop through the Cuala Press enterprise she set up with her sister Lolly in Dublin. In the present work , Lily has illustrated one of her brother’s most famous poems: The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1890).

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Jack B. Yeats, Diary with Illustrations for 1888.
Estimate £8,000–12,000.

The sale is full of wonderful early illustrations and sketches by Jack B. Yeats as a child. This diary records in great colour and detail Jack Yeats’ new life in London, to where he had moved from Sligo in 1887. It is full of humour and anecdotal material that characterises his future artistic career.

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Jack B. Yeats, The Cameleopard.
Estimate £8,000–12,000.

The present work is one of a number of illustrations in the sale by Jack B. Yeats which he made for A Broadside (1908-15), the publication printed by his sister Lolly at Cuala Press, which included ballads and poems and illustrations by himself and became highly influential in the Arts and Crafts movement.

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An Edwardian tole deed box, painted "W.B.Yeats".
Estimate £2,000–3,000.

Within the sale are many personal items and objects relating to the family, including W.B. Yeat’s painted deed box .

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Large Pair of Spiral Twist Altar-Sticks.
Estimate £800–1,200.

This fine pair of candlesticks stood by the great fireplace at Thoor Ballylee, the castle in Galway that W.B. Yeats celebrated in some of his most famous poems, and where he made a country home for much of the 1920s.

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