Jazz Babies, a 1929 work by Jack B. Yeats at Adams. (Click on image to enlarge). UPDATE: THIS MADE A HAMMER PRICE OF 480,000.
An key transitional work by Jack B. Yeats – Jazz Babies from 1929 – features at the James Adam sale of important Irish art in Dublin on December 5. The pre-sale estimate is 500,000-700,000. Adams achieved one million euro for A Fair Day, Mayo, a 1925 work by Yeats, at their sale in September. Jazz Babies demonstrates a move from his early realism to the more expressionist approach of his later work. It was first shown at the RHA exhibition of 1929.
Another Yeats in this sale, Evening Kildare (1936), once belonged to George Bernard Shaw. It is one of 14 works from the Beaulieu House collection. They are being sold to finance continuing restoration of the finest and best preserved 17th century house in Ireland.
Beaulieu House in Drogheda remains in the ownership of the family who built it in 1660/7. Works from here include Mary Swanzy’s lush Gauguinesque view of a banana grove in Samoa dating from 1919/25. When first exhibited in Paris in 1925 this work received positive reviews from New York Herald critic Georges Bal. It is estimated at 20,000-30,000. There are two works by Norah McGuinness, a pair of early works by Dan O’Neill and art from Kitty Wilmer O’Brien, Cecil French Salkeld and Colin Middleton from Beaulieu in this auction.
UPDATE: Jazz Babies sold for 480,000 at hammer, Evening Kildare made 36,000 and the auction realised 2 million euro, with 80 per cent of lots on offer sold.