DISCOVERY, 1952 – JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957). UPDATE: THIS MADE 380,000 AT HAMMER
The distinguished London-based art critic, John Berger, who visited Jack B. Yeats in Dublin in September 1956, wrote to him about this painting a few weeks later. ‘In your canvas called Discovery, the explorer has to enter the cave, walk past the last lights that circle and fly as though they were moth and candle in one, and go even further, trailing a scarf of shadow – but then suddenly in the explorer’s close-up face it is the spectator who makes the discovery. Perhaps all art’s rather like that. But many must be richer for the discoveries that are made through your being the explorer – I among them’.
Discovery is, at €300,000-€500,000, the most expensively estimated lot at Whyte’s sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on May 27. The catalogue is online.