Even though he made it at a time when he was confronting his own mortality there is a sense of exuberance, joy even, in this late painting by Yeats. Running Man dates to 1947, the year the artist lost his wife Cottie, and centres on a male figure running alone in an open space, towards the viewer. This small work in a classical Yeats west of Ireland setting is full of life, action, mystery and movement. It highlights Dolan’s art auction online from May 17 – 26. In a catalogue note Dr. Roisin Kennedy writes: “The focus on the figure’s physicality reflects what Samuel Beckett described as Yeats’s paintings’ embodiment of ‘the impenetrability of the world, and the subject’s helpless solipsism before it…’ Once in the collection of Nol Gogarty it is estimated at €100,000-€150,000.
UPDATE: THIS MADE 100,000 AT HAMMER