All that remains of the house at Coole Park – home to Lady Gregory and forever associated with the Irish literary renaissance – is the plinth on which it once stood. Two pastels of the vanished house by the poet WB Yeats will come up at Sotheby’s sale of 220 lots of the Yeats family collection in London on September 27.
Like the rest of his siblings the poet WB Yeats was a trained artist. He dearly loved this house and the grounds on which it stood, now a nature reserve. His poem The Wild Swans at Coole was inspired by this landscape near Gort and he described it as “the most beautiful place in the world”.
The most expensively estimated lot in the sale is the long series of letters he wrote to Olivia Shakespear, his life long friend and first lover, which is estimated at £250,000-350,000. The Runaway Horse is the most valuable of the 35 artworks by Jack B Yeats and is estimated at £150,000-250,000. Many lots from among the personal effects of John Butler Yeats and his children, poet WB, embroidery designer Lily, printing press pioneer Lolly and artist Jack, have much more affordable estimates.
Among these is a textile by Lily illustrating The Lake Isle of Innisfree (£1,500-2,500), the Yeats family dining table acquired by WB with money awarded when he won the Nobel Prize in 1923 (£1,500-2,500), a portrait by WB’s muse and sometimes lover Maud Gonne of her daughter Iseult (£2,000-3,000), Jack’s artist palette (£200-300), WB’s late 19th century Canton chess set (£2,500-3,500), the Yeats family scrapbook with 47 drawings by William, Jack, Lily and Lolly (4,000-6,000) and a handmade boat by the Poet Laureate John Masefield (£700-900).
Highlights will be on view at the RHA Gallery in Dublin from September 14-16 and viewing in London gets underway on September 22. The auction on September 27 is on the same day at Sotheby’s annual Irish art sale.
Coole, coloured pastels by William Butler Yeats (£7,000-10,000) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £43,750
WB Yeats Writing Bureau, England 18th century (£20,000-30,000) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £187,500
Jack Butler Yeats – William Butler Yeats reading in the garden Bedford Park (£8,000-12,000) UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £30,000
The Yeats family dining table (England 20th century) 1,500-2,500. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £8,000 AT HAMMER
