The combined value of the collection has been estimated at £1.9m.
The top lot, a group of more than 130 letters written by WB Yeats (1865-1939) to his life-long friend, first lover and author Olivia Shakespear, is estimated at £250,000-350,000.
The correspondence, totalling some 350 pages, features drafts of Yeats’ poems, advice to Shakespear on her novels and commentary on the seismic changes to Irish politics and society in the early 20th century.
Yeats also remarks on the work of author contemporaries. Of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), Yeats wrote: “…the language is that of cabmen and yet the book is all fire.”
Sotheby’s described the letters by Yeats, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, as being “of the highest importance to literary history and of exceptional rarity on the open market”.
The most valuable of 35 artworks by Jack Yeats (1871-1957) in the sale is The Runaway Horse, an oil on canvas painted in 1954 and estimated at £150,000-250,000.
The collection's estimates start at £80-120 for WB Yeats’ retractable telescope.
Furniture, scrapbooks, diaries and books give a glimpse into the artistic life of the Yeats family.
Objects for sale include paintings and sketches by family patriarch John Butler Yeats (1839-1922) and items belonging to his daughters Susan Mary (Lily) Yeats, an embroidery designer, and printing press pioneer Elizabeth Corbet (Lolly) Yeats (1868-1940).
First refusal
Ahead of the sale, Ireland’s cultural institutions were given the chance to acquire any of the Yeats items – a gesture that led the Irish state to grant an export licence for the collection, deemed of huge Irish cultural significance, to be sold in London. The country’s National Library bought items including correspondence between WB Yeats and James Joyce.
The vendors are the grandchildren of WB Yeats. “Our family has enjoyed these items for many years,” a family spokesperson said. “We are delighted they will now … be available for collectors to have the opportunity to acquire their own piece of Irish history.”
After a public exhibition of the collection in Dublin on September 14-16, the sale takes place at Sotheby’s in New Bond Street on September 27, with extra Yeats family works offered by Irish auction house Fonsie Mealy in November and December.
