# William Butler Yeats artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/william-butler-yeats/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T19:48:16.902Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: Irish

## Portrait

![William Butler Yeats](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/William_Butler_Yeats_by_George_Charles_Beresford.jpg)
George Charles Beresford · Public domain
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Butler_Yeats_by_George_Charles_Beresford.jpg

## About William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), commonly identified as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet and playwright rather than a figure known principally for visual art. Wikidata and VIAF consistently identify him by name, occupation, and life years, while the collected biographical material also describes his work as a writer and literary critic. He was associated with the Irish Literary Revival, helped establish the Abbey Theatre, and received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature. His identity requires care in an art and auction setting because his father, John Butler Yeats, was a painter and his brother, Jack Butler Yeats, was a visual artist. Appraisily currently associates 180 records with William Butler Yeats, but the source pack does not establish their media or attribution individually. Collectors should therefore match each catalogue record to his authority identifiers and stated literary identity before drawing conclusions about authorship, object type, or value.

## Common works and media

The collected sources establish Yeats primarily as a poet, playwright, writer, and literary critic. They do not document a recurring visual-art corpus or substantiate common auction media, subjects, editions, paintings, prints, sculptures, or other object categories. Common works should be described only after Appraisily reviews the underlying records and separates material reliably attributable to William Butler Yeats from records concerning similarly named or related artists.

## Market and appraisal context

Appraisily’s current artist-page input reports 180 auction records associated with this name, but the collected pack provides no lot-level breakdown, realized prices, media distribution, or attribution review. The first appraisal task is therefore entity resolution: confirm that a record concerns William Butler Yeats, the Irish writer born in 1865, rather than another Yeats family member or an object merely associated with him. Once identity is secure, the catalogue description, stated attribution, object type, date, condition, provenance, edition or uniqueness, and genuinely comparable public sales can be evaluated. No price direction or typical value range is supported by this source pack alone.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine public artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available and can be reliably matched to the artist.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40213
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/46768718/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500019359
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats
- Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/william-butler-yeats/