Audrey Whitty investigates the history of a newly discovered sketchbook by Jack B Yeats given to philanthropist and collector Albert Bender in 1934
While researching the life and work of Albert M Bender (1866–1941) at Mills College, California earlier this year, the writer came across a previously unrecorded sketchbook by Jack B Yeats from his first trip to the Aran Islands in 1899
Yeats had presented the sketchbook to Bender in 1934
Albert Bender was born in Dublin in 1866, the son of Rabbi Philip Bender, one of the principal ministers in the city during the mid to late 19th century. In the late 1870s Bender left Ireland for San Francisco where he became a very successful insurance broker. His four siblings also left Ireland, leaving no immediate family in this country
