NEW YORK — Those who foolishly pigeonhole Ira Yeager as just another California artist will miss out on the breadth of his varied and delightful career.

Yeager (1938-2022) was born in Bellingham, Washington and studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute before heading to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, an experience that infused European influences into his work. He also spent time in Santa Fe, New Mexico and traveled widely, living and working in places such as Morocco, Italy, and Greece. Although he settled in Calistoga, California in the early 1980s, having a gallery as well as his home and painting studio there, his artistic approach was powerfully influenced by his travels. According to his obituary, “His celebrated works include landscapes of exotic locales where he lived, Native Americans he met traveling the U.S., colorful characters he encountered traveling the world, and the natural beauty he saw in animals and flowers he found along the way.”

“He was very much a San Francisco artist from as early as the 60s and he was constantly an artist all through that time — one of the few that actually made a living from his art while alive,” said Stephen Turner, founder of Turner Auctions + Appraisals in San Francisco, which handled the artist’s estate after his death in January 2022. “He didn’t hold on to a style; his style changed immensely over the years. He was an artist that was capable of reading his followers and his market. If things slowed down, he changed.”

Turner said collectors of Yeager tend to gravitate toward three of his major genres: Native American portraits; animals; and the Neo Veneto series, in which he explores and plays with what he saw and learned in Europe. Speaking of how Yeager’s time in the Old World shaped his art, Turner said, “There was a part of his career when he was painting a lot of European scenes, but he borrowed motifs from the genres that he enjoyed and was very successful with it,” adding that collectors are especially interested in his “1700s-style European paintings where the characters are butchers, bakers, farmhands and things like that, but at a very grandiose scale.” Most of these Neo Veneto paintings, such as one titled 1795 Portrait, which attained $38,000 plus the buyer’s premium in December 2020 at Turner Auctions + Appraisals, are large canvases, measuring about 5 feet by 5 feet.

These crisply rendered paintings combine California modernism with a narrative style and a European sensibility. They are also ripe for interpretation. Interestingly, on the front of 1795 Portrait the artist inscribed the words ‘Avant l’arche de noe’, which translates to ‘Before Noah’s Ark’, leaving viewers to interpret that how they will. The man carries a basket with a pair of geese and an apple, and the elaborate fan the woman holds features a variety of vignettes reflecting historical references that scholarly viewers may recognize.

Another fine example in this series is a painting that seems to check all the boxes, from its artful composition to its vibrant palette, with bonus points for storytelling. An oil and acrylic on canvas centered on a milkmaid, whimsically titled 1762 and clearly referencing Vermeer’s famed circa-1660 painting of the same name, brought $8,600 plus the buyer’s premium in October 2022 at Turner Auctions + Appraisals. Posed against a rich red background, the milkmaid, instead of glancing down at the spout as Vermeer’s milkmaid does, looks directly at the viewer with a welcoming expression on her face. She is accompanied by a cow, a chicken, a duck, and a vase of flowers.

Immediately after the artist’s passing, interest in Yeager’s paintings spiked, but Turner said the market has weathered the impact of his death and remains strong. “We are getting anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 plus, and I think I still hold the record for the most money paid for a painting of his,” he said, referring to 1795 Portrait, discussed above.

Many artists have been moved to paint portraits of Native Americans, and Yeager’s images in this vein are atmospheric and display a reverence for his subjects’ culture. A highly expressive example is a portrait of a chief wearing a headdress that sold in December 2021 for $8,200 plus the buyer’s premium at Turner Auctions + Appraisals.

Yeager was also enchanted by animals, often painting elephants, monkeys, lions, tigers, and wolves. A commanding oil on canvas of a wolf against an apricot-orange background secured $12,000 plus the buyer’s premium in July 2018 at Clars Auction Gallery. Erin Cabral, a senior specialist in fine art at Clars Auction Gallery Inc., in Oakland, California, said Yeager’s paintings featuring single animals consistently sell well.

He depicted most of his animals at a large scale, as seen in a 66-by-66 inch painting of a sheep posed amid garden flowers, which realized $8,000 plus the buyer’s premium in December 2021 at District Auction. “Ira Yeager’s pieces are consistently selling at auction, generally speaking, in the $2,000-$6,000 range,” Cabral said. “His work is accessible to most collectors, with pieces selling in the last year for as low as around $500. I think it’s a good time to buy his work.”

New collectors likely will not be contenders for his monumental paintings, as they typically command between $15,000 to $30,000, but his smaller works tend to sell in the $1,000 to $3,000 range, according to Turner. These smaller-scale works typically measure 18 by 24in, but some are slightly bigger. His Fox in Floral Garland, at 36½ by 24⅝ inches, made $4,500 in November 2023 at Michaan’s Auctions.

Yeager’s appeal extends far past his home state of California. Turner has received consignments from local owners, but also from as far away as Florida and New York. Buyers of his works are competitive bidders who sometimes hail from surprising places. Turner revealed that the record-setting 1795 portrait went to a Chicago bidder and the underbidder was from Hong Kong. “That gives you an indication his paintings are international now … and that’s courtesy of the [online] platforms — your platform, LiveAuctioneers, specifically — for him now getting exposed all over the world,” he said, adding, “Yeager was quite the character, and he is going to be missed. but his artwork is going to live on for a lot longer than a lot of other artists.”