Julian E. Yates (1871-1953)
Born in Williams Mills, NC, Colonel Julian E. Yates received a Divinity degree from the University of Chicago. A military Chaplain who saw action in France duty during WWI, he eventually became Chief of Chaplains for the US Army. He retired in 1935.
During most of the following 18 years, Col. Yates and his wife divided their time between Washington, DC and 27 India Street, Nantucket, where Colonel Yates spent much of his time painting. Apparently self-taught, he produced a body of art significant to Nantucket’s the post-war summer colony genre. Soon enough, Yates became active in the newly founded Artists’ Association of Nantucket, exhibiting at the Kenneth Taylor Galleries and during AAN’s annual sidewalk sales to favorable review by the press. Col. Yates served as the organization’s first secretary and treasurer.
The artist’s preferred medium was oil. While primitively rendered, his realistic, and infinitely detailed paintings were justly appreciated for their apt expressions of daily life during the late 30’s to early 50’s. He recorded a unique period in the history of the summer colony that continues to be of interest today.
In 1961, The Lobster Pot Gallery presented a retrospective exhibition of Yates’ work. In 1999, Yates was prominently featured in the Nantucket Historical Association, Fair Street Gallery exhibit entitled, “The Originals,” in honor of the Artists’ Association’s 50th anniversary. Several of his paintings remain in the collection of Nantucket Historical Association. Yates is listed in Robert diCursio’s Art on Nantucket and in Who’s Who in American Art, with individual work(s?) cataloged in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture database.
by Carolyn Walsh; Ref: Picturing Nantucket/An Art History of the Island of Nantucket with Paintings from the Collection of the NHA, Michael A. Jehle; pub. 2000
Recent Examples at Auction










- Joan Albaugh
- Ethel Anderson
- William D. Appleton
- Clifford Warren Ashley
- John Austin
- Milton Avery
- Solon Francis Montecello Badger
- James Francis Barker
- Doris & Richard Beer
- Eugene Louis Boudin
- Alfred Thompson Bricher
- Albert Bross
- Robert Bushong
- Polly Bushong
- James Edward Buttersworth
- Ralph Eugene Cahoon
- Martha Cahoon
- Nikita Carpenko
- Lincoln J. Ceely
- Frederick S Chadwick
- Rodney Charman
- Frank Swift Chase
- Leander M Churbuck
- Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin
- Anne Ramsdell Congdon
- Colin Campbell Cooper
- Laura Cooper
- Mellie Cooper
- Frank Corso
- James Cromartie
- Roy Cross
- Vu Cao Dam
- William R. Davis
- Gene Davis
- Molly Dee
- Donald Demers
- John Devaney
- William Duffy
- Lawrence Charmichael Earle
- Henry Stephens Eddy
- Alan J. Eddy
- Virginia Bargar Evans
- José Fabri-Canti
- John Falato
- George Gardner Fish
- Annie Barker Folger
- James Walter Folger
- Stephen Gibbs
- André Gisson
- Sybil Goldsmith
- Emile Albert Gruppe
- Marilyn Guerinot
- Mauritz Frederik Hendrick de Haas
- Davis Hall
- Kerry Hallam
- James Harrington
- James Hathaway
- Lowell Herrero
- Jason Emerson Herron
- Philip Hicken
- George Frank Higgins
- G.S. Hill
- Megan Hinton
- Emily Hoffmeier
- Alfred Heber Hutty
- George Inness
- Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobson
- Edgar W. Jenney
- Theodore Jeremenko
- Eastman Johnson
- Illya Kagan
- Michael Keane
- William Keith
- David Kooharian
- Kenneth Layman
- David Lazarus
- George Lear
- Richard Hayley Lever
- John Lochtefeld
- Harriet Lord
- Richard Loud
- William W. Lowe
- Michael Lynch
- William Starbuck Macy
- William Ferdinand Macy
- Wendell Macy
- Aletha Macy
- George Herbert McCord
- Keith McDaniel
- Joseph McGurl
- Maggie Meredith
- Addison Thomas Millar
- Jan L. Munro
- Mary Sarg Murphy
- Mark Myers
- Tom Nicholas
- Reginald Eugene Nickerson
- Michael A. Palmer
- Margaret Jordan Patterson
- Jan Pawlowski
- Edgar Payne
- C. Robert Perrin
- Helen Sharp Potter
- Jane Brewster Reid
- José Formoso Reyes
- Volney Allan Richardson
- Forrest Anderson Rodts
- Sergio Roffo
- Lenka Rubenstein
- Elizabeth Saltonstall
- Andrew Jackson Sandsbury
- Tony Sarg
- Issac Sheffield
- Andrew Shunney
- Henry Pember Smith
- Lillian Gertrude Smith
- H. Stadler
- Richard Stalter
- Robert Stark Jr.
- William Pierce Stubbs
- Mara Superior
- Ruth Haviland Sutton
- Ferdinand Sylvaro
- Anthony Thieme
- Tim Thompson
- Roy Tidmarsh
- Yasemin Tomakan
- Katie Trinkle-Legge
- Isabelle Hollister Tuttle
- Emma H. Van Pelt
- William Welch
- Orrin Augustine White
- Paul Whitten
- Paul Willer
- Sid Willis
- Bert Wright
- James Wyer
- Julian E. Yates
- Lori Zummo