JACK BUTLER YEATS (1871-1957)
MODERN BRITISH (20th Century ) Biography

Provenance

Lady Layard (Bought at the Dublin exhibition), Private collection

Exhibition History

Dublin, Leinster Hall, Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland and elsewhere, 1900, number 28

Description / Expertise

The watercolour shows a returned American of the type frequently seen in Sligo during the early nineteen hundreds, and often referred to as Yankees. This particular Yankee, tall and lanky, with the typical slouch hat, and wearing high-heeled boots, lounges on Sligo Quay, looking about the scene of his youth. The cheroot protruding from his lips is another sign of the returned American. His appearance is so similar to the character portrayed in Memory Harbour (Jack B. Yeats 1871-1957: A Centenary Exhibition (18) - collection: Michael Yeats) that it is likely that the artist was thinking of the same man: only here he has a jaunty, expectant demeanour, while in the other watercolour, painted in the same year, the expression is one of melancholy and disquiet, as though now the viewing of old haunts had become emotionally disturbing.

Yeats lived in Devon when he painted this watercolour, which combines the graphic freshness and liquid quality of the works from 1897 to about 1901. A visit to Venice in 1898 had resulted in an enriching of colour, and a blending of complementary tones in order to create a unifying effect. The brilliant blue of the man's shirt seen against the more somber blues of reminiscence surrounding him suggests a conflict between self-assertiveness as an emigrant and the very real emotion he feels towards the birthplace with which he is once more confronted.

Following on his experience of the 1898 centenary celebrations in Sligo, Yeats turned from the English subjects to devote himself to an Irish subject matter, and embarked on a series of exhibitions devoted to Life in the West of Ireland, of which this superb watercolour is a prime example. He explored every aspect of Western Irish life, being interested in the psychology of a people, to whom the land across the ocean, where their emigrant relatives lived seemed but a stones throw away. As late 1951, long after he had abandoned the Life in the West of Ireland series, and the watercolour technique, he wrote to Anna Russell, I wish that I could see San Francisco. I have just looked again on a map at that city of Imagination.(1)

Hilary Pyle, May 1989.



1. MSS Letters to Anna Russell from Jack B. Yeats, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, July 31st, 1951.