25
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
Estimate:
€500,000 - €700,000
Sold
€1,400,000
Live Auction
The Ernie O'Malley Collection in association with Christie's
Size
24 by 36in. (61 by 91.4cm)
Description
Title: REVERIE, 1931
Note: A man reclines in a railway carriage. His head rests on his hand in a pose of melancholia, familiar from 17th and 18th century painting and tomb effigies of the 16th and 17th centuries. Those displaying signs of melancholia were believed to be suffering from not only emotional and physical imbalance but one in which they were out of alignment with the cosmos. Artists suffered more acutely from melancholia as the act of creating made them keenly aware of the transience of life. Ernie O’Malley, who acquired this painting from Jack Yeats in 1945, wrote of how ‘the shifting scene’ in his work is ‘temperamental and induces mood’. ‘Land can become sogged with persistent rain; it is then more than ever a burden and a heart-breaking task to work, or to brood a melancholy in the mind. With shafted light after the rain comes a lyrical mood in which tender greens vibrate in tones, whins crash with yellow glory and atmosphere is radiant’. (1) The green blue waterlogged land, visible through the window, creates a poignant backdrop. By contrast, the interior of the carriage is made of deep reds and oranges, suggesting its polished wood and upholstered décor. Its warm tones evoke a womb-like environment in which the traveller can reflect. While advertisements are visible on the rail above him they are subsumed into the overall atmosphere of the space. Yeats travelled by rail across Ireland extensively throughout his career. It is a major subject in his paintings and in his writings. It provided the perfect trope for juxtaposing an uncultivated world with that of the modernity of modern transport. As in Evening in Sligo, another work that belonged to O’Malley, the view through the window can be read as symbolic of the figure’s thoughts and imagination. The train provides a contemporary manner of experiencing the landscape, at one step removed and yet in this case allowing private contemplation. O’Malley shared Yeats’ reverence for the Irish countryside and had many memories of travelling through it as a young commander during the War of Independence and the Civil War. Dr Róisín Kennedy September 2019 1. Ernie O’Malley, ‘Introduction’, Jack B. Yeats National Loan Exhibition Catalogue, National College of Art (Dublin, June-July 1945).
Note: A man reclines in a railway carriage. His head rests on his hand in a pose of melancholia, familiar from 17th and 18th century painting and tomb effigies of the 16th and 17th centuries. Those displaying signs of melancholia were believed to be suffering from not only emotional and physical imbalance but one in which they were out of alignment with the cosmos. Artists suffered more acutely from melancholia as the act of creating made them keenly aware of the transience of life. Ernie O’Malley, who acquired this painting from Jack Yeats in 1945, wrote of how ‘the shifting scene’ in his work is ‘temperamental and induces mood’. ‘Land can become sogged with persistent rain; it is then more than ever a burden and a heart-breaking task to work, or to brood a melancholy in the mind. With shafted light after the rain comes a lyrical mood in which tender greens vibrate in tones, whins crash with yellow glory and atmosphere is radiant’. (1) The green blue waterlogged land, visible through the window, creates a poignant backdrop. By contrast, the interior of the carriage is made of deep reds and oranges, suggesting its polished wood and upholstered décor. Its warm tones evoke a womb-like environment in which the traveller can reflect. While advertisements are visible on the rail above him they are subsumed into the overall atmosphere of the space. Yeats travelled by rail across Ireland extensively throughout his career. It is a major subject in his paintings and in his writings. It provided the perfect trope for juxtaposing an uncultivated world with that of the modernity of modern transport. As in Evening in Sligo, another work that belonged to O’Malley, the view through the window can be read as symbolic of the figure’s thoughts and imagination. The train provides a contemporary manner of experiencing the landscape, at one step removed and yet in this case allowing private contemplation. O’Malley shared Yeats’ reverence for the Irish countryside and had many memories of travelling through it as a young commander during the War of Independence and the Civil War. Dr Róisín Kennedy September 2019 1. Ernie O’Malley, ‘Introduction’, Jack B. Yeats National Loan Exhibition Catalogue, National College of Art (Dublin, June-July 1945).
Medium
oil on canvas
Signature
signed lower left; titled on reverse
Provenance
Purchased by Ernie O'Malley, 1945;
Thence by family descent
Literature
Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch, London, 1992, Vol. I, page 388, catalogue no. 429
Exhibited
RHA, Dublin, 1931, catalogue no. 23;
‘Loan Exhibition’, Temple Newsam House, Leeds, 20 June to 4 August 1948;
‘Loan Exhibition’, Tate Gallery, London, 14 August to 15 September 1948, catalogue no. 18;
‘Joint Exhibition of Paintings from the Collection of the late Ernie O’Malley and the Yeats Museum’, County Library and Museum, Sligo, 2-20 August 1963, catalogue no. 6 (illustrated);
‘Loan Exhibition’, Institute of Technology, Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts, 11 January to 17 Febraury 1965, catalogue no. 48;
‘Jack B. Yeats: A Centenary Exhibition’, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, September to December 1971 and in New York, Cultural Center, April to June 1972, catalogue no. 54 (illustrated);
‘Jack Yeats: Irish Expressionist’, Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 15 March to 30 April 1980, catalogue no. 46 (illustrated);
‘Jack B. Yeats: The Late Paintings’, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, 16 February to 24 March 1991 and afterwards at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 5 April to 26 May 1991, also at the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 21 June to 15 September 1991, catalogue no. 9 (illustrated)
