35
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
Estimate:
€400,000 - €600,000
Sold
€470,000
Live Auction
The Ernie O'Malley Collection in association with Christie's
Size
24 by 36in. (61 by 91.4cm)
Description
Title: DEATH FOR ONLY ONE, 1937
Note: A tramp stands gazing down on a corpse. His face is obscured but his hands are folded in a gesture of reverence or of mourning. He seems to possess nothing. His clothes are ragged and he carries nothing. The title suggests his isolation in the face of his companion’s death, while equally evoking the concrete acceptance of mortality in the context of the wide expanse of vibrant nature in which the scene is enacted. The dead body below him is stretched out across the rich green bogland. Its head is thrown back and its eyes, still open, seem to gaze at the world around it. Its body is formed out of strokes of marbled paint that appear incongruous and ephemeral in contrast to the solidity of the impasto of its face. Behind and around the two figures a vast landscape extends. The scene takes place on an open cliff-top, with the darkened sea and dramatic cloud strewn sky dominating the background. O’Malley spoke of the way in which the sky gives ‘a sense of infinite distance and mystery mixed with tragic desolation’. Yeats wrote that he considered the work to be ‘an important picture’, and described both figures as tramps, noting the dark sea and sky. (1) O’Malley first saw the painting on a visit to Yeats in 1939, when he stated that he ‘fell clear in love with the picture and felt I must have it’. (2) He acquired the work immediately from Yeats, as his first Yeats painting, paying for it in instalments. The painting, considered to be one of Yeats’ most important works, was subsequently exhibited at the National Gallery, London in 1942 and in the Jack B. Yeats National Loan Exhibition in 1945. Hilary Pyle has written that the composition suggests the period of the Troubles in Ireland, and that this may have attracted Ernie O’Malley’s interest in the painting. (3) Dr. Róisín Kennedy September 2019 1. Letter of Jack B. Yeats to Thomas MacGreevy , April 1939, TCD Ms. 8105/31. 2. Letter of Ernie O’Malley to Thomas MacGreevy, 1 May 1939, TCD MS. 8117/3. 3. Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch, 1992, I, p.451.
Note: A tramp stands gazing down on a corpse. His face is obscured but his hands are folded in a gesture of reverence or of mourning. He seems to possess nothing. His clothes are ragged and he carries nothing. The title suggests his isolation in the face of his companion’s death, while equally evoking the concrete acceptance of mortality in the context of the wide expanse of vibrant nature in which the scene is enacted. The dead body below him is stretched out across the rich green bogland. Its head is thrown back and its eyes, still open, seem to gaze at the world around it. Its body is formed out of strokes of marbled paint that appear incongruous and ephemeral in contrast to the solidity of the impasto of its face. Behind and around the two figures a vast landscape extends. The scene takes place on an open cliff-top, with the darkened sea and dramatic cloud strewn sky dominating the background. O’Malley spoke of the way in which the sky gives ‘a sense of infinite distance and mystery mixed with tragic desolation’. Yeats wrote that he considered the work to be ‘an important picture’, and described both figures as tramps, noting the dark sea and sky. (1) O’Malley first saw the painting on a visit to Yeats in 1939, when he stated that he ‘fell clear in love with the picture and felt I must have it’. (2) He acquired the work immediately from Yeats, as his first Yeats painting, paying for it in instalments. The painting, considered to be one of Yeats’ most important works, was subsequently exhibited at the National Gallery, London in 1942 and in the Jack B. Yeats National Loan Exhibition in 1945. Hilary Pyle has written that the composition suggests the period of the Troubles in Ireland, and that this may have attracted Ernie O’Malley’s interest in the painting. (3) Dr. Róisín Kennedy September 2019 1. Letter of Jack B. Yeats to Thomas MacGreevy , April 1939, TCD Ms. 8105/31. 2. Letter of Ernie O’Malley to Thomas MacGreevy, 1 May 1939, TCD MS. 8117/3. 3. Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch, 1992, I, p.451.
Medium
oil on canvas
Signature
signed lower right; titled on reverse
Provenance
Purchased directly from the artist by Ernie O’Malley, 1939;
Thence by family descent
Literature
Thomas MacGreevy, Jack B. Yeats: An Appreciation and Interpretation, Victor Waddington Publications Limited, Dublin, 1945, page 37;
Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch, London, 1992, Vol. I, page 451, catalogue no. 496
Exhibited
RHA, Dublin, 1938, catalogue no. 17;
‘National Loan Exhibition’, National College of Art, Dublin, June to July 1945, catalogue no. 98 (illustrated);
‘Society of Scottish Artists 52nd Exhibition’, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Spring 1946, catalogue no. 170;
‘Loan of Paintings from the Collection of Ernie O’Malley’, Art Gallery, Limerick, October 1948, catalogue no. 34;
‘Joint Exhibition of Paintings from the Collections of the late Ernie O’Malley and the Yeats Museum’, County Library and Museum, Sligo, 2-20 August 1963, catalogue no. 4 (illustrated);
‘Loan Exhibition’, Massachusetts, Institute of Technology, Hayden Gallery, 11 January to 17 February 1965, catalogue no. 15;
‘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. 64 (illustrated);
‘Jack Yeats: Irish Expressionist’, Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, 15 March to 30 April 1980, catalogue no. 21 (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. 11 (illustrated)
