24
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
Estimate:
€20,000 - €30,000
Sold
€20,000
Live Auction
Irish & International Art
Size
23 by 19.25in. (58.4 by 48.9cm)
Description
Title: A PROFESSIONAL MAN, c.1905
Note: Yeats was always fascinated by the social fabric of rural Ireland. His awareness of social class was sharpened by his travels with John Millington Synge through the Congested Districts Board in 1905, the year this work was painted. The two men noted the encounters between shopkeepers and wealthy farmers and the ordinary labourers in the illustrated articles that they produced for the Manchester Guardian. This splendidly coloured watercolour of a professional man in his frock coat is one of several paintings of different male occupations or types that Yeats produced at this time. The figure strides purposefully across the landscape in his urban attire with his incongruous umbrella and a red book, probably a ledger, in his gloved hand. The low-viewpoint and opaque application of paint enables Yeats to create a kaleidoscope of forms and colours in the sky and the rolling fields behind him.Dr Róisín KennedyApril 2016
Note: Yeats was always fascinated by the social fabric of rural Ireland. His awareness of social class was sharpened by his travels with John Millington Synge through the Congested Districts Board in 1905, the year this work was painted. The two men noted the encounters between shopkeepers and wealthy farmers and the ordinary labourers in the illustrated articles that they produced for the Manchester Guardian. This splendidly coloured watercolour of a professional man in his frock coat is one of several paintings of different male occupations or types that Yeats produced at this time. The figure strides purposefully across the landscape in his urban attire with his incongruous umbrella and a red book, probably a ledger, in his gloved hand. The low-viewpoint and opaque application of paint enables Yeats to create a kaleidoscope of forms and colours in the sky and the rolling fields behind him.Dr Róisín KennedyApril 2016
Medium
watercolour on card laid on board
Signature
signed lower left; with Waddington Galleries label on reverse
Provenance
James Adam, 5 April 1979, lot 85;Private collection;Taylor de Vere, 1989;with Trinity Gallery, London;Waddington Galleries, London;Private collection
Literature
Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolours Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, no. 536, p.139-140 (illustrated)
Exhibited
'The Life and Times of Ireland by Jack B. Yeats', Theo Waddington's Irish Art Project, Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, 10 September to 10 October 2008
