14 by 18in. (35.6 by 45.7cm)

Title: RUSTY GATES, 1948
Note: This late painting by Jack B. Yeats depicts two elderly gents walking along a high stone wall. They stand before a gateway that opens onto a vista of distant landscape and a mountain peak on the horizon. (The setting and the mountain are reminiscent of County Wicklow and the Sugar Loaf, an area that Yeats, who lived in Greystones for a number of years, knew well). The men are clustered closely together, one is leaning on a stick, while his companion has his arm on his shoulder as he gazes out across the rolling hills. The other seems to have his head turned towards the viewer, as if aware of our presence or of something else in the scene. The foreground of the painting is constructed out of another gateway or opening through which we perceive the figures. A dark blue border frames this section of the composition. Swathes of summer foliage and plants cross the top of the opening, a dramatic blossom of white and yellow sprouts from the right hand post. The rich dark colouring of this foreground element makes it appear like a deliberately artificial element in what is otherwise a more mute and naturalistic scene. The figures of rambling tramps are familiar from Yeats' late paintings and his novels. These characters are free to travel through the countryside encountering both strange and familiar sights in their endless meanderings. In this painting they are sculpted out of thick impasto pigment of orange, pink and blue. Their form is made more solid by the fact that it is in shadow in contrast to the sun drenched expanse of nature that extends out beyond the walls. The painting extracts the maximum drama from a simple, unaffected scene through its dramatic composition and its ebullient use of colour.Dr Róisín KennedyFebruary 2020

oil on board

signed lower left; titled on reverse; also with Theo Waddington label on reverse