20 by 27in. (50.8 by 68.6cm)

Title: THE TOP OF THE TIDE, 1955
Note: This very late work by Jack B. Yeats depicts two men standing in a wild open landscape with low mountains in the distance. The ground is damp and colourful and evokes the West of Ireland, so beloved of Yeats. The scenery may have been inspired by Rosses Point, Co Sligo, according to Hilary Pyle. (1) The two men, one with his back to us, stand in theatrical, self-conscious poses. One has a long pony-tail, suggestive of the 18th century and he extends his left hand in a mannered gesture. His golden haired companion who is placed at some distance, holds his hand towards his face, as if he were listening. The subject of flamboyant figures, either solitary or in pairs, in a barren Western landscape is a familiar one in Yeats's late work, most notably Two Travellers, (1942, Tate), The Night has Gone, (1947, Private collection), There is no Night (1949, Hugh Lane Gallery) and That we May Never Meet Again, (c.1955, Private collection). Top of the Tide can be distinguished from these by the youthfulness of the figures. The colourful setting and the direct co-relation between the disposition of the figures and the relative tranquility of the landscape is reminiscent of the juxtaposition of mood between performer and nature in The Singing Horseman (1949, National Gallery of Ireland) where a lone figure, again in theatrical costume, travels on horseback through an austere West of Ireland terrain. The fragility of the figures in Top of the Tide is made evident by the fact that parts of them are transparent against the strong blues and yellows of the vibrant setting. They are also shown as discreet and separate and their faces are not visible to us, either because they have their back to us or because Yeats does not include facial features. For commentators like Samuel Beckett this aspect of Yeats's work awakens a profound sense of the tenuousness of human interaction. 'One does not realise how still his pictures are', Beckett wrote, 'till one looks at others, almost petrified, a sudden suspension of the performance, of the convention of sympathy and antipathy, meeting and parting, joy and sorrow.' (2) The skies are full of movement with swirls of dark clouds amidst the blue and white. The waterlogged topography further suggests the instability of existence in which all is subject to change, especially the human figure, whose mortality would have been significant to Yeats. He was in his eighties when he painted the work and aware of his own imminent demise. Hilary Pyle states that the work is one of the last works completed by the artist who inspected it in his studio in February 1956 and declared it ready for exhibition. (3) He died a year later in March 1957.Dr Róisín KennedyAugust 2024Footnotes:1. Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 1992, II, p. 1087. Pyle also suggests that the figure in the cap may be the Pilot of Rosses Point.2. Letter of Samuel Beckett to Thomas MacGreevy, 14 August 1937, quoted in Conor Carville, Samuel Beckett and the Visual Art, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 128. 3. Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 1992, II, p. 1083.
Frame dimensions: 28 by 35in. (71.1 by 88.9cm)

Excellent condition.

oil on canvas

signed lower left