Jack B. Yeats

{{Infobox person

| honorific_prefix =

| name = Jack Butler Yeats

| honorific_suffix =

| image = Jack Butler Yeats.jpg

| image_size = 160px

| alt =

| caption = Yeats in 1904

| native_name =

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| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1871|8|29}}

| birth_place = London, England

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1957|3|28|1871|8|29}}

| death_place = Dublin, Ireland

| resting_place =

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| education =

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| known_for = Painting

| notable_works =

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| movement =

| father = John Butler Yeats

| relatives = W. B. Yeats (brother)
Lily Yeats (sister)
Elizabeth Yeats (sister)

| awards =

}}

Jack Butler Yeats{{cite web |url=https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Wicklow/Greystones/Rathdown_Lower/892778/ |title=Residents of a house 13 in Rathdown Lower (Greystones, Wicklow) |work=1911 Census of Ireland Records |publisher= National Archives of Ireland}} RHA (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist. Born into a family of impoverished Anglo-Irish landholders, his father was the painter John Butler Yeats, and his brother was the poet W. B. Yeats.{{cite web|url=https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/920813 |title=Jack Butler Yeats |work=Olympedia |access-date=23 July 2020}} Jack B. was born in London but was raised in County Sligo with his maternal grandparents, before returning to London in 1887 to live with his parents. Afterwards he travelled frequently between the two countries; while in Ireland he lived mainly in Greystones, County Wicklow and in Dublin city.

Yeats's first solo exhibition "Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland" was held in 1898. He began as an illustrator and watercolourist until moving to oil paint around 1906.Pyle, 106 His early pictures are lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures predominantly from the west of Ireland. His early oil paintings are heavily influenced by Romanticism, before he adopted Expressionism c. 1910, for which he became famous.

He died in Dublin in 1957, aged 85 years. The National Gallery of Ireland holds a significant collection of his paintings, as well as his personal archive."[https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/highlights-collection/liffey-swim-jack-b-yeats/jack-b-yeats-1871-1957 Jack B. Yeats (1871–1957)]". National Gallery of Ireland. Retrieved 28 October 2024

Early life

Yeats was born in London, England. He was the youngest son of the Irish portraitist John Butler Yeats and the brother of W. B. Yeats (William Butler), who received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature. He grew up in Sligo with his maternal grandparents, before returning to his parents' home in London in 1887. Yeats attended the Chiswick School of Art with his sisters Elizabeth and Susan,[https://www.archiseek.com/2009/1881-chiswick-school-of-art-bedford-park-london/ 1881 – Chiswick School of Art, Bedford Park, London], Archiseek, 26 August 2009, accessed 11 August 2022{{cite web |title=1881 – Chiswick School of Art, Bedford Park, London {{!}} Architecture @ Archiseek.com |url=https://www.archiseek.com/2009/1881-chiswick-school-of-art-bedford-park-london/ |website=www.archiseek.com |access-date=21 September 2024 |date=26 August 2009}} learning "Freehand drawing in all its branches, practical Geometry and perspective, pottery and tile painting, design for decorative purposes – as in Wall-papers, Furniture, Metalwork, Stained Glass".

File:Portrait of Jack B. Yeats .PNG, c. 1883-1884"[http://onlinecollection.nationalgallery.ie/objects/1637/portrait-of-jack-b-yeats-18711957-as-a-boy Portrait of Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957) as a Boy]". National Gallery of Ireland. Retrieved 28 October 2024]]

Early in his career, Yeats worked as an illustrator for magazines like the Boy's Own Paper and Judy, drew comic strips, including the Sherlock Holmes parody "Chubb-Lock Homes" for Comic Cuts, and wrote articles for Punch under the pseudonym "W. Bird".{{Cite web|url=http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/History/HistoryWhole.asp?PassedEra=Comics%202|title=History of British Comics: 1890 - 1899 (Early Comics) Part 2|access-date=6 November 2010|archive-date=9 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200809062557/https://www.comicsuk.co.uk/History/HistoryWhole.asp?PassedEra=Comics%202|url-status=dead}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.lambiek.net/artists/y/yeats_jack.htm|title=Jack Yeats|website=lambiek.net}} In 1894 he married Mary Cottenham White, a fellow student,"[https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/highlights-collection/liffey-swim-jack-b-yeats/jack-b-yeats-1871-1957 Jack B. Yeats (1871–1957)]". National Gallery of Ireland. Retrieved 25 October 20024 also a native of England and two years his senior. At the 1911 Census they lived in Greystones in County Wicklow.

Career

From around 1920, he developed into an intensely Expressionist artist, moving from illustration to Symbolism. He was sympathetic to the Irish Republican cause, but not politically active. However, he believed that 'a painter must be part of the land and of the life he paints', and his own artistic development, as a Modernist and Expressionist, helped articulate a modern Dublin of the 20th century, partly by depicting specifically Irish subjects, but also by doing so in the light of universal themes such as the loneliness of the individual, and the universality of the plight of man. Samuel Beckett wrote that "Yeats is with the great of our time... because he brings light, as only the great dare to bring light, to the issueless predicament of existence."{{cite web |last1=Brennan |first1=Séamus |title=The Work of Jack B. Yeats |url=http://www.arts-sport-tourism.gov.ie/publications/release.asp?ID=2047 |access-date=1 July 2009 |archive-date=7 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607171232/http://www.arts-sport-tourism.gov.ie/publications/release.asp?ID=2047 |url-status=dead }} Speech at the National Gallery of Ireland, 17 July 2007 The Marxist art critic and author John Berger also paid tribute to Yeats from a very different perspective, praising the artist as a "great painter" with a "sense of the future, an awareness of the possibility of a world other than the one we know".Berger, John. Permanent Red. Methuen, 1960 repr. Writers & Artists Collective, 1979. 148. {{ISBN|0904613-92-5}}

His favourite subjects included the Irish landscape, horses, circus and travelling players. His early paintings and drawings are distinguished by an energetic simplicity of line and colour, and his later paintings by an extremely vigorous and experimental treatment of often thickly applied paint. He frequently abandoned the brush altogether, applying paint in a variety of different ways, and was deeply interested in the expressive power of colour. Despite his position as the most important Irish artist of the 20th century (and the first to sell for over £1m), he took no pupils and allowed no one to watch him work, so he remains a unique figure. The artist closest to him in style is his friend, the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka.

In 1943, Yeats accepted Victor Waddington as his sole dealer and business manager. Waddington played a crucial role in building his career and reputation.{{cite web |last1=Clavin |first1=Terry |title=Victor Waddington |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/waddington-victor-a10128 |website=www.dib.ie |publisher=Royal Irish Academy |access-date=20 December 2021}}

Besides painting, Yeats had a significant interest in theatre and in literature. He was a close friend of the playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett. He designed sets for the Abbey Theatre and three of his own plays were produced there. His literary works include The Careless Flower, The Amaranthers (much admired by Beckett), Ah Well, A Romance in Perpetuity, And To You Also, and The Charmed Life. Yeats's paintings usually bear poetic and evocative titles. He was elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1916.W. J. Gillan & McCormack, Patrick. The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture. WileyBlackwell, 2001. 624. {{ISBN|0-631-22817-9}}

When Yeats's wife, Cottie, passed away in 1947, his art took on a more metaphysical tone and became more nostalgic and optimistic. He continued working through the final years of his life and died in Dublin in 1957.{{Cite book |last=Stanton |first=Richard |title=The forgotten Olympic art competitions: the story of the Olympic art competitions of the 20th century |date=2000 |publisher=Trafford |isbn=978-1-55212-606-6 |location=Victoria}} He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.

Yeats holds the distinction of being Ireland's first medallist at the Olympic Games in the wake of the creation of the Irish Free State. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Yeats' painting The Liffey Swim won a silver medal in the arts and culture segment of the Games.{{Cite web|title=Jack Butler Yeats {{!}} Irish painter|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-Butler-Yeats|access-date=2021-08-09|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en}} In the competition records the painting is simply entitled Swimming.p.318, McCarthy, Kevin Gold Silver And Green: The Irish Olympic Journey 1896-1924 Cork: Cork University Press 2010{{Cite book |last=Stanton |first=Richard |title=The forgotten Olympic art competitions: the story of the Olympic art competitions of the 20th century |date=2000 |publisher=Trafford |isbn=978-1-55212-606-6 |location=Victoria}}Mike, Cronin. "The State on Display: The 1924 Tailteann Art Competition". New Hibernia Review. Volume 9, Number 3, Autumn 2005. 50-71

Works

In November 2010, one of Yeats's works, A Horseman Enters a Town at Night, painted in 1948 and previously owned by novelist Graham Greene, sold for nearly £350,000 at a Christie's auction in London. A smaller work, Man in a Room Thinking, painted in 1947, sold for £66,000 at the same auction. His painting Sleep Sound (1955) was bought by David Bowie in 1993 for £45,500 and sold at auction in 2016 for £233,000.{{Cite news |title=Jack B Yeats painting owned by David Bowie to be auctioned |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/jack-b-yeats-painting-owned-by-david-bowie-to-be-auctioned-1.2763710 |access-date=2022-08-10 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Vallig |first=Marc O’Sullivan |date=2021-10-20 |title=Jack B Yeats: Celebrated artist, brother of WB, and Ireland's first Olympic medallist |url=https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-40724742.html |access-date=2022-08-10 |website=Irish Examiner |language=en}}

In 1999 the painting, The Wild Ones, sold at Sotheby's in London for over £1.2m.{{cite news | title=Jack B Yeats paintings net £415,300 at auction | work=BBC Northern Ireland News (12 November 2010)| url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11746655 | access-date=14 November 2010 | date=12 November 2010}} Whyte's Auctioneers hold the world record sale price for a Yeats painting, Reverie (1931), which sold for €1,400,000 in November 2019.{{cite news | title=Jack Butler Yeats painting makes €1.7m in 'white glove sale' | url=https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/jack-butler-yeats-painting-makes-17m-in-white-glove-sale-38734101.html | access-date=4 August 2018 | date=29 September 2011}} The Model, Home of The Niland Collection, in Sligo cares for one of the best and most extensive collections of Jack B. Yeats's work in existence. It presents regular curated exhibitions of his work, notably, The Outside in 2011, Enter the Clowns - The Circus as Metaphor, 2013; The Music has Come, 2014; Painted Universe, 2018; Salt Water Ballads, 2021.

Hosting museums

The Model, Sligo
The Hunt Museum, Limerick
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork"[https://crawfordartgallery.ie/the-aib-collection/ The AIB Collection]". Crawford Art Gallery, 2015. Retrieved 28 October 2024
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
[http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=20184 The Swinford Funeral at the Walters Art Museum]
The Municipal Art Collection, Waterford
Ulster Museum, Belfast
The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame
[https://sniteartmuseum.nd.edu/collections/recent-acquisitions/jack-b-yeats-driftwood-in-a-cave/ Driftwood in a Cave at the Snite Museum of Art]

Notes

References

Samuel Beckett. 1991. Jack B. Yeats: The Late Paintings (Whitechapel Art Gallery)
John Booth. 1993. Jack B. Yeats: A Vision of Ireland (House of Lochar)
John W. Purser. 1991. The Literary Universe of Jack B. Yeats (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)
Hilary Pyle. 1987. Jack B. Yeats in the National Gallery of Ireland (National Gallery of Ireland)
Hilary Pyle. 1989. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography (Carlton Books)
T.G. Rosenthal. 1993. The Art of Jack B. Yeats (Carlton Books)
Jack B. Yeats. 1992. Selected Writings of Jack B. Yeats (Carlton Books)
Declan J Foley (2009), ed. with an introduction by Bruce Stewart, The Only Art of Jack B. Yeats Letters and essays (Lilliput Press Dublin).

External links

{{Commons category-inline}}
[http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Cuala%20Press%20Broadside%20Collection/ Cuala Press Broadside Collection, illustrated by Jack B. Yeats] is located at the [http://digital.library.villanova.edu/ Special Collections/Digital Library] in [http://library.villanova.edu/ Falvey Memorial Library] at Villanova University.
[http://www.lilliputpress.ie/ The Only Art: Letters of JBY]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100217062206/http://johnbutleryeatsseminar.com/ The Fourth John Butler Yeats Seminar, at the Swift Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin 10–12 September 2010 details ]
[http://heidicon.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/pool/punch/person/118771590 Jack Butler Yeats' Illustrations from Punch] in HeidICON
{{Gutenberg author | id=35523| name=Jack Butler Yeats}}
{{Internet Archive author |sname=Jack Butler Yeats}}
{{LCAuth|n50020999|Jack B. Yeats|34|ue}}
[http://www.yeatssociety.com Yeats Society Sligo ]
Works by Jack Butler Yeats as part of the [https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/collections/ms35tg81f?locale=en Cuala Press Collection], Library of Trinity College Dublin.