Jack Butler Yeats RHA (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist. Born into a family of impoverished

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...

landholders, his father was the painter John Butler Yeats, and his brother was the poet W. B. Yeats. Jack B. was born in London but was raised in

County Sligo County Sligo ( , ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Northern and Western Region and is part of the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht. Sligo is the administrative capital and largest town in ...

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 County Wicklow ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. The last of the traditional 32 counties, having been formed as late as 1606 in Ireland, 1606, it is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the Provinces ...

and in

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

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. 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 Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

, before he adopted

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

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.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 Sligo ( ; , meaning 'abounding in shells') is a coastal seaport and the county town of County Sligo, Ireland, within the western province of Connacht. With a population of 20,608 in 2022, it is the county's largest urban centre (constituting 2 ...

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 Susan is a feminine given name, the usual English version of Susanna or Susannah. All are versions of the Hebrew name Shoshana, which is derived from the Hebrew ''shoshan'', meaning ''lotus flower'' in Egyptian, original derivation, and severa ...

,1881 – Chiswick School of Art, Bedford Park, London
Archiseek, 26 August 2009, accessed 11 August 2022 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". He briefly attended The High School Dublin as a pupil alongside his brother. Portrait of Jack B

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 Sherlock Holmes () is a Detective fiction, fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "Private investigator, consulting detective" in his stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with obser ...

parody "Chubb-Lock Homes" for '' Comic Cuts'', and wrote articles for '' Punch'' under the pseudonym "W. Bird". In 1894 he married Mary Cottenham White, a fellow student,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

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

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 Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

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." The Marxist art critic and author

John Berger John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...

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". 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. Besides painting, Yeats had a significant interest in

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a Stage (theatre), stage. The performe ...

and in

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

. He was a close friend of the playwright and novelist

. 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. 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. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. Yeats holds the distinction of being Ireland's first medallist at the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games (Olympics; ) are the world's preeminent international Olympic sports, sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a Multi-s ...

in the wake of the creation of the

Irish Free State The Irish Free State (6 December 192229 December 1937), also known by its Irish-language, Irish name ( , ), was a State (polity), state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-ye ...

. At the

1924 Summer Olympics The 1924 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the VIII Olympiad () and officially branded as Paris 1924, were an international multi-sport event held in Paris, France. The opening ceremony was held on 5 July, but some competitions had al ...

in Paris, Yeats' painting ''The Liffey Swim'' won a silver medal in the arts and culture segment of the Games. In the competition records the painting is simply entitled ''Swimming''.

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 Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...

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 David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...

in 1993 for £45,500 and sold at auction in 2016 for £233,000. In 1999 the painting, ''The Wild Ones'', sold at Sotheby's in London for over £1.2m. Whyte's Auctioneers hold the world record sale price for a Yeats painting, ''Reverie'' (1931), which sold for €1,400,000 in November 2019. 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, CorkThe AIB Collection
. Crawford Art Gallery, 2015. Retrieved 28 October 2024 *

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum is a public art museum located in the Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded and opened in 1934, it holds collections from the mid-19th century that were amassed substantially ...

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

*
The Swinford Funeral at the Walters Art Museum
* The Municipal Art Collection,

Waterford Waterford ( ) is a City status in Ireland, city in County Waterford in the South-East Region, Ireland, south-east of Ireland. It is located within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster. The city is situated at the head of Waterford H ...

* Ulster Museum,

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

* The Snite Museum of Art,

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

*
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

*
Cuala Press Broadside Collection, illustrated by Jack B. Yeats
is located at th
Special Collections/Digital Library
i
Falvey Memorial Library
at Villanova University.
The Only Art: Letters of JBY

The Fourth John Butler Yeats Seminar, at the Swift Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin 10–12 September 2010 details

Jack Butler Yeats' Illustrations from Punch
in HeidICON * * *
Yeats Society Sligo
*Works by Jack Butler Yeats as part of th
Cuala Press Collection
Library of Trinity College Dublin. {{DEFAULTSORT:Yeats, Jack Butler 1871 births 1957 deaths 19th-century Irish painters Irish male painters 20th-century Irish painters Burials at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium Jack 19th-century Irish illustrators Irish comics artists Olympic artists for Ireland Olympic silver medalists for Ireland Olympic silver medalists in art competitions People educated at the Chiswick School of Art People educated at Sligo Grammar School People educated at The High School, Dublin Artists' Rifles soldiers Art competitors at the 1924 Summer Olympics 19th-century Irish male artists 20th-century Irish male artists 20th-century Irish illustrators People on Irish postage stamps