Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Ireland’s most important artists, a new exhibition at the National Gallery will explore the role of memory in Jack B. Yeats’ life and work. From his earliest forays into oil painting, Yeats was unusually reliant on memory and retrospection. Memories of childhood in Sligo inspired many of his works, and particular motifs – music and horses prominent among them – recur in his paintings. In a selection of oil paintings spanning more than 40 years, view places and people Yeats remembered, his observations of humanity, and reflections on life and loss in his later years.

 The ‘Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory’ exhibition will include over 84 works from private and public collections, and lenders, from Ireland and around the world, as well as the Gallery’s own Jack B. Yeats collection making it the largest exhibition of Jack B. Yeats oil paintings to ever be hosted globally. For information on the exhibition and tickets, go to: www.nationalgallery.ie

The exhibition celebrates the 150^th anniversary of Jack B Yeats’ birth. As an overview of his work, what is the significance of Yeats’ work in Irish art history?

Around 1895 Yeats began to exhibit watercolours and turn to Irish rural life for his subject matter. His characterisation of Irish people was admired by leading figures of the Irish Celtic Revival as he portrayed the Irish as a heroic people with a strong connection to the land and sea. When he began to paint in oils he expanded his vision of the Irish life and culture, representing Ireland in more lyrical, expressionistic works. Samuel Beckett said, “Yeats became not merely a genre painter, but so identified himself with the people of Ireland”, that he became the “painter who in his work was the consummate expression of the spirit of his own nation”.

Can you provide a brief biography of his life? He was born into a remarkably artistic family.

Yeats was born at 23 Fitzroy Road, London, youngest child of the artist John Butler Yeats and Susan Yeats (née Pollexfen). He spent his early years moving with his family between London, Dublin, and Sligo as his father struggled to establish himself as an artist. From 1879 to 1887, he lived in Sligo with his maternal grandparents. He rejoined his family in London, in 1887, in order to begin his art training at the South Kensington School of Art, and then at the Chiswick School of Art. It was at the latter that Jack met his future wife, fellow student, Mary Cottenham White; they married in Surrey in 1894 and, in 1897, they settled in the coastal village of Strete, Devon.

Jack began his artistic career, in the 1890s, as a black and white journalistic illustrator for various publications, alongside carrying out design work for Allen and Sons in Manchester. Following his move to Devon with Cottie in 1897, however, Jack decided to focus on working in watercolour, holding his first exhibition of watercolours, of Devon life, at the Clifford Gallery, London in 1897. Jack and Cottie moved to Ireland in 1910, settling at Greystones, Co. Wicklow until 1917, followed by 61 Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, Dublin and finally, in 1929, to 18 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin where they remained for the rest of their lives.

Following the move to Ireland, Jack began to work in oil paint. His early paintings share the realist approach of his graphic work and concentrate on scenes of rural and urban life. Yeats’s painting style changed radically in the later 1920s. As time went on he experimented more with colour and used larger canvases. The subject matter of his later paintings is more obscure, although the work remains figurative. Alongside his painting, Jack continued to produce a considerable amount of work for publication, including illustrations for J.M. Synge’s book The Aran Islands (1907). In addition, Yeats published a number of plays for miniature theatre, a collection of short stories for children, and several plays and novels published throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Other notable members of the Yeats family include Jack’s brother – the poet W.B. Yeats – and their father, painter John Butler Yeats. His sisters Susan Mary (Lily) Yeats and Elizabeth Corbet (Lolly) Yeats, along with Evelyn Gleeson, founded arts and crafts co-operative Dun Emer Guild for women in Dundrum Dublin, in 1902, and the Yeats sisters also founded Cuala Industries in Churchtown, Dublin in 1908. Jack’s niece Anne Yeats was the chief designer for the Abbey Theatre and a founding member of both Graphic Studio Gallery and Aosdána.

Jack B. Yeats’s personal archive is located in the National Gallery of Ireland, and includes the artist’s sketchbooks which document over fifty years of his career. Additional material documents Mary Cottenham Yeats’s artistic contribution to the Cuala Industries established by Susan Mary and Elizabeth Corbet Yeats in 1908.

What are some of his key masterpieces?

Yeats completed over 1,200 paintings, a remarkable tally for any artist. What makes this total even more extraordinary is that Yeats only began painting in oil on canvas in his late thirties. Up to that point, he had specialised in watercolours and illustration, and had taken a largely documentary approach to his work. This inclination informed his early paintings, which focussed on local characters and locales, and events in Irish life. These pictures, which often declare their origins in illustration, appeal to many people. As Yeats grew older, and became more adventurous in his use of paint, his brushwork became looser, and his palette increasingly non-naturalistic and expressive. Many of the motifs he favoured in his early paintings, watercolours and illustrations, remained however. These included horses, circus acts, fairs, public entertainment and the Sligo landscape, and retain a broad appeal. While some works are particularly well-known and loved (‘The Liffey Swim’; ‘The Island Funeral’; ‘The Singing Horseman’; ‘On Through the Silent Lands’; ‘My Beautiful, My Beautiful’), it is difficult to isolate works by so prolific an artist. As its title suggests, ‘Jack B. Yeats. Painting & Memory’ explores Yeats’s particular reliance on and interpretation of memory.

The new exhibition focuses on Yeats’ reliance on memory and retrospection – possibly national characteristics – were these melancholic or celebratory?

Both. Yeats’s paintings, particularly those produced in the last fifteen years of his life, reflect the ebbs and flows of his own lived experience. The death of family members, particularly his beloved wife Cottie (to whom he had been married for over fifty years), had a profound impact on Yeats, and finds expression in his art. However, contemplation of death, expressions of loss and sombre retrospection were countered by moments of revelation and stoicism.

How do you define his work; as a Romantic or Expressionist or Colourist…? His style changed quite considerably over the course of his career.

Yeats developed a distinctive style which defied strict categorisation. In terms of colour range and technique, his mature work was Expressionist in character, but the themes were often decidedly romantic and sometimes mystical. Yeats preferred not to explain or interpret his work, at once keeping his inspiration and motivation secret and allowing his audience to find and apply their own meanings. He also favoured working alone and without distraction in his studio. However, he was also well-informed, well-travelled and erudite, with a good knowledge of art history and tradition.

The images I particularly like – ‘Grafton Street Conversation Piece’, ‘Paris of the West’, ‘Had I the Wings of A Swallow’ – show a keen eye for fashion. 

‘Grafton Street Conversation Piece’ captures a fleeting moment in modern life, a glance or evanescent interaction between a man and a woman on a busy commercial shopping street. It shows Yeats’s sensitivity towards the character and pace of modern life.

A ‘Paris of the West’ imagines the Greek legend ‘the Judgement of Paris’ occurring in the west of Ireland – the three goddesses and Paris, replaced by three young women and a boy. This is an example of Yeats’s adaptation of Greek mythology, a technique made popular by modern writers such as James Joyce.

‘Had I the Wings of a Swallow’ is a memory of a woman singing on a train. Yeats’s portrayal has a heroic quality to it that elevates the otherwise simple scene to an epic event. “She had the appearance of an old trouper singing, her song sounded moving”, Yeats later wrote.

The Gallery holds Yeats’ personal archive and sketchbooks – will these be on display at the exhibition?

 The exhibition focuses squarely, and very deliberately, on Yeats’s work in oils. We thought the 150^th anniversary of his birth provided us with an ideal opportunity to explore and celebrate the work by which Yeats was best known. Just a short number of years ago, the Gallery held an exhibition of his sketchbooks.

What are some of the activities planned around the exhibition?

A learning programme to accompany the exhibition will include talks, an art appreciation course (Yeats: An Artistic Family), a visual resource for teachers and schools, and a dementia inclusive project (Exploring the Yeats Archive).

Need to Know: ‘Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory’, will exhibit at the National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square West, Dublin, from Saturday, 4th September 2021 to Sunday, 6th February 2022. Book your tickets at www.nationalgallery.ie.