Beschreibung:

GALWAY MAN IN WAISTCOAT AND CAP Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
Medium: watercolour over pencil (no.10) Dimensions: 13 by 9cm., 5 by 3.5in. The first forty lots of this sale comprise the complete collection of works from a sketchbook by Jack Butler Yeats RHA, dated, 1899, Gort, Co.Galway. The sketchbook was gifted by Yeats to his friend a... and patron Ernie O’Malley (1897-1957) and is listed in Hilary Pyle’s Jack B. Yeats, His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, p.184, nos. 15-17 [Three sketchbooks in the Ernie O’Malley Collection].The sequential number of each sketch as it originally appeared in the intact sketchbook is given in the description of each sketch below. Each sketch is framed and bears a Certificate of Authenticity on reverse. Ernie O’Malley (1897-1957), born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo was a major figure in the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War as well as a pivotal figure in artistic circles and author of enduring accounts of Irish modern history such as On Another Man’s Wound. 1899 was a year of many firsts and a hugely significant period in Yeats’ career. In February of that year he devoted an entire exhibition in London to Irish-based subject matter. This exhibition, which comprised watercolours and drawings, moved to Dublin in May. This was the artist’s first one-man show in the capital. In the same year Yeats visited Lady Gregory’s home, the hub of the Celtic Revival, at Coole Park and, for the first time, made a critical journey to the Aran Islands with his wife, Cottie. Variously annotated, these sketches capture locations, characters, minutiae, oddities, industry and ancient history. His fondness in particular for children is depicted in several sketches as is his unwavering bond to his loyal companion, a yellow ochre mongrel, Hooligan, or “Hooley”, who was a regular sole witness to his master’s creations. In his latter years Yeats reverted continually to these sketchbooks; which would form the genesis of some of his later works in oil. These works are essential tools in unearthing the private observations of an obsessive recorder. The fitting words in the Dublin Express, 1899 by his contemporary, George Russell (AE) capture the power and importance of Yeats’ gift, ”There is a weird power in these sketches which gives them a distinct place of their own in art. It is not due to caricature but to an almost poetical excess of energy in the conception. Scene and characters such as we meet with every day have been stored up in the artist’s memory…it is not an ideal Ireland that has been reflected in Mr Yeats’ mind, but it is in a certain measure true…” (See, Arnold, Bruce, Jack Yeats, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1998, p.85) more