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Artist: John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922) Title: Lily Yeats (1891) Signature: signed, titled and dated 1891 Medium: pencil drawing Size: 27½ x 22½cm (10.8 x 8.9in) Framed Size: 56 x 51cm (22 x 20.1in) Provenance: Yeats Family Collection; Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} This portrait of Mary Susan "Lily" Yeats, daughter of John Butler and Susan (née Pollexfen) Yeats, dates from 1891, when the sitter was twenty-five years old. Yeats has used a soft black pencil, probably a chalk/graphite pencil, with great sensitivity and skill. Sitting upright in an armch... Read more John Butler Yeats Lot 1 - 'Lily Yeats (1891)' Estimate: €1,000 - €1,500 This portrait of Mary Susan "Lily" Yeats, daughter of John Butler and Susan (née Pollexfen) Yeats, dates from 1891, when the sitter was twenty-five years old. Yeats has used a soft black pencil, probably a chalk/graphite pencil, with great sensitivity and skill. Sitting upright in an armchair, dressed in a fashionable late Victorian dress with puffed sleeves, Lily gazes straight ahead. There is little detail in terms of background, and the chair, made of ornate carved wood, is lightly indicated, as is the lower part of her dress. Born in Enniscrone, Co. Sligo, in 1866, Lily was one of four children of John and Susan Yeats; her siblings were William, Jack, and Elizabeth ("Lolly"). Her father sketched and painted Lily on many occasions; in the Niland Collection there is a portrait of her, aged about ten. Much of Lily's early life was spent in Sligo, until in 1874 she joined her brothers and sister in London. Four years later, the family moved to Bedford Park, the new Arts and Crafts garden suburb at Chiswick. In 1881 she moved to Dublin, enrolling, with her sister Elizabeth, at the Metropolitan School of Art. Returning to England, Lily then stayed with her aunt and invalid mother in Huddersfield, before rejoining her family in Bedford Park in 1888. She studied embroidery with May Morris daughter of William Morris before becoming an embroidery teacher herself, at William Morris & Co. Frequently prone to ill-health, Lily contracted typhoid in France in 1896. She settled in Dublin some years later, co-founding the Dun Emer Guild, where she ran the embroidery section and supervised and made banners for Loughrea cathedral. In 1904, the enterprise divided into the Dun Emer Guild and Dun Emer Industries, with Evelyn Gleeson running the former, and the Yeats sisters taking on the latter. Four years later the sisters founded Cuala Industries and Cuala Press. In 1931 Lily again fell ill, due to overwork. The embroidery section of Cuala Industries was wound up and Lily continued to work on her own, before her death in 1949. Peter Murray, March 2022