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Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
A PROFESSIONAL MAN, c.1905
watercolour on card laid on board
signed lower left; with Waddington Galleries label on reverse
23 by 19.25in. (58.42 by 48.90cm)
Provenance:
James Adam, 5 April 1979, lot 85;
Private collection;
Taylor de Vere, 1989;
with Trinity Gallery, London;
Private collection
Exhibited:
‘The Life and Times of Ireland by Jack B. Yeats’, Theo Waddington’s Irish Art Project, Irish Architectural Ar-
chive, Dublin, 10 September to 10 October 2008
Literature:
Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolours Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, no.
536, p.139-140 (illustrated)
Plye records, “A Professional Man, in old fashioned frock coat and trousers, clutching umbrella and book,
pushing against the wind. The strong flat figure, stylised with strong shadow, draws part of its strength from
the way it is silhouetted against a sky composed of broad theatrical elements, echoing the blustery personality
of the man...”
Yeats was always fascinated by the social fabric of rural Ireland. His awareness of social class was sharpened
by his travels with John Millington Synge through the Congested Districts Board in 1905, the year this work
was painted. The two men noted the encounters between shopkeepers and wealthy farmers and the ordinary
labourers in the illustrated articles that they produced for the Manchester Guardian. This splendidly coloured
watercolour of a professional man in his frock coat is one of several paintings of different male occupations or
types that Yeats produced at this time. The figure strides purposefully across the landscape in his urban attire
with his incongruous umbrella and a red book, probably a ledger, in his gloved hand. The low-viewpoint and
opaque application of paint enables Yeats to create a kaleidoscope of forms and colours in the sky and the
rolling fields behind him.
Dr Róisín Kennedy
April 2016
€30,000-€40,000 (£23,620-£31,500 approx.)
Large Image & Place Bid Lot 29