WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 26 FEBRUARY 2018

31 Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) OLD MEN BATHING, 1922 oil on board signed lower left 9 by 14in. (22.9 by 35.6cm) Provenance: Victor Waddington, London; Private collection, Dublin, 1973; James Adams, August, 1975; Private collection; Adam’s, 5 December 2001, lot 90; Private collection Exhibited: ‘Paintings of Irish Life’, Gieves Art Gallery, London, 7-18 January 1924, catalogue no. 14; ’Pictures of Life in the West of Ireland’, Engineers’ Hall, Dublin, 27 March to 8 April, 1924, catalogue no. 14 Literature: Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsh, London, 1992, Vol. I, p.152, catalogue no. 174 Painted during the Civil War, this painting refers to a less stressful aspect of Irish life. It may be inspired by Jack Yeats’s memories of sea-bathing at Rosses Point in Sligo as a child and adolescent. He refers to this in several early watercolour paintings such as A Sunday Morning Sligo (1898, Private Collection) which shows two young men diving into the sea. Yeats recalled how, ‘Almost every year of my boyhood some friend, or myself stepped too soon into the creaming edge of the Atlantic’. (1) A number of later oils, The Old Bathing Place, (1943) and The Spring Board, (1952) also recall this exhilarating part of rural life. Adult bathers on the shore at Sligo feature in two oils The Bather (1918) and The Bather at the Point Sligo, (1925). In Old Men Bathing two men wade out into the Atlantic with a view of the precipitous west of Ireland coastline behind them. The right hand figure is about to submerge himself in the water, his hands extended forward and his back inclined in readiness. The other younger man gazes out beyond the viewer as if surveying the expanse of sea and the rising sun. His hands gently paddle the surface of the waves as he gradually heads out into deeper water. This latter muscular figure is obviously strong and physically able and while middle aged does not appear to be old. The title may be a drôle comment on how such figures would appear to the younger swimmers. Yeats builds up the surface of Old Men Bathing in loose, thinly applied paint that creates a colourful and dynamic surface. A myriad of horizontal brushstrokes of green, turquoise, and red, are used to depict the waves in the right-hand foreground where their vibrancy suggests the reflection of intense morning light. The cliffs in the background are by contrast constructed of vertical layers of colour emphasising their beauty and sublimity. Much of the sky is strewn with thick grey cloud the gloomy appearance of which indicates the changeable weather of the West and adds to the drama of the scene. This expressionist approach of using strong exaggerated colours and emphatic brushwork may have resulted in the work being refused by the conservative Royal Academy in 1923 although it was shown at Yeats’s one-man show ‘Paintings of Life in the West of Ireland’ in London and Dublin in 1924. These two inveterate swimmers appear isolated against the forces of nature. But despite their courage to brave the Atlantic swell, there is a humorous slant to the painting and a strong sense of the enjoyment and pleasure that sea bathing in such spectacular surroundings provides for these figures and for the viewers of the painting. Dr. Róisin Kennedy January 2018 1. Jack B. Yeats quoted in Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, 1993, p. 71. €40,000-€60,000 (£28,570-£42,860 approx.) Click Here for Large Images & To Bid Lot 31