WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART Monday 11 March 2024 at 6pm

28 14 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. (58.4 by 48.9cm) Frame Size: 32 by 28.5in. (81.3 by 72.4cm) Provenance: James Adam, 5 April 1979, lot 85; Private collection; Taylor de Vere, 1989; with Trinity Gallery, London; Waddington Galleries, London; Private collection; Whyte’s, 2 December 2019, lot 24; Private collection Exhibited: Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolours Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, no. 536, p.139-140 (illustrated) Literature: ‘The Life and Times of Ireland by Jack B. Yeats’, Theo Waddington’s Irish Art Project, Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, 10 September to 10 October 2008 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 €25,000-€35,000 (£21,370-£29,910 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot14