WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 May 2025 FROM 6PM

26 14 Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) A PATRIOT, c.1902 watercolour with monogram lower left; with typed Victor Waddington Gallery label preserved on reverse 13.75 by 6.50in. (34.9 by 16.5cm) Frame Size: 25 by 17 (63.5 by 43.2cm) Provenance: Victor Waddington Gallery, London; Whence purchased by A.S. Alkin Esq.; Sotheby’s London, 21 May 1999, lot 341; Private collection; Whyte’s, 25 April 2006, lot 62; Private collection Literature: Pyle, Hilary , Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolours Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, no. 393a, p.112 (illustrated) This early watercolour shows Jack Yeats’ perceptive use of composition and colour. Through an open doorway he allows us a glimpse of the warm interior of a rural cottage. A man is seated by an open fire on which a large cooking pot is placed. Pride of place amongst his modest possessions is a coloured print of Robert Emmet, the great hero of Irish nationalism, whose features are instantly recognisable. Such a central position, over the fireplace, would normally be taken by a religious picture. Yeats was first drawn to Emmet and the nationalist cult of the hero when he visited Sligo and Donegal in the summer of 1898. He attended the 1798 centenary celebrations at Carricknagat, Co. Sligo where a monument was being erected to a local hero of the uprising, Bartholomew Teeling. Amongst the sights that Yeats recorded in his sketchbooks of this event, was one of a Sligoman dressed up as Robert Emmet. Yeats was struck by the bizarre sight of contemporary Irishmen re-enacting and reimagining historical events in such an obviously theatrical manner. His sketches of the celebrations reveal the curiousness of modern men donning aristocratic type costumes of one hundred years previously. However, Yeats also recognised the value of such dramatisations of past victories and triumphs to the nationalist imagination. This watercolour plays on the incongruity of displaying an image of a long dead hero within the relatively impoverished present. By framing this scene through the open door Yeats’ image indicates the personal and private meanings that figures such as Emmet represented to Irish patriots. The clever presentation of the scene, perceived through the angle of the open doorway cuts off the figure, creating an off-centred composition made up of interlocking rectangular shapes of browns, greys and pink. This complex arrangement speaks to the multifaceted nature of Irish nationalism and the richness of its symbolism and rhetoric at the beginning of the twentieth century. Dr. Róisín Kennedy €18,000-€22,000 (£15,250-£18,640 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot14