IMPORTANT IRISH ART Monday 23 November 2026 from 6PM

42 21 Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) MAYO FAIR [ILLUSTRATION TO ‘THE SMALL TOWN’], 1905 ink and watercolour signed lower right 10 by 12.50in. (25.4 by 31.8cm) Frame Size: 17 by 19.5in. (43.2 by 49.5cm) Provenance: Collection of Muriel Ryan Exhibited: ‘Drawings and Pictures of Life in the West of Ireland’, Stephen’s Green Gallery, Dublin, 25 April to 9 May 1923, catalogue no. 23 Literature: Manchester Guardian, 22 July 1905, p. 7; J. M. Synge, CollectedWorks Vol 2, London 1966, p. 331 as ‘Market Day’; Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats: His Cartoons and Illustrations, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1994, catalogue no. 711, p. 133 (illustrated) In 1905 John Millington Synge was commissioned to write a series of articles for the Manchester Guardian on the distress in what were known as the ‘congested districts’ in the West of Ireland. He asked Jack Yeats to come with him on his journey of investigation through Galway and Mayo, and to make illustrations for the articles. Yeats, living in Devon and working as a cartoonist and illustrator, was ready for the task - he and Synge had often spent a day walking together -- and they set off in June. The writer reported, ‘Jack Yeats and myself had a great time, and I sent off three articles a week for four weeks running.’Yeats made fifteen illustrations for the articles. Afterwards, though Synge commented that they had had ‘a wonderful journey’, and had been able to explore so many out of the way places, he had to admit that he wished he could have written ‘an interpretation of the whole life’, rather than having to concentrate on the ‘distress’. Yeats illustrated Synge’s observations in each article, drawing the locals at work, a ferryman, kelp gatherers, boat builders, men and even girls at the ‘relief ’ road works. When it came to ‘The Small Town’, in which Synge highlighted Swinford in County Mayo, and remarked that the fair had started there first, after which the town grew up around it, he chose ‘Market Day’, a time when the town became alive, and he illustrated it from Synge’s vivid description. Large booths have been set up where second hand clothes brokers hold up their ‘greasy’ wares, beyond them roams a famished dog in the middle of the street, near a group of strolling acrobats, one of them standing on his hands. Yeats’s quick eye notes the Connemara shawl the women wear, unique to the region. He distinguishes the different characters with a light touch of his pen, finding touches of humour that conjure up the atmosphere of the fair. Hilary Pyle, October 2026 €30,000-€40,000 (£25,210-£33,610 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot2 1