Jack Butler Yeats

Heffel Auction House Biography and Notes

Jack Butler Yeats was born in London, the son of a portrait painter and brother of the poet William Butler Yeats. He was brought up in Sligo by his maternal grandparents, and it was here that he undoubtedly became familiar with the rural life of the west of Ireland. He initially worked as an illustrator, but in 1895 his first watercolour was accepted by the Royal Hibernian Academy. He had his first one man show at the Clifford Gallery, London in 1897. Yeats wrote many plays and poems as well as illustrating several books during the early 1900s. He returned to Ireland in 1900, and in 1905 toured the west of Ireland with the playwright J.M. Synge. An exhibition of his paintings was held in London in the summer of 1914, but this represented his last show until 1920. During these years Ireland was embroiled in highly turbulent political events, and Yeats very actively sympathized with the movement for Irish self-determination. One could surmise that he was deeply affected by these events, and certainly he did subsequently produce a series of paintings depicting Civil War themes. The Mail Car, Early Morning was painted in 1920 and was instigated by the memory of a visit to Ballina in County Mayo in 1905 with J.M. Synge. The painting depicts a mail car drawn by two horses moving down the main street at the first sign of light. Several crows are in the foreground pecking between the stones on the street. Synge is in the foreground at the lower right, holding his raincoat over his left arm. There is an obvious influence of Sickert in the painting, with the rather somber colour tones combined with a highly representational image. The paint has been laid on quite thickly, but the figure of Synge is not as strongly outlined as in earlier oils. Strong oblique lines run along the pavement, houses and roofs, and the slanted figure of Synge intersects these lines on the right side. The movement created by these lines enhances the advancing movement of the horses in the middle ground. This is a fine example of Yeats's work of this period.