John Butler Yeats

STRUCTURE Original canvas. some ssuperficial frame abrasions along the upper edge. A minor area of craquelure to the left of the right elbow, however in generally good overall condition, ready to hang. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT No signs of restoration. FRAME In a gilt slip frame.
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John Butler Yeats’s tender and pensive portrait of his son, William B Yeats, captures the poet mid motion, as if he is about to respond to a question by his father. John was a charming conversationalist; his melodious voice and soft cadence enchanted his sitters and one can see in William’s dreamy eyes that he was not immune to the spell. He leans forward in an engaged manner and his eyes directly meet ours, yet with a hazy, distant look. A large shock of dishevelled hair falls over his brow, evoking the romantic untidiness of a poet. He seems to be emerging from the darkness with light falling on his face, collar, and poised hands, bathing him in a warm glow. John Butler Yeats has imbued the image with a softly spiritual quality that pays homage to his belief in the divinity of nature and his son’s fascination with mysticism and the occult.

William, born in 1865, was the oldest of John Butler Yeats’s children, and his father took charge of his education from an early age, encouraging him not to focus on a career but rather a general understanding of the world. With the publication of The Lake of Innisfree and his collection of poems, The Wind Among the Reeds, William established himself as a writer of lyrical and symbolist poems.  William also helped found Abbey Theatre, reinvigorating Irish drama as well as poetry. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize. His output was prolific, and William’s work remains one of the most important Irish contributions to the modernist movement that swept through the twentieth century.

Although John Butler Yeats is best remembered as the father of the poet William Butler Yeats and the artist Jack Butler Yeats, he was one of Ireland’s most important modern artists and a prominent figure in Anglo-Irish artistic circles. John Butler Yeats initially trained as a lawyer but soon abandoned these plans to train at Heatherley’s Art School in London. He became a master portrait painter and exceptional conversationalist, although his lack of business acumen and frequent moves between England and Ireland meant a lifetime of financial instability. His two masterpieces were his portraits of Irish separatist John O’Leary and his son, William Butler Yeats.  John Butler Yeats moved to New York in 1908, and enjoyed the company of John Sloan, John Quinn, and Jeanne Robert Foster, among others. After a long and painful illness, he died in America in 1922 and was laid to rest in Jean Robert Foster’s family plot.

This portrait was commissioned by John Quinn, the prolific American art collector and was later given to William Michael Murphy, the authority on the Yeats family, by Jeanne Robert Foster. John Quinn's close friend, Professor William Michael Murphy, author of Prodigal Father and Family Secrets, was a Harvard-educated English professor who taught at Union College in New York for forty years. In the 1950s he was also chairman of the housing authority in Schenectady where he met Jeanne Robert Foster. Foster encouraged Murphy to travel to Dublin and write a short article on John Butler Yeats. While in Ireland, he became close friends with Yeats’s son and widow and was given access to family letters which led to the writing of his two major works and other smaller text.