JACK B. YEATS, R.H.A. | SIMON THE CYRENIAN

Sold in 1902 to John Quinn;

American Art Galleries, New York, Sale of the John Quinn Collection, 9 February 1927, lot 91, where purchased by Ernest Boyd;

Dr. P. Macartan;

Patrick Macartan, Greystones;

Adams, Dublin, December 1975

Dublin, Wells Central Hall, Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland, 18 - 30 August 1902, no.29;

Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Jack B. Yeats, A Centenary Exhibition, September - December, no.25, with tour to Belfast and New York

John Quinn 1870 - 1925: collection of paintings, watercolours, drawings and sculpture, 1926, p.22;

Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, A Biography, London, 1970, p.44, pl.3 and 1980, illustrated p.20;

Hilary Pyle, Jack B Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch, 1992, Vol. I, no.2, p.2

The present painting belongs to a small group of religious works, or 'sacred pictures' as Yeats wrote in a letter to Lady Gregory in 1901, which here depicts Jesus and Simon on the road to Calvary. A smaller, watercolour version is in the Sligo County Museum. 

It is one of Yeats's earliest oils and the strong, stylized outlines resemble Yeats's black and white illustrations for A Broadsheet and has a likeness to stained glass.