Jack B. Yeats, R.H.A. 1871-1957

Terence de Vere White, circa 1941
Sale, James Adam, Dublin, 14th September 1978
Dr Michael W.J. Smurfit, Dublin
Private Collection

London, Arthur Tooth & Sons, Jack B. Yeats, Paintings, 1928, no.3;
Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1940, no.70;
Monaco, Centre de Congres and Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, Images in Yeats, 1990, no.19, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue;
Scranton (Pennsylvania), The Murray Collection, Jack B. Yeats: Vision of Ireland, 1995, no.19.

Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, André Deutsch, London, 1992, no.357, p.325, illustrated.

Painted in 1928. The ‘Metal Bridge’ of the title is Dublin’s famous landmark, also known as both the Halfpenny Bridge (for the toll originally levied to cover construction costs) or by its original title of Wellington Bridge (it was built in 1816 to commemorate the English Duke’s victory at Waterloo). The elegant structure spans the Liffey in the heart of the city, carrying pedestrians from Temple Bar to Ormond Quay and Bachelor’s Walk and back again. It can be seen in entirety, viewed from a few metres further east downriver and set against the same receding vista, in Yeats’s O’Connell Bridge of 1927. The artist himself also referred to the Halfpenny Bridge, when making early sketches in 1911, as ‘The Iron Bridge’.

The wrought banisters are laid down on this beautiful, densely painted panel with thick impasto, as if the artist has simply taken a tube of pigment and squeezed and trailed the paint top to bottom in regular repetition. The young girl, cresting the arc of the bridge and simultaneously exulting in dramatic view that greets her to the west, is picked out with comparable three-dimensional gusto. Examined out of the frame the panel has surface contours that give it a life not always associated with these typically narrative 9 by 14 inch social records. The body and hair of the girl, along with the metal bridge itself, are picked out in satisfying counterpoint to the smoother working of the Liffey, the dramatically vanishing quayside buildings, and the turbulent sky overhead. Here the expected blues and greens are melded with dark reds and a fearless use of black to evoke the atmosphere of Dublin’s core. At the exact centre of the panel a flash of red on the underside of the handrail unites and animates the various primaries used throughout. The late Twenties were the years in which Yeat’s earlier illustrative, story-telling style, billed as ‘Life in the West of Ireland’, blended so successfully with the beginnings of his more expressionist, and emotional, style.

Hilary Pyle comments in respect of Crossing the Metal Bridge that Yeats painted many romantic pictures of women during the 1920s. She suggests that the artist "here seems to reach an emotional peak", depicting "a sudden inspirational insight in the life of the girl" as she reaches the rise of the bridge (op.cit.). Yeats’ only other oil of the same view (1923, From the Metal Bridge, private collection) was painted at the beginning of this decade that was to prove so critical to the artist’s developing confidence. The dramatic change in Yeats' style over this period can be seen to have begun in the years between execution of these two pictures. The earlier panel simply sets the stark barrier against the distant river view, with no figure to soften the architectural lines. In contrast, the chestnut-haired and swan-necked beauty here, her hair fashionably bobbed, invites the viewer to join her in contemplation, her gaze directed westwards as in so many of Yeats’ Dublin scenes. In so doing she subtly evokes a sweet nostalgia for the romantic and simple life, whether imagined or real, to be found in the West – and perhaps more specifically for the artist’s home town of Sligo.