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

The Waddington Galleries, London;
Acquired from the above in 1961 by Mr. & Mrs. F.S. Hess, London and thence by descent to the present owners

Illustrated London News, 8th April 1961, 593;
Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Dublin 1993, no.493, p.130 (illustrated);
Hilary Pyle, Yeats, Portrait of an Artistic Family, Exh.cat., National Gallery of Ireland 1997, p.262, (illustrated as fig.152)

This current work was executed circa 1903. Yeats attended the first Buffalo Bill Cody show performed in London in 1887 held at the newly built Olympia exhibition centre. He was immediately enthralled by the action, colourful costumes and perfomances of the Cowboy and his accompanying Red Indians mounted on horseback. The present work relates to similar shows he attended at the Crystal Palace where he clearly delighted in the same flamboyant subject. Here, a head-dressed Red Indian swirls his tomahawk aboard his brightly spotted hobby horse; its true human form given away by the roller skates appearing beneath it. Yeats later built up the memory of the lively spotted horse in painitngs such as The Cavalier's Farewell to his Steed (1949, National Gallery of Ireland) and the Red Indians in Attack on the Deadwood Coach (1943).

Although the present work was dated 1892 when it was exhibited at the Waddington Galleries in 1961, Pyle argues for a later date circa 1903 as it related more closely stylistically to other watercolours from this period.