Jack Butler Yeats, R.H.A.

Dawson Gallery, Dublin;
Mrs Patricia McGrath, Dublin;
Private collection, Dublin where purchased by the present owner in the early 1990s

Dublin, The Life and Times of Ireland by Jack B. Yeats, September 2008;
London, The Waddington Galleries, Father and Son - Paintings, Watercolours and Drawings by John Butler and Jack B. Yeats, May 2009, no.22

Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats: His Cartoons and Illustrations, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1994, no.2017, p.284

The sheet is sound and not laid down. Cockles slightly. One or two very faint and isolated spots of foxing, the work appears in good overall condition ready to hang. Held under glass in a wood frame with a linen mount, in good condition; unexamined out of frame.
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In the present work, Yeats offers a contemporary scene of rural Irish life, the elongated format allowing him to incorporate a spectrum of details: the village shop and post office, the country folk on cart horses and school children running down the road on the right, set against an expansive landscape with the village church on the left. This original design is one of the earliest images published by Cuala Press, founded by Yeats' sisters, Lily and Lolly, in 1908, after splitting from Dun Emer Press in 1907. The designs Jack supplied were transferred on to a block and then printed and hand-coloured by Yeats himself or one of the craftswomen at the Cuala Press. They proved extremely popular and were issued as individual prints, Christmas cards and calendars and as Dr Roisin Kennedy observed, 'the unpretentious style of the drawings was very influential on Irish visual culture and the portrayal of rural Ireland in the early 20th century.'