Jack Butler Yeats, R.H.A.

Waddington Galleries, Dublin, where purchased by a private collector;
Major Allnatt, from whom acquired by the previous owner circa 1959, by whom gifted to the present owner in 1996

Dublin, Waddington Galleries, 1953, no.11

Hilary Pyle, Jack Butler Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Vol. II., Andre Deutsch, London 1992, no.957, p.864

Original canvas. There are some minor signs of craquelure in the thicker areas of white pigment in the sky. Some old paint separation which is stable in the woman's dress lower left corner; otherwise the work appears in good overall condition. Under ultraviolet light there appear to be no signs of retouching. Held in a gilt composite frame under glass; unexamined out of frame.
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Yeats depicts in the present work a girl with long hair looking down upon a group of soldiers with pennants flying, who are marching across an open space towards woods with mountains beyond. The theme, as Hilary Pyle writes, exalts 'the leaders of the 1916 Rising and all supporters of freedom' (ibid). 

The energy of the composition is intense and reverberates across the canvas in typical fashion. The brushwork is vigorous, and figures are denoted boldly with the point of the handle of a brush, incising the wet paint surface. The colours convey a similar enthusiasm, with prussian blue and vivid greens and yellow - such vividness a reflection of his own character as much as the subject. As Brian O'Doherty wrote in the Dublin Magazine in 1957, 'Yeats was warm enough to bring heat to our cold northern rocks.' 

Although entering the last decade of his life by the time of the present work, Yeats' output did not soften but grew in fervour - in colour, in brushwork, in nationalism - and it was during this period that the artist created some of his most openly patriotic and dazzling paintings.