Jack Butler Yeats, R.H.A.

to be sold with a letter from Jack B. Yeats to Dr E. P. Carey (the previous owner), dated August 5th 1952, in which the artist muses on his views of painting and age with a comment on Bernard Shaw; for example, 'no painters should be characterized by age - old or young. Of course I was a child when I just drew but I never was an "infant prodigy". I have kept the date of my birth out of all lists and I have no intention of playing the "old wonder", and going on to critique Bernard Shaw for doing just that and as a result, 'everything he wrote just became "cute for his age"'; together with a special edition book (250 copies) on Jack B. Yeats by Thomas MacGreevy (published 1945)

Dr E. P. Carey, London and thence by descent to the present owners

The board is sound and the work appears in good original condition with strong passages of impasto. Ultraviolet light reveals areas of fluorescence but these are a result of pigments used rather than retouching. Held under glass in a composite frame; unexamined out of frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Previously unrecorded and emerging on the market for the first time, in the present work, a scene from a Victorian play has been transported from the stage to the grey backdrop of a city quay, where some of Yeats’s typical characters gather near the river wall, chatting near a vaguely defined vehicle.  The spotlight falls on the left foreground.  A comely gypsy’s world-wise face contrasts with the questioning innocence of the baby in her arms, and the chalk-coloured mask of a gullible young fop, who stares transfixedly into space as she puts something - money, or a flower, or some small object she has found? – into his outstretched hand.  It is a beautifully described, tantalising and dramatic image.  One interpretation has it that the gypsy is telling the young man’s fortune.  Her lips are greedy.  But, as often in his late paintings, the artist is enigmatic.  Yeats compels the spectator personally to fill in the narrative and the details.

The enigma doesn’t end with the painting’s subject.  The original owner - Dr E.P. Carey, a Kerryman and one of De Valera’s close circle - became friendly with Yeats during the 1940s, and purchased two small paintings from him in his Fitzwilliam Street studio, Drama in October 1944, and Beach Near a Port in September1945. Yeats presented this picture to him later, and from a letter Yeats wrote to Dr. Carey on 13 September 1948 we may assume that it may have been about then that he made the gift. Interestingly, A Fortune, and/or any details he might have jotted down about it, appears nowhere in the artist’s usually meticulous records of his work.  Only In his Owners of Pictures list does he refer to the painting when he cites Dr E.P Carey as the owner of two pictures, Beach near a Port (1945) and Fortune (1947) [sic] – (the title appears as A Fortune, on the back of the panel).   Drama,  Dr  Carey’s first purchase from the artist, is not mentioned in this Owner’s List.  Of course, Yeats painted a phenomenal number of works during the 1940s, and the painting may simply have slipped his notice as he was entering the details of new pictures into his Workbook.

What was the reason for the gift? It was very occasionally that Yeats gave away a work and usually as an expression of thanks.  His letter of 1948 to Dr Carey offers a possible clue.  1948 was an emotional time for Jack B. Yeats.  It was not long since his wife, his ‘May Queen’, had died.  Soon Ireland would be declared a Republic, an event that was very close to his heart.  The artist’s letter refers to ‘Mrs W.B.’, and also to the writer and critic, (later Director of the National Gallery of Ireland) Thomas MacGreevy, as ‘being as kind and trouble taking as he could’ in arranging what turned out to the very complicated return of W.B. Yeats’s remains to Sligo (see B. Arnold, Jack Yeats, Yale University Press 1998, pp. 337-8). It could be that, with De Valera, the doctor played some part in bringing to a successful conclusion this major cultural event.

The Wheel of Fortune in the country fair, with the Circus itself, was a fundamental and colourful element of Yeats’s early depictions of ‘Life in the West of Ireland’, and in his late paintings selected images from these developed into metaphors for Life itself - its triumphs, its paradoxes, its tragedies.  This captivating little painting, where the vignette with the tantalising main characters is contrasted with the stern grey of the city scene beyond, has a dynamic comparable with that of Yeats’s small painting of a performer, He Sings Alone - painted also in 1947, and remembering the country ballad singers of his youth. The images in A Fortune ultimately derive from what he termed as a ‘half memory’ of one of the many melodramas he saw, and relished, as a young man.

We are grateful to Dr Hilary Pyle for her kind assistance preparing the catalogue entry for the present work.