JACK BUTLER YEATS, R.H.A. | THE ROLLING DONKEY

Robert Gregory (son of Lady Gregory);

Private collection, U.K., thence by descent to the present owner

London, Walker Art Gallery, Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland, February 1899, no.7 (purchased by Robert Gregory);

Dublin, Leinster Hall, Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland, May 1899, no.7;

London, Guildhall, Loan Exhibition of Irish Artists, May-July 1904, no.243.

The Artist, London, 1899, p.25, p.148 illustrated;

Anne Gregory, Me and Nu - Childhood at Coole, Buckinghamshire, 1970, p.87-8;

Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Dublin, 1993, no.160, p.78

The present work was purchased by Lady Gregory's son Robert and hung in Coole Park before passing down through the family. Lady Gregory's grand-daughter Anne recalled in her memoirs, Me and Nu - Childhood at Coole (1970), the present work: Jack Yeats used to come to Coole now and again...We had several of Mr Yeats' pictures. There was a wonderful rolling donkey' (p.87). The setting of the present work was thought by Robert Gregory to be a scene in Co. Clare.