JOHN BUTLER YEATS | 'CUCKOO' YORK POWELL

The Artist, thence by family descent

Drawn circa 1895-99, Mariella York Powell was the daughter of John Butler Yeats' close friend Frederick York Powell, whom the artist first met on his move to Bedford Park, London in the late 1880s. 

In 1901 Powell wrote a letter to JBY, which as William Murphy points out, is a quite remarkable acknowledgment coming from Oxford's Regius Professor of History: 'I know you are a better man in heart than I am, and I am always glad to try and follow the high example you set in life and thought, and I honestly believe that I am very much the better for having had the privilege of your friendship, a blessing that I think much of.' (quoted in W. Murphy, Prodigal Father, 1978, p.224)