Jack Butler Yeats
Biography And Paintings of the Irish Romantic Expressionist Artist.
Visual Arts Guide - Famous Irish Artists

The Two Travellers (1942)

Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957)

One of the most important figures in the visual art of Ireland during the 20th century, Jack Butler Yeats' paintings of scenes of daily Irish life and Celtic mythology contributed to the surge of nationalist spirit in Irish painting after the War of Independence. A fine draughtsman of Irish life, his status as one of the great Irish artists of the twentieth century is reinforced by the fact he was the first painter to sell a painting for £1 million.

Jack Butler Yeats was born in London in 1871, the youngest son of Irish portraitist John Butler Yeats, and the brother of the Nobel Prize winning poet William Butler Yeats. He studied painting and drawing at the Westminster School of Art under Fred Brown, before leaving to work as a graphic artist, cartoonist (in 1894 he created the first cartoon strip of Sherlock Holmes), illustrator and water-colourist. While he began using oils from about 1897, Yeats did not regularly produce oil paintings until 1905, preferring to work in watercolours. His early artworks were romantic depictions of landscapes and figures from the west of Ireland, particularly from his home in Sligo. He was influenced by the French Impressionist masters in Sir Hugh Lane's art collection and began exhibiting at the Royal Hibernian Academy from 1899. After residing in London, he lived in Devon (England) for fourteen years, before moving to Greystones in county Wicklow. In 1917, he moved to Dublin.

After the death of his wife in 1947, to whom he had been happily married since 1894, his work became increasingly nostalgic. Retrospective exhibitions of his paintings were held at the National Gallery, London, 1942, in Dublin 1945, in the London Tate Gallery 1948, while a showing of his last works was staged at the Waddington Galleries, London, in 1958. Although some critics have dismissed Jack B Yeats' artwork as irrelevant, an exhibition of his paintings at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, in 1971, revived his reputation as an important modern painter in the history of Irish art.

Jack B Yeats passed away in Dublin on March 28, 1957.

Off the Donegal Coast (1922) stems from a drawing made by Yeats in 1906, which depicted four fishermen in their currach, pausing momentarily on the top of a large wave to scour the horizon for land. This painting shows a moment of extreme danger, as a group of fishermen in their flimsy canvas-built craft are caught in a storm and try to catch the rope thrown from a lifeboat. The drama is perfectly captured in Yeats' vigorous brushstrokes and strong, natural colours.

More Information About Irish Fine Art and Culture

• For details of other expressionist painters, see: Irish Artists: Paintings and Biographies.
• For more about Irish and world culture, see: Visual Arts Cork: Guide to Irish Art.

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