Jack B Yeats

I was in Sligo in May and of course had to visit The Model: Home of the Niland Collection in order to see some of their Jack B Yeats collection currently on display in two exhibitions.

I first went into the exhibition A Painted Universe. This exhibition showed the development of Yeats’s painting style over four decades once he began painting in oils in 1910. I am very familiar with his later, expressionist style from regularly visiting the Yeats room at The National Gallery of Ireland. Some of these works, however, I was sure I had seen before. IMMA had an exhibition a number of years ago that played on the interaction between the work of Jack B Yeats and Lucian Freud. I enjoy those echoes that happen when I unexpectedly see work again.

The gallery itself was set up very reverently with its dark grey walls reminding me of a major museum exhibition.

But it was this painting especially that struck me as familiar. I remember noticing and loving the way the horses legs are painted so sketchily. The front legs become non existent - the path is visible - just before he has painted the hooves, and yet the shape clearly outlines a horses leg for the viewer! I wondered if this was the way all horses legs were painted in his later years, but I checked the IMMA website and indeed it was this exact painting that I had seen, just before covid!

The next Yeats exhibition, The Living Ginger, was more of an archival exhibition and exploration of the type of work he did in the years prior to painting in oils (1910). The title of the exhibition comes from Yeats’s own phrase to describe that “vital spark he believed a great painting must contain”.

There were several vitrines in this seemingly more sterile (or modern?) room than the previous room of paintings. The enlarged reproductions of illustrations that Yeats had made for publications, allowed for looking at the work in more detail.

Jack was brought up in Sligo by his grandparents and enjoyed sketching local characters and the nearby ocean. It was delightful to see the linen trunk decorated randomly with his sketches.

There were a number of early watercolour paintings depicting various characters in his locale. He would later return to these characters in oil paintings.

My favourite painting in this exhibition is this 1904 watercolour of the mysterious man in the trenchcoat. Entitled The Car is at the Door, it is difficult to ascertain whether the man is coming or going, whether he is the passenger or the driver, and one has no idea where the destination is meant to be, nor in fact, what time of day or night it is, or what the the weather might be. There is, however, a sense of urgency translated in expressive paint and sombre facial features. I think that in future work in oil paint, Yeats successfully strived to maintain this urgency.

It was wonderful to be immersed in Yeats’s work to such a level at The Model!