Jack B. Yeats RHA (1871-1957) The Westering Sun Oil on board, 35.5 x 46cm (14 x 18'') Signed Provenance: Bought by a New York collector at the Waddington Galleries 1951 and sold by them to a...

Jack B. Yeats RHA (1871-1957) The Westering Sun Oil on board, 35.5 x 46cm (14 x 18'') Signed Provenance: Bought by a New York collector at the Waddington Galleries 1951 and sold by them to a private Dublin collector, June 1997. Exhibited: ''Summer Exhibition'' the Frederick Gallery, Dublin, June/ July 1997, catalogue no. 45, where purchased by current owner. Literature: ''Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonn? of Oil Paintings II'' by Hilary Pyle, London 1992, no. 1022, p.928. A young woman reads a book which she holds delicately in her hands as she walks along. In front of her, in the extreme left hand foreground, a seated man is lost in thought. His peaked hat indicates that he is a sailor or a river pilot, a familiar figure in Yeats's work. His presence introduces the idea of travel and of nostalgia for bygone times. These two protagonists, in spite of their proximity, appear to be unaware of each other. Both are engaged in private intellectual activities, imagining or remembering undisclosed events. Yeats gives a sense of what these interior thoughts might be in the background of the painting. The woman stands in a colourful and erratic setting. Green foliage and distant blue hills provide the backdrop. Above them a pink tinted sky evokes the poetic title of the work, The Westering Sun. Behind the woman to the right a group of men on horseback gallop around an open field. Their energy and movement is counteracted by a tall solitary figure, visible to the left of the woman. The physicality of the figures in the background counteracts the cerebral nature of the woman reading and the man remembering. The work is part of a group of paintings which Yeats made in a very productive and creative phase in his life in the early 1950s. His work was selling well at this period in large part due to his association with the art dealer Victor Waddington who was active in promoting the artist's reputation at home and abroad. The Westering Sun was not exhibited publicly, but was sold through Waddington shortly after its completion. Its visionary quality is akin to that of such works as Grief, (National Gallery of Ireland, 1951), and Glory, (Private Collection, 1952). In The Westering Sun, a young woman, rather than the golden-haired child of these works, takes on the metaphorical role of hope and imagination. Her freedom is expressed through her walking pose and lively expression. An important difference in terms of the theme is the way in which Yeats draws our attention to different levels of imaginative experience in The Westering Sun. The woman's thoughts are fed by literature while those of the sailor come from life itself but re-imagined through memory. The painting therefore draws attention to the construction of fantasy. As in other late works by Yeats the use of paint and the construction of the composition are of crucial importance. Yeats subtly differentiates between the two spatial planes in which the sailor and the woman are placed at the forefront of the composition, indicating that they belong to different spheres of reality. By contrast the smaller scale and less clearly defined figures in the background indicate their considerable physical distance. Akin to stage design there is a dramatic connection between the foreground and background in the painting, with the middle ground sharply truncated. Yeats builds up the perspective through pure colour, almost sculpting the forms out of paint while leaving other parts of the canvas nearly bare. In spite of the unorthodox technique, the various components of the composition and their relationship to each other are decipherable. The strong colours and the expressive way in which they have been applied give The Westering Sun a tangible vitality which is inextricably linked to its inspiring subject matter. Dr. Roisin Kennedy

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