John Butler Yeats RHA (1839 - 1922) Portrait of Jenny Yeats Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 40.7cm (20 x 16'') Exhibited: Pyms Gallery, London, Friendship Portraits, 11th May - 17th June 2005, Cat. No. 1 ...

John Butler Yeats RHA (1839 - 1922) Portrait of Jenny Yeats Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 40.7cm (20 x 16'') Exhibited: Pyms Gallery, London, Friendship Portraits, 11th May - 17th June 2005, Cat. No. 1 Literature: The Art of a Nation: Three Centuries of Irish painting, Pyms Gallery London, June 2002, cat. no. 15 The son of a Protestant rector from Sligo, John Butler Yeats was born in Co. Down and studied Law at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1865 after the birth of his first child, the poet William Butler Yeats he moved to London and joined Heatherley's School of Art. He became friends with J.T. Nettleship, George Wilson and Edwin Ellis who were all keen to extend the ideals of the Pre-Raphaellites. In 1872 Yeats produced his first portraits and in 1880 he returned to Ireland showing regularly at the R.H.A. In 1908, after having moved back to London in 1887, he emigrated permanently to New York. He became friendly with Robert Henri and John Sloan, the leaders of the Ash Can School. He showed regularly with members of the school in New York whilst also enjoying the patronage of John Quinn. Yeats' family, particularly his children, provided him with material for portraits throughout his career. Here he paints his sister Jane Grace or Jenny, named after their mother. Yeats, also gave the same pair of names to his daughter who died in infancy. Like her sister Grace Jane (Gracie) she remained unmarried living quietly in Morehampton Road, in Donnybrook. The 'Morehampton Road Yeats' (also including his brother Isaac) represented the respectable antithesis of the artist's carefree and bohemian lifestyle, though on occasion they dutifully turned up to certain important events such as Susan Mitchell's lecture on their brother in 1919. Isaac in particular was a conservative bourgeois, secretary of the Artisan Dwelling Company and a firm unionist 'if he ever had a daring idea he successfully concealed it'. Surprisingly little information survives about Jenny Yeats's life, she hardly features in her brother's correspondence. She died shortly before the Second World War at the age of ninety two. As early as the mid 1870s, Yeats had portrayed Gracie (in a work which was turned down by the Royal Academy), while the present portrait of Jenny can be dated to the early 1890s. As such, it is a rare early oil by the artist from his London period. Yeats himself claimed that he did not lift a paint brush between 1890 and 1897. This is not quite true as a Portrait of Ascheson Henderson (Ulster Museum) is dated 1891, certainly, however, it was a fallow period in his career, during which he was more concerned with book illustration and failed literary projects. Nevertheless the portrait of his sister is an accomplished piece of painting with a strong sense of modelling and neat simplicity of composition. It shows Jenny, on a visit to London, conservatively dressed, perhaps even a little prim, her attire contrasting with the oriental screen of the background. William Butler in his autobiography recalled that the family home in Bedford Park was decorated in the aesthetic style with 'peacock blue' and the juxtaposition of his buttoned up aunt with the sensual background, with all the connotations that the aesthetic movement conjured up in London of the 1890s is surely deliberate and not a little ironic

View more View less