Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
The Woods in The Bay / The Woods and The Bay (1955)
Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14”)
Signed, inscribed with title ‘The Woods and The Bay’ verso

Provenance:...

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
The Woods in The Bay / The Woods and The Bay (1955)
Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14”)
Signed, inscribed with title ‘The Woods and The Bay’ verso

Provenance: Wilfred Evill Collection; Miss Honor Frost, executor of the collection; Sale, these rooms, 12 February 1981, lot 53; Private Collection, Dublin.

Exhibited: Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery & Museum, June/August 1965, cat. no. 283, label verso

Literature: Hilary Pyle, A Catalogue Raisonné of The Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch, 1992, cat. no. 1182.

 

The Wood in the Bay is one of Jack B. Yeats’s last works. It was completed in August 1955 when the artist was living in Portobello Nursing Home and visiting his studio in Fitzwilliam Square to complete his paintings.¹ He died in March 1957, less than two years later. 

Hilary Pyle notes that in Yeats’s final paintings there is ‘greater abstraction of form and setting and a tendency to purer tones, … the mood is more overtly spiritual’.²  This is evident in this delicate, ethereal landscape. Its palette consists of subtle greens and blues evoking a summer vista of open water and verdant terrain. The large blue silhouette of a mountain in the background has the shape of Ben Bulben. A copse of trees in the mid left, sculpted out of impasto, add texture and depth to the composition. In the right foreground touches of orange suggest the colourful flora of the West of Ireland, such as the exotic Montbretia. The blustery sky consists of vertical lines of white board visible through the blue. Elsewhere vivacious brushstrokes convey the movement of the clouds and the constantly changing environment of the Irish landscape.  Energy is evident throughout the composition, from the sweep of water in the foreground to the quivering trees and shuddering clouds in the sky above.

 

Dr Roisin Kennedy

July 2023

 

1. H.Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil paintings, l, p.1083 Ibid.

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