Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)

Flowing Tide, Inishbeg, Near Skibbereen (1919)

Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cms (9 x 14'')

Signed

 

A view of Inishbeg, west of Skibbereen near Baltimore;...

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)

Flowing Tide, Inishbeg, Near Skibbereen (1919)

Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cms (9 x 14'')

Signed

 

A view of Inishbeg, west of Skibbereen near Baltimore; the area where Yeats spent the summer of 1919.

 

Provenance: Purchased from Victor Waddington Galleries, 21st Jan 1942, costing £15.00 by Mr J.P. Reihill Snr, Deepwell and thence by descent to his son and his sale Adams 4th December 2012 Lot No. 51, where purchased by current owner.

 

Exhibited: 1920 Mills Hall, Dublin ''Jack B. Yeats - Drawings and pictures of life in the West of Ireland'' Cat. No. 18.

 

Literature: ''Jack B. Yeats - A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil paintings'', Hilary Pyle 1992, Vol 1 Cat. No. 119, p105. Also illustrated Vol III p50.

 

This work is one of a series of paintings of West Cork painted by Jack Yeats in 1919. It shows the island of Inishbeg in the distance with some of its houses visible. One of the Carbery Hundred Islands, Inishbeg lies in the estuary of the Ilen River not far from Skibbereen. Yeats stresses the movement of the tide in the way in which he has painted the surface of the water using short strokes of grey, blue and brown pigment flecked with white. In contrast the sky is smoothly painted giving a flat opaque background to the scene. Yeats was clearly taken by the region's numerous islands and undulating coastline which are broadly reminiscent of parts of the West. Islands recur in his later paintings as a symbol of creative possibility and change. Their interim position between the sea and the mainland lent them and their inhabitants a particularly special quality in Yeats's imagination. This work is a forerunner of these later explorations. But in this early work the overcast sky and earthy colours of the islands highlight the real physical appearance of the scene, making the sensation of being there almost tangible.

 

Dr. Roisin Kennedy

 

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