Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) The Public Letter Writer Oil on board, 35.5 x 53cm, (14 x 20.75'') Signed Provenance: Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin; Sir Basil Goulding, Co. Wicklow,...

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) The Public Letter Writer Oil on board, 35.5 x 53cm, (14 x 20.75'') Signed Provenance: Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin; Sir Basil Goulding, Co. Wicklow, thence by descent Exhibited: London, 1958, Waddington Galleries, No 2; Dublin Nov/Dec 1961 Municipal Gallery, One Man's Meat-:The Basil Goulding Collection, Catalogue No 30. Literature: Yeats, Jack B., Sligo (1930); Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats - A Catalogue Raisonn? of the Oil Paintings, Catalogue No 1147 Hilary Pyle has written: A reminiscence in fantasy of a character whom Yeats saw in New York in 1904, on a visit which made a lasting impression on him ( see 582 etc.) He wrote in Sligo: I saw in a Street in New York a card writer, I mean a writer of visiting cards. He turned them out at ten cents a dozen in a lovely curling hand, and he sat at a little table by a doorstep, and he wore a Buffalo Bill hat...there used to always be something to see in the 'Side walks of New York'. The public letter writer of the painting is preparing letters on behalf of illiterate people in the Western States, and his solemn face has an expression of sympathetic wisdom.

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