Jack Yeats

An Irish artist and writer, considered the biggest English painter of the XX century.

Jack Butler Yeats was the youngest son of a painter John Butler Yeats.
His elder brother William became a poet and Nobel laureate. The childhood of the future artist passed on the East of Ireland in the county of Sligo. He learnt the basics of fine arts from his father.

During his lifetime, Jack Yeats was recognized and famous as a master of landscape and plot painting, a book illustrator, creator of graphics, including caricature. The most amazing fact of his biography may be considered his victory at Olympic games in France in 1924, when painting, like sculpture and architecture, was an Olympic category. J. Yeats remains a popular master – in 2011, the painting “A Just Day. Mayo” (1925) was sold for one million euros.

Key ideas:

– The early paintings of Jack Yeats were created under the influence of paintings of French Impressionists, while he used very little oil, preferring watercolor for his landscapes and figurative compositions on the themes of West Ireland. Nevertheless, in 1899, these works were exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA).

– Around 1920, he developed a more personal expressionistic style, distinguished by a bright color and an extremely friable manner of applying oil paints.

– Sympathetic to the movement of Irish Republicans, but not much involved in their activities, the artist created emotional images of the urban and rural life of Ireland. His favorite themes remained landscapes; also the interest of the master extended to the subjects of Celtic mythology. Those scenes, like everything else were painted in the style much far from the traditional academic fine art. At the same time, his canvases became brighter; the painting technique changed as well – the paints were applied very thickly, often with the help of instruments, and not only brushes. The brushstrokes of the artist became free and decisive, like if he gave a right to his emotions to come on the canvas.

– Despite the “friability” of the painting, it conveys the artist’s expression to the viewer. Especially it concerns genre paintings with the images of circuses, horse races, music concert halls, celebrations and fights. An example of this might be the painting “A small ring” (1930), created in an Expressionist manner, which Yeats learnt at the end of the 1920s. The plot shows a young boxer defeating his opponent, and the crowd, depicted with energetic strokes, is confused by the surprise and shrinks around him.

– In the last two decades, being already a master, Jack Yeats continued to work with even greater energy and created a significant number of works (approximately as in the previous three decades). As it happens with many great artists, he could leave whole areas of his canvases empty, filling them with expertly painted strokes. In the last period, such delightful masterpieces as “Silent lands” (1951), “Glory” (1952) and others.

– Jack Yeats believed that “an artist should be a part of the land and life, which he depicts”, and his own artistic development, especially as Expressionist, helped form the art of Dublin of the 20th century and the entire culture of Ireland.