John "Jack" Butler Yeats (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist

Irish art

The early history of Irish art is generally considered to begin with early carvings found at sites such as Newgrange and is traced through Bronze Age artefacts, particularly ornamental gold objects, and the religious carvings and illuminated manuscripts of the medieval period...

. His early style was that of an illustrator; he only began to work regularly in oils

Oil paint

Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...

 in 1906. His early pictures are simple lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures, predominantly from the west of Ireland—especially of his boyhood home of Sligo

Sligo

Sligo is the county town of County Sligo in Ireland. The town is a borough and has a charter and a town mayor. It is sometimes referred to as a city, and sometimes as a town, and is the second largest urban area in Connacht...

. His brother was William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

. Yeats' works contain elements of Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

.

Life

Yeats was born in London, England. He was the youngest son of Irish portraitist John Butler Yeats

John Butler Yeats

John Butler Yeats was an Irish artist and the father of William Butler Yeats, Lily Yeats, Lollie Yeats and Jack B. Yeats. He is probably best known for his portrait of the young William Butler Yeats which is one of a number of his portraits of Irishmen and women in the Yeats museum in the National...

, and the brother of the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winning poet William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...

. He grew up in Sligo

Sligo

Sligo is the county town of County Sligo in Ireland. The town is a borough and has a charter and a town mayor. It is sometimes referred to as a city, and sometimes as a town, and is the second largest urban area in Connacht...

 with his maternal grandparents, before returning to his parents' home in London in 1887. Early in his career he worked as an illustrator for magazines like the Boy's Own Paper

Boy's Own Paper

The Boy's Own Paper was a British story paper aimed at young and teenage boys, published from 1879 to 1967.-Publishing history:The idea for the publication was first raised in 1878 by the Religious Tract Society as a means to encourage younger children to read and also instil Christian morals...

and Judy, drew comic strips, including the Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

 parody "Chubb-Lock Homes" for Comic Cuts

Comic Cuts

Comic Cuts was a British comic book. It was created by the reporter, Alfred Harmsworth through his company Amalgamated Press . It was published from 1890 to 1953, lasting 3006 issues, and in its early days inspired other publishers to produce rival comics. It's first issue was an assortment of...

, and wrote articles for Punch

Punch (magazine)

Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...

under the pseudonym "W. Bird". In 1894 he married Mary Cottenham, also a native of England and two years his senior, and resided in Wicklow according to the Census of Ireland, 1911

Census of Ireland, 1911

The Census of Ireland, 1911, was a census that covered Ireland, and was conducted on Sunday 2 April 1911 as part of a broader Census of the United Kingdom. A census of Ireland had taken place every ten years beginning in 1821 until 1911. The next census would not take place until 1926 due to the...

.

From around 1920, he developed into an intensely Expressionist artist, moving from illustration to Symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

. He was sympathetic to the Irish Republican cause, but not politically active. However, he believed that 'a painter must be part of the land and of the life he paints', and his own artistic development, as a Modernist and Expressionist, helped articulate a modern Dublin of the 20th century, partly by depicting specifically Irish subjects, but also by doing so in the light of universal themes such as the loneliness of the individual, and the universality of the plight of man. When he died, Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

 wrote that "Yeats is the great of our time...he brings light as only the great dare to bring light to the issueless predicament of existence."

His favourite subjects included the Irish landscape, horses, circus and travelling players. His early paintings and drawings are distinguished by an energetic simplicity of line and colour, his later paintings by an extremely vigorous and experimental treatment of often thickly applied paint. He frequently abandoned the brush altogether, applying paint in a variety of different ways, and was deeply interested in the expressive power of colour. Despite his position as the most important Irish artist of the 20th century (and the first to sell for over £1m), he took no pupils and allowed no one to watch him work, so he remains a unique figure. The artist closest to him in style is his friend, the Austrian painter, Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

.

Besides painting, Yeats had a significant interest in theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and in literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

. He was a close friend of Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

. He designed sets for the Abbey Theatre

Abbey Theatre

The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...

, and three of his own plays were also produced there. He wrote novels in a stream of consciousness style that Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 acknowledged, and also many essays. His literary works include The Careless Flower, The Amaranthers (much admired by Beckett), and The Charmed Life. Yeats's paintings usually bear poetic and evocative titles. Indeed, his father recognized that Jack was a far better painter than he, and also believed that 'some day I will be remembered as the father of a great poet, and the poet is Jack'. He was elected a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy

Royal Hibernian Academy

The Royal Hibernian Academy is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823.-History:The RHA was founded as the result of 30 Irish artists petitioning the government for a charter of incorporation...

 in 1916. He died in Dublin in 1957, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery

Mount Jerome Cemetery

Mount Jerome Cemetery is situated in Harold's Cross on the south side of Dublin, Ireland. Since its foundation in 1836, it has witnessed over 300,000 burials...

.

Unusually, Yeats holds the distinction of being Ireland's first medalist at the Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

 in the wake of creation of the Irish Free State

Irish Free State

The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

. At the 1924 Summer Olympics

1924 Summer Olympics

The 1924 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VIII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1924 in Paris, France...

 in Paris, Yeats' painting The Liffey Swim won a silver medal in the arts and culture segment

Art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics

Art competitions were held as part of the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Medals were awarded in five categories , for works inspired by sport-related themes....

 of the Games. In the competition records the painting is simply entitled Swimming.

Works

In November 2010, one of Yeats works, A Horseman Enters a Town at Night, painted in 1948 and previously owned by novelist Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

, sold for nearly £350,000 at a Christie's

Christie's

Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...

 auction in London. A smaller work, Man in a Room Thinking, painted in 1947, sold for £66,000 at the same auction. In 1999 the painting, The Wild Ones, had sold at Sotheby's

Sotheby's

Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...

in London for over £1.2m, the highest price yet paid for a Yeats painting.

Work in Collections

• The National Gallery, Dublin
• The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
• Crawford Art Gallery, Cork
• Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
• The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

External links

• Cuala Press Broadside Collection, illustrated by Jack B. Yeats is located at the Special Collections/Digital Library in Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University.
• The Only Art: Letters of JBY
• The Fourth John Butler Yeats Seminar, at the Swift Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin September 10-12, 2010 details