48
37
John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922)
Portrait of Jenny Yeats
Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 40.7 cms (20 x 16”)
Exhibited: Pyms Gallery, London,
Friendship Portraits
, 11th May
- 17th June 2005, cat. no. 1
Literature:
!e Art of a Nation: !ree Centuries of Irish Painting,
Pyms Gallery London June 2002, cat. no. 15
!e son of a Protestant rector from Sligo, John Butler Yeats was
born in Co. Down and studied Law at Trinity College, Dublin. In
1865 after the birth of his &rst child, the poet William Butler Yeats
he moved to London and joined Heatherley’s School of Art. He
became friends with J.T. Nettleship, George Wilson and Edwin
Ellis who were all keen to extend the ideals of the Pre-Raphaelites.
In 1872 Yeats produced his &rst portraits and in 1880 he returned
to Ireland showing regularly at the RHA. In 1908, after having
moved back to London in 1887, he emigrated permanently to New
York. He became friendly with Robert Henri and John Sloan, the
leaders of the Ash Can School. He showed regularly with members
of the school in New York whilst also enjoying the patronage of
John Quinn.
Yeats’ family, particularly his children, provided him with material
for portraits throughout his career. Here he paints his sister Jane
Grace or Jenny, named after their mother. Yeats, also gave the
same pair of names to his daughter who died in infancy. Like her
sister Grace Jane (Gracie) she remained unmarried living quietly
in Morehampton Road, in Donnybrook. !e ‘Morehampton Road
Yeats’ (also including his brother Isaac) represented the respectable
antithesis of the artist’s carefree and bohemian lifestyle, though
on occasion they dutifully turned up to certain important events
such as Susan Mitchell’s lecture on their brother in 1919. Isaac in
particular was a conservative bourgeois, secretary of the Artisan
Dwelling Company and a &rm unionist ‘if he ever had a daring
idea he successfully concealed it’. Surprisingly little information
survives about Jenny Yeats’s life, she hardly features in her brother’s
correspondence. She died shortly before the Second World War at
the age of ninety two.
As early as the mid 1870s, Yeats had portrayed Gracie (in a work
which was turned down by the Royal Academy), while the present
portrait of Jenny can be dated to the early 1890s. As such, it is a
rare early oil by the artist from his London period. Yeats himself
claimed that he did not lift a paint brush between 1890 and 1897.
!is is not quite true as a
Portrait of Ascheson Henderson
(Ulster
Museum) is dated 1891, certainly, however, it was a fallow period
in his career, during which he was more concerned with book
illustration and failed literary projects. Nevertheless the portrait
of his sister is an accomplished piece of painting with a strong
sense of modelling and neat simplicity of composition. It shows
Jenny, on a visit to London, conservatively dressed, perhaps even
a little prim, her attire contrasting with the oriental screen of the
background. William Butler in his autobiography recalled that
the family home in Bedford Park was decorated in the aesthetic
style with ‘peacock blue’ and the juxtaposition of his buttoned up
aunt with the sensual background, with all the connotations that
the aesthetic movement conjured up in London of the 1890s is
surely deliberate and not a little ironic
!&',###- &%,###
