148
100 Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
The Day’s First Customer (1952)
Oil on board, 35.5 x 45.7cm (14 x 18”)
Signed
Provenance: Purchased at the 1953 exhibition by Mrs. Jobling Purser, and later with Pyms Gallery, London, from
whom purchased circa 1993 by the current owner.
Exhibited :
Jack B. Yeats
Exhibition, Victor Waddington Galleries Dublin 1953, Cat. No. 4;
Jack B. Yeats - Loan Exhibition
New Gallery, Belfast June 1965, Cat. No. 10; and
An Ireland Imagined,
Pyms Gallery, London. Oct / Nov 1993 Cat. No. 66
Literature:
Jack. B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings
1992 by Hilary Pyle, Vol II Cat. No. 1119
p.1021; and
An Ireland Imagined,
1993 full page illustration p.99
This very late work by Jack B. Yeats shows a little boy entering a shop doorway on a sunny morning.The shopkeep-
er sits reading a newspaper at the end of the counter with his back to the door.The child holds a tin whistle in his
hand, alerting the man of his arrival through the sound of music. His small figure is literally sculpted out of paint.
He is built up in blends of blues and purples with golden highlights on his legs and head where the sunlight falls
on his body. Surrounded by a halo of intense light, with his long eye lashes and down cast face, he materializes like
an angelic apparition.
The sunlight makes a profound impact on the dark interior of the shop. It throws the features of the elderly
merchant into relief as he sits between two sources of light, the door and the window. He is engrossed in reading,
his face contorted into an expression of intense concentration. Behind him the red handled teapot suggests that
breakfast has just been finished. The counter and the interior walls reflect back the light in a cacophony of dark
reds and blues with flashes of green and yellow. This extraordinary construction of form through paint brings
every element of the scene to life and conveys with a remarkable intensity the physical sensation of standing in a
darkened interior on a hot sunny morning.
The relationship between youth and age, a favourite theme in Yeats’s work, is central to the painting. While the
elderly vendor is preoccupied with the concerns of the adult world and is fastened to one spot, the little boy belongs
to the realm of imagination where music and sweetshops are among the many pleasures that the day’s adventures
will bring.The amusing title brings to mind the positive impact that the arrival of the child has on the shopkeeper,
a passing encounter that enlivens the working day.
Dr. Roisin Kennedy
October 2013
€80,000 - 120,000
