90
84
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
A Rose (1936)
Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14”)
Signed
Exhibited:
The Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition
1939 Cat. No. 255
Exhibited by Irish Artists
presented by the Victor Waddington Galleries in Waterford and
Cork.
Paintings and Sculptures by Irish Artists
presented by Victor Waddington Galleries RDS
Dublin May 1941
Jack B Yeats - National Loan Exhibition
NCAD June - July 1945 Cat. No. 104
Irish Art from Private Collections 1870 - 1930
Wexford Arts Centre 1977 Cat. No. 40
Literature:
Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings
Hilary Pyle 1992 Vol 1 p438 further
illustrated vol III p207
Jack B. Yeats
by Bruce Arnold 1998 p278 - 280n illustrated p279
Provenance: Senator Joseph Brennan from the sale of whose collection purchased 1942 by John P. Rehill Snr,
Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
This is one of a series of four paintings of roses begun by Jack B. Yeats in the late summer of 1936. All
are of the same proportion and three of them were shown together in the major Jack B. Yeats National
Loan Exhibition in Dublin in 1945. But each work is a separate study and they were never intended to
be shown together. Another
The Rose in the Basin,
(Private Collection, 1936) belonged to Kenneth Clarke
and was included in the exhibition of Yeats’s work that he curated at the National Gallery of London in
1942.
In 1936 when he began working on the series, Yeats wrote to the then director of the National Gallery
of Ireland Thomas Bodkin, an old friend, telling him that he had ‘painted a new subject for me – a rose’.
The flower had in fact appeared in an earlier work, the
Scene Painter’s Rose,
(Private Collection, 1927),
where a rose in a vase stands on a table in the artist’s studio, as a symbol of natural beauty in contrast to
the artificiality of the artwork.
In
A Rose
he concentrates on the flower, rather than its surroundings. At the centre of the composition is
the dark red form of the rose, drooping over the edge of a white basin on a mantelpiece.The blossom takes
on a theatrical quality contrasting dramatically with its muted backdrop.The apparent simplicity of this
traditional subject, a still-life painting of a flower, is challenged by the complex handling of colour and
light in the work.The white wall against which the bowl is placed is constructed of vibrant flecks of blue,
yellow, pink and green made from diverse brushstrokes. This suggests movement and life as opposed to
the solemnity of the dark sculptural rose. It is testament to Yeats’s ability as a painter that he can draw so
much drama from such a simple device. Samuel Beckett was much taken with the paintings when he saw
them on a visit to Yeats’s studio. He referred to this work, the first to be completed, as ‘the tyranny of the
rose’.There is in fact something tyrannical or at least compelling about
A Rose
which while full of potent
symbolism and beauty is at the same time fragile and transitory. The work subtly conveys both aspects of
the subject while retaining its integrity as a complex painting in its own right.
Dr. Róisín Kennedy
Dublin September 2014
€40,000 - 60,000
