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Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871 - 1957)
Hearing the Nightingale (1936)
Oil on Board, 23 x 35cms
Signed
Provenance: From the collection of Dr Madeleine Dempsey who purchased it at the 1943 Dublin Exhibition.
Later sold in these rooms, February 4th, 1976 Cat No. 78 where purchased by the current owner
Exhibited: Jack B Yeats “Recent Paintings” Exhibition, Dunthorne Gallery London, Mar/Apr 1936,
Catalogue No. 11;
Group Exhibition, Leger Galleries, London, Apr/May 1942;
Jack B Yeats Exhibition, Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin, November 1943, Catalogue No. 7;
“Jack B Yeats Loan Exhibition” Jun/Jul 1945, Catalogue No. 94
Literature: “Jack B Yeats A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings” by Hilary Pyle, Catalogue
No. 481, (Vol 1) page 435
Hearing the Nightingale
is a deceptively simple but deeply evocative painting. A man and a woman stand,
barely perceptible, in the foreground of the work.They are situated, according to Hilary Pyle, on Richmond
Hill with an extensive view of the city of London before them.The close proximity of the couple to each other
suggests a romantic attachment which is added to by the allusive title of the work.
The view from Richmond Hill is one of the most famous in England, even being protected by royal decree.
It has been painted many times by English artists, most notably J.M.W. Turner. His ethereal landscapes and
his ability to use paint not only to evoke light and shade but to suggest the nuances of form as perceived by
the human eye are shared by Yeats. Despite living in the twentieth century and painting in a modernist style,
Yeats, like Turner, was fundamentally a romantic and his work is at its most appealing, as in this painting,
when it uses colour and form to stimulate the senses and the imagination of the viewer.The dexterous appli-
cation of colour in the painting is striking. The dark greens of the foliage contrast with the clear blue expanse
of sky that dominates the composition while the deep red of the middle foreground adds a sonorous note.The
pigment is vigorously worked and the paint surface has been scored into in places to add a sense of movement
such as that of the vegetation and the light wisps of cloud which gently stir around the static figures.
Yeats knew London well, having lived there in his teens and twenties and returning there regularly in later
life when his work was shown at various venues in the city, as this painting was on two occasions. But this, as
its title suggests, is not intended to be a topographical view. It is an evocation of a summer’s day and of the
effect of the sounds, sights and smells of nature on the senses. The title’s reference to a nightingale singing
suggests the fleeting passing of time and opens the viewer’s imagination to the sounds of a bird singing and
to the sweet and melodious call of the nightingale in particular.
Dr. Róisín Kennedy
March 2015
€25,000 - 35,000