Adams Important Irish Art 23rd March 2016 : You can Download a PDF Version from the Bottom Menu Down Arrow Icon

Oil on panel, 23 x 36cm (9 x 14’’)

Signed, also inscribed verso

Provenance: Private Collection, purchased directly from Victor Waddington Gallery, Dublin.

Literature: Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats - A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings No.719.

Man Reading

depicts a scene of quiet contemplation in a public house in the middle of the day. Three oddly congenial companions

stand at the bar. A view of the empty street outside and the semi-circular shaped fanlights of its Georgian doorways are clearly

discernible. One of the men stands reading with his hand in his pocket. His other hand supports his head as he gazes in close

concentration at the pages of his book. The barmaid and another customer look on, each lost in their own thoughts.

The theme of the public house was a recurring one in Jack Yeats’s work and as Hilary Pyle has noted ‘bartenders were as inter-

esting to him as the people drinking in the pubs’. In this work the barmaid appears suitably sympathetic and aloof allowing her

customers to enjoy their solitude. The way in which the work is constructed is deliberately at odds with its calm subject. Its vigour

and complexity intensifies the sense of silence that pervades the picture. The cold blue light that emanates from the window sev-

ers the composition transforming the woman into a pale ghostlike figure. Her pallor contrasts with the strong red of the counter

and the cacophony of colours that make up the profile of the man on the left and the jacket and trousers of the reader. Flecks

of strong reds, yellows, blues and pinks bring vibrancy and immediacy to this vista of repose. The counter acts both as a physical

barrier between the three and as a symbol of the emotional neutrality provided by the commercial premises in which they have

come together. The dominant form of the window can be read as an allusion both to the outside world and to the inner thoughts

and concerns of the figures.

In the mid 1920s Yeats painted a number of pub interiors including

The Railway Bar

(1924, Private Collection) and

The Bar

(1925,

Private Collection). In the mid 1940s he returned to the subject with this work and several others such as

Bartender Reading a Letter

(1943, Private Collection) and

The Quiet Man

(1943, Private Collection). The latter, like

Man Reading

, are daytime scenes in which

both staff and customers enjoy the tranquil and peaceful ambiance of a deserted pub. The emphasis is not on drinking but on the

dark cool interior of this liminal space that is both public and intensely private. Like other features of modernity such as the railway

carriage, the theatre, the tram and the shop, the public house allowed Yeats the opportunity of observing his fellow men and

women engaged in the informal rituals of social interaction associated with such spaces. For Yeats and clearly for the figures in

this painting, a pub was not a place to get drunk in, but a refuge where one could think, read or converse and while away an hour

or two in a hospitable atmosphere.

Dr.Roisin Kennedy

February 2016

€ 60,000 - 90,000