Adam's Important Irish Art & Irish Historical Documents December 2016 : Click Lot Title for More Info

The False Morning Promise (1945)

Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14’’)

Signed

Provenance: Sold through the Waddington Galleries Dublin to Leslie Dacus 1945.

Exhibited: ‘Jack B. Yeats Exhibition’, Waddington Galleries London, April/May 1971, Cat. No13.

Literature: ‘Jack B. Yeats’ exhibition catalogue, London 1971, illustrated in colour; ‘Jack B. Yeats, Catalogue Raisonne of

the Oil Paintings’ by Hilary Pyle, London 1992, Cat. No.713.

Yeats painted a number of pure landscapes of Dublin Bay, Sligo and Donegal in 1945. Like this bright painting, many

of them focus on waterside scenery. The view looks across a span of water, with a pathway visible in the extreme left

foreground, to a hill with a cow grazing on the other side of the inlet. Two small boats, one dark blue, the other a muted

grey, bob on the surface of the water. In the middle left of the composition the water merges with the land forming a

glistening surface of reflected light. This leads the eye to the distant shapes and forms of hills and mountains and to the

sky beyond.

The paint is applied in varied and seemingly rapid strokes, in which touches of brown amidst the blue and white suggest

sand and dirt and the shadows of clouds above. Above all the physical surface of the painting conveys the idea of a

water sodden landscape that is constantly changing. The title gives a clue as to why this is happening. A calm sunny

morning is about to be overcome by threatening rain. The lightness of the palette creates, however, an optimistic mood

and evokes the freshness of the Irish countryside.

Dr Róisín Kennedy November 2016

€ 25,000 - 35,000