ADAM'S - Important Irish Art Auction - 31st May 2017 (Click Lot title for more images and to Place Bid)

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66
Oil on panel, 23 x 36cm (9 x 14¼’’)
Signed
Provenance: Sold to Mr & Mrs Michael Burn in 1942; and later in the collection of Miss Harnett;
sold in Christie’s Irish Sale, Dublin, May 1989, where purchased; from the Collection of
the late Gillian Bowler.
Exhibited: Dublin RHA Annual Exhibition 1942, Catalogue No.187;
Jack B. Yeats Exhibition, York City Art Gallery, 1960, presented as part of
‘The York Festival’, Catalogue No. 22;
Images in Yeats Exhibition, Cente de Congrés, Monaco June 1990; The National Gallery of
Ireland July 1990, Catalogue No. 26.
Literature: Jack B. Yeats: An appreciation and Interpretation by Thomas MacGreevy, Dublin 1945, p.31/2;
Images in Yeats (1990) by Hilary Pyle, illustrated p.53, plate 26.
Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, by Hilary Pyle, Andre Deutsch 1992,
Catalogue No.518, p.477
Yeats painted this small vibrant work in 1941 at the beginning of one of the most productive decades of his ca-
reer. It depicts the countryside near the coastal Sligo town of Cliffony. According to Hilary Pyle, the view is looking
eastwards away from the town at the dramatic Dartry mountain range which includes such famous peaks as Ben
Bulben and Truskmore. The Bunduff river, which marks the border between Connaught and Ulster, is surging
through the foreground. On the extreme rights its banks are lined with saplings.
The paint is applied with great variety of technique, from the sketchy dark leaves of the trees to the sculptured
cliff faces of the mountains. The palette contrasts pale blues and mauves with bright reds and yellows. This
and the dynamic way in which the forms are depicted creates an animated surface, suggestive of the energy of
nature. The elements of rocky mountain, open sky and fast-flowing river are subtly demarcated by the lush co-
lours of the grass, trees and vegetation of the land. The countryside of north Sligo appears as a fluid, constantly
changing vista.
Pyle has suggested that Yeats made pure landscapes like Early Morning, Cliffony , as an alternative and perhaps
as a respite from his creation of large-scale fantasy works such as Tinkers Encampment, Blood of Abel, (1940,
Private Collection) and Two Travellers, (1943, Tate). The production of both kinds of painting flourished in his
oeuvre of the 1940s. Both refer to the West of Ireland and particularly to Sligo. The latter was closely connected
to Yeats’s childhood, the memories of which formed a crucial source for his painting at this later stage in his life.
Sligo also forms the backdrop to the myths and legends of ancient Ireland such as those associated with Queen
Medbh and Diarmuid and Grainne whose stories are connected to specific locations in the Dartry mountains.
Landscapes such as Early Morning, Cliffony were painted in the studio from memory, sometimes aided by earlier
sketches made on the spot. They can be understood as settings for human events and affairs both real and
imaginary. But as Thomas MacGreevy put it, ‘With Yeats, the landscape is as real as the figures. It has its own
character as they have theirs’.
Early Morning, Cliffony , with its yellow flecks of morning light and the vibrancy and movement of the foliage, sky
and water is an important example of this type of painting. It expresses the energy and drama of this terrain
as the artist remembers it and recreates it. On seeing the work at the RHA in 1942, MacGreevy described it as
‘a small gem of pure landscape’. It featured in the 1990 exhibition, Images in Yeats, shown at Monaco and the
National Gallery of Ireland, as a quintessential example of Yeats’s pure landscape paintings.
Dr Roisin Kennedy, April 2017
€ 25,000 - 35,000