Adam's Important Irish Art 12th June 2019

56 56 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957) A Lament for Art O’Leary (1940) A set of six illustrations, pen and ink, variously sized 14 x 18.4cm up to 20 x 16cm (5½ x 7¼’’ to 7¾ x 6¼’’) Variously signed, signed with monogram and with mono- gram stamp; Together with a 2nd edition, Cuala Press. A Lament for Art O’Leary. Translated from the Irish by Frank O’Connor, with six illustrations by Jack. B. Yeats RHA. Reprint, 1971, for the Irish University Press, T.M. MacGlinchey Publisher, Robert Hogg Printer Provenance: With Theo Waddington, Irish Art Project. Literature: Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats, Irish Academic Press, 1994, Catalogue No.1474, illustrated p.203, 204 and 205. € 12,000 - 18,000 Jack B. Yeats’s illustrations to A Lament for Art O’Leary are among his most expressive and memorable drawings. Cuala Press brought out a limited edition of 130 cop- ies of Frank O’Connor’s translation of the 18th century poem in 1940 for which Yeats supplied six pen and ink illustrations. These were hand-coloured by Eileen Colum and Kathleen Banfield of the Cuala Press in the printed edition. The poem is the celebrated Lament of Eileen O’Con- nell composed in Irish for the wake of her husband Art O’Leary who was murdered on the orders of the local magistrate Abraham Morris in 1773. O’Leary came from a landed Catholic family and served as a captain in the Hussars of the Austro-Hungarian army. The couple lived in Rathleigh House, near Macroom, Co. Cork. Eileen was of the O’Connell family of Derrynane, Co. Kerry and an aunt of the future politician, Daniel O’Connell. Preserved orally for generations, her Lament is one of the last mani- festations of the bardic poems of Gaelic Ireland. Frank O’Connor in his introduction to the poem, writes