Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

66 40 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957) The Bridge, Skibbereen (1919) Oil on canvas, 46 x 61cm (18 x 24”) Signed Provenance: Sold by the artist to Dr Carey, London, 1950; Victor Waddington, London; With Theo Wad- dington Fine Art; Private Collection, Dublin Exhibited: Dublin, August 1920, Society of Dublin Painters; Limerick, September 1945, Goodwin Gal- leries; New York, November 1971, Coe Kerr Gallery, Centennial Exhibition ; Dublin, September/October 2004, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Jack B. Yeats Amongst Friends , cat.no. 3; Dublin, October 2010, IMMA ‘ The Moderns ’ cat.no.17 (illus p.49); Skibbereen, Co. Cork, July/October 2018, Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger. Literature: Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings , Andre Deutsch, London 1992, No. 116, vol.1 € 400,000 - 600,000 In the summer of 1919 Jack B Yeats visited Skibbereen, in Co. Cork, drawing and sketching the surrounding landscape. He wrote to the American collector, John Quinn, telling him that ‘There was good painting ground near to the town. All the creeks and islands of the bay were delightful…’. [1] Yeats produced several oil paint- ings based on the scenery of Skibbereen and Schull. The Bridge, Skibbereen is the largest and most ambitious of these works and was exhibited at the inaugural show of the newly formed Society of Dublin Painters in 1920. Two boys and two young women stand on a bridge overlooking the river Ilen. Below them is an expansive view of the surrounding hills and the undulating flow of the water through the countryside. Two horses stand in the field below. The bridge is the old metal bridge which spanned the Ilen river and which was removed in 1963 and replaced by the more modern John F. Kennedy Bridge, the following year. The bridge was locat- ed beside the West Cork Hotel, a popular destination for tourists.[2] Its stone capstone and metal railings separate the figures from the view, creating an unusual and modern composition. The fashionably dressed young women seem to belong to the more urbane world of travel and fashion than that of the wild nature that extends before them. Their genteel poses are counteracted by those of the youths, one of whom has his arm around his companion’s shoulders, emphasizing their shared elation at observing the horses. The height of the surrounding hills has been exaggerated to create a more dramatic environment but one in which a sense of calm prevails. The outskirts of the town are visible on the hill to the left, with smoke emanat- ing from the chimneys and walled gardens extending down the bank. The distant mountain is made of tones of green and blue and the sky is streaked with salmon pink and grey clouds. This palette is subtly picked up in the pink and blue costumes of the women in the foreground, completing a tightly composed work in which all the components of form and colour subtly compliment and enrich each other. Dr Roisin Kennedy, May 2022 [1] Letter of Jack B. Yeats to John Quinn, 8 October 1919, quoted in H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Rai- sonne of the Oil Paintings, 1992, I, p.102. [2] I am grateful to Finola Finlay for this information.