Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25th September 2024

56 41 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871 - 1957) Two illustrations to ‘The Woman of Three Cows’ by James Clarence Mangan A pair, pen, ink and watercolour, 11.5 x 16cm (4½ x 6 ’’) Both signed, one with artist’s monogram, the other in full Provenance: John Lynes, Lanarkshire; Sale, these rooms, 10 February 2003; Private Collection Exhibited: Dublin, Stephen’s Green Gallery, ‘ Jack B. Yeats; Drawings and Pictures of Life in the West of Ireland ’’ No. 21 and 25; Dublin, The Gorry Gallery, March 2005, No. 39 and 40 Literature: A Broadside , No 4, seventh and last year (Sept 1914); Hilary Pyle, The Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats , Dublin 1994, p. 270, No. 1969, 1970 € 15,000 - 20,000 Jack B. Yeats first became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement when he lived in Devon, publishing ‘A Broad Sheet ’ and some little illustrated books for children with Elkin Mathews ,the London publisher. About the same time his sisters set out to Dublin to establish an Arts and Crafts co-operative with textile artist Evelyn Gleeson, marketing handcrafted embroideries for which Jack provided some designs, and establishing the Dun Emer private press for which he designed bookplates and prints. The sisters left Dun Emer in July 1908 to form their independent company – the Cuala Industries. This was one month after Elizabeth Yeats had issued the first number of Jack Yeats’s new illus- trated monthly publication from Dun Emer, ‘ A Broadside ’, which was to prove such a success under the Cuala imprint - running for seven years- and is today a much coveted col- lectors’ item. W.B. Yeats would revive ‘ A Broadside ’ nearly twenty years later – first with F.R. Higgins in 1935 and then with the writer Dorothy Wellesley in 1937 – where the em- phasis was on contemporary English as well as Irish poetry, and sometimes music was included. Jack Yeats, along with other artists, was to contribute illustrations to this later more specialised, still monthly publication. Jack B. Yeats’s ‘ Broadside ’ (1908-15) breathed the spirit of the Irish Renaissance. Original in its art and presentation, it looked back to traditional Irish broadsheets and broadsides of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where a sheet of popular verse was enlivened with a pictorial woodcut in black ink. ‘A Broad Sheet ’ (1902-3) which he published with Pamela Colman Smith, had consisted of a single large sheet of paper, but for ‘ A Broadside ’ he adopted a smaller format, a folded sheet with one or two illustrated poems on the first two pages and one large uncoloured picture on the third page. Patrons received individual issues in plain blue enve- lopes, and handsome blue portfolios issued later enabled regular subscribers to store complete sets. Yeats published poems by modern writers such as Pádraic Colum and James Stephens, as well as old ballads and patriotic songs appro- priate to the times. He did all the illustrations himself, and watercolour tinting was applied by hand under his instruc- tion by the women assistants at the Cuala Press. Mangan’s poem ‘ The Woman of Three Cows’ appeared in A Broadside in September 1914 in the seventh and last year of the set, when the subscription was 12/- a year, post free. James Clarence Mangan (1803 – 1847) was the essence of romanticism to lovers of Irish literature. ‘Born to unhappiness, dowered with a melancholy temper- ament and a drifting will, he never found natural joy save, like Thomas à Kempis, “in a nook with a book” and in the exercise of his art,’ scholars wrote later, lamenting that ‘like sundry other unhappy poets, he found joys less natural and sane in opium and alcohol.’ He worked sporadically in the Ordnance Survey Office, and as a cataloguer in Trinity Col- lege Library, encouraged in his writing by intellectuals of his day such as Petrie and Todd; and he is remembered par- ticularly for his recreations of traditional Irish poems such as ‘ Róisín Dubh’ (‘My Dark Rosaleen’ ), and ‘ The Woman of Three Cows ’, both of which appear regularly in anthologies of Irish verse. Yeats, made two illustrations for the poem – the third (uncoloured) illustration in this issue of ‘ A Broadside ’, is a fair scene, entitled ‘ Hoopla ’. Yeats seems to have gone to ‘ The Cabinet of Irish Literature ’ for his version of the poem. The collection of volumes of the 1880s had been revised recently and republished in the new extended edition of 1909 by his brother’s friend, Katharine Tynan Hinkson. Yeats included all nine verses printed there, and in this first illustration conveys the gist of the main part of the poem. A shabby man, whose attentions have been re- buffed, grasps his blackthorn and clutches his coat lapels at the same time as giving the stand-offish woman a piece of his mind (she meantime keeps a tight hand on the lid of her basket. He leans towards her, looking up into her haughty eyes, exclaiming – ‘you it seems are big with vain ideas’ (she