Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 4 DECEMBER 2024

ulations, their nervous grace, their spirit.” The meticulous attention to detail of artist and trainer, their prolific output and their success and acclimation unite O’Brien and Yeats in the public imagination. “Yeats displayed a great affection for horses throughout his career. Horses feature promi- nently in his work, from his earliest watercol- ours of life in the west of Ireland to his later, more esoteric paintings” say the National Gallery of Ireland, referencing another Yeats painting in their collection. Jack B. Yeats “received many public honours during his lifetime, being acknowledged as the greatest artist of the first half of the 20th century and a strong influence on his contem- poraries” says his citation in Modern Irish Lives (Gill & Macmillan), something that could equally be said of Vincent O’Brien. It is often forgotten that Jack B. Yeats also won Ireland’s first Olympic medal in 1924, a bronze, for his painting The Liffey Swim , when art was then part of the Olympics Games. The two ‘horse paintings’ acquired by Vincent O’Brien are the richly coloured Horsemen (1947) and He Reads a Book (1953), described by Yeats expert Hilary Pyle in her catalogue of his work, as a “delightful image…arising from some incident witnessed by the artist.” This rare combination also chimes with Jacqueline O’Brien’s consuming interest in books, writing and photography. The other paintings from the Vincent and Jac- queline O’Brien collection are the early Yeats, Willie Reilly (1902) which shows a ballad singer on stage, most likely singing The Coleen Bawn ( An Cailín Bán ). The painting was originally bought by American/Irish lawyer, John Quinn, a patron of the Yeats’ – poet and artist - and of James Joyce, from who he acquired the manu- script of Ulysses. The fourth Yeats in the collection, The Window with a View of the Town (1951) shows a man and boy looking towards a distant church steeple and was originally purchased by the Cork born heiress, Mabel Spiro, who was the second wife of Dublin and London gallery owner, Victor Waddington. The four Yeats paintings, along with the Orpen, hung in Ballydoyle House until Vincent O’Brien retired from training and his place was taken by Aidan O’Brien (no relation) in 1996. He has since emulated ‘The Master’ as a horse train- er of unparalleled excellence and trains for Coolmore, the world-wide breeding enterprise established by Vincent O’Brien, his son-in-law John Magnier and Pools heir, Robert Sangster. The O’Brien’s later moved to the K-Club in Co. Kildare and since 2017 the paintings which had been in their possession since 1971, have been on loan to the National Gallery of Ireland. The fifth O’Brien painting in the sale is the evocative William Orpen, Old John’s Cottage, Connemara (1908) which shows Seán and Máire Geoghegan sitting stoically by the fire in their humble Mayo cottage after their grand-daugh- ter’s Farewell Party, known as an ‘American Wake’ and painted at a time when they were unlikely ever to see her again. This large and beautifully executed painting was first purchased for £200 by the immense- ly wealthy American heiress Mrs. Evelyn St. George who became Orpen’s lover the same year (1908). The pair later scandalised high society in Dublin and London by having a child together. What united Jack B. Yeats and Vincent O’Brien was the ability to see with the ‘artists eye’ what others do not. Both reached the pinnacle of achievement in their chosen spheres, because O’Brien was never prepared to settle for sec- ond best, and Yeats was a single-minded artist of vision and talent. The result is this remarkable collection of paint- ings Vincent and Jacqueline were enabled to buy by his exploits on the turf and whose repu- tation, like that of Yeats and Orpen, has grown, rather than diminished with the decades. Liam Collins