ADAM'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MAY 2026

60 27 JACK BUTLER YEATS RHA (1871-1957) The 1st Time Around Pen and ink, 16.5 x 23.5 cm (6½ x 9¼”) Signed and inscribed with title Provenance: With The Oriel Gallery, Dublin; Private Collection, Dublin € 10,000 - 15,000 This lively ink drawing by Jack B. Yeats illustrates a scene from J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World , first published in 1907 and set in Coun- ty Mayo. The subject is the mule race run along the strand near Michael Flaherty’s public house, a pivotal episode in which Christy Mahon further consolidates his status within the community. As the tide recedes, the course is marked out with flagpoles, and Christy is mounted on the “winkered mule”, to the encouragement of the onlookers. Yeats depicts the race with his characteristic energy and narrative clarity. Em- ploying the now outmoded but highly effective Victorian convention of show- ing the animals with all four legs airborne, he heightens the sense of speed and urgency. Two mounts, neck and neck, thunder past the flagpole marking the turn, while a third, ridden by a jockey in striped colours, strains to close the gap. In the foreground, two boys lie in the grass, witnessing the drama at close quarters, their presence anchoring the scene in everyday observation. The drawing captures much of the visual excitement and rough theatre of racing on the strand, a motif that appealed strongly to Yeats’s imagination. The composition was later reproduced as a print in 1913, hand-coloured and published by the Cuala Press, underscoring its importance within the artist’s graphic work inspired by Irish literature.