To be loved as a cupboard: the Yeats Museum in the National Gallery of Ireland

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Fall-Winter, 2001 by Hilary Pyle

Often referred to as "JBY" (one of his forms of signature), John Butler Yeats (1839-1922) is as highly esteemed in New York as in his homeland. (9) This brilliant but itinerant parent spent his last fourteen years there. He was never to see his children again, except for the poet who visited him when on a lecture tour, but he corresponded with them at length. He could still influence artist and poet from a distance, though in spirit and habit they had both long since anchored in the land of their ancestors, and in particular in the Sligo their mother had taught them to love.

JBY's restless nature perhaps accounts for the way in which he continually reassessed and revised his method of working, always comparing his style with that of younger contemporaries. Consequently the likenesses he made of his sitters are generally lively and original. On entering the exhibition in the museum, the visitor is immediately confronted by his portraits of the two outstanding members of the family, Jack B. Yeats and his brother William. JBY seemed to prefer his own progeny as sitters, making several portraits of each. Thus he contributed to any opinions they formed of themselves and manipulated posterity's vision of their contrasting characters. Near William are JBY, in a late unfinished self-portrait (figure 3), and his wife, Susan Mary Pollexfen, portrayed in subdued browns after ten years of marriage, her demure and serious face framed by a modest bonnet. Lily, closest companion of their father, hangs near Jack, in a portrait rendered romantically by JBY as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Though the National Gallery has no portrait of Elizabeth (1868-1940), Jack's younger sister has been represented for the new museum's first two years by JBY's only oil of her, generously lent by the family. Her work will continue to be represented by examples of her watercolors or prints. A handpainted fan of 1905, bearing a verse from one of her brother's first collections cradled deliciously in pansies and crocuses, will be exhibited from time to time.

JBY's portraits of now historic personalities, friends, and acquaintances during the height of the Irish cultural and political movement are a feature of the museum. They include some remarkable, often forgotten, women: Violet Osborne, sister of the painter Walter Osborne; Ruth Heaven, sister of connoisseur patron Hugh Lane; and Rosa Butt, daughter of Isaac Butt, the Home Rule leader, for whom JBY devilled (10) while he trained for the Bar, before he had aspirations as an artist. His gift for child portraiture brought him from London to Dublin in the 1880s to paint for friends and others. At that time he painted the memorable Jack B. Yeats as a Boy.

Returning to Dublin once more, he painted the creators of the Literary Revival in captivating images: AE (George Russell) and Susan Mitchell, mystic poets who were editor and sub-editor, respectively, of Horace Plunkett's nationalist publication, the Irish Homestead; Standish O'Grady, who brought to life the heroes of Gaelic legend; Padraic Colum, poet and dramatist (a recent long-term loan); Maire nic Shiubhlaigh, the beautiful Abbey actress who also worked in Lily's embroidery workshop; Douglas Hyde (An Craoibhin Aoibhinn), founder of the Gaelic League and first President of Ireland; and the novelist George Moore, who himself immortalized, if spitefully, all those involved in the literary movement, and is seen in the oil as an elegant philosopher. Three portraits from JBY's American period were donated to the National Gallery in the 1960s and make an effective bridge to two canvases by Anne, his granddaughter. One of these, painted in the 1990s, is a reminder that the creativity of the Yeats family has yet to be quenched.