search.noResults

search.searching

dataCollection.invalidEmail
note.createNoteMessage

search.noResults

search.searching

orderForm.title

orderForm.productCode
orderForm.description
orderForm.quantity
orderForm.itemPrice
orderForm.price
orderForm.totalPrice
orderForm.deliveryDetails.billingAddress
orderForm.deliveryDetails.deliveryAddress
orderForm.noItems
Technique and materials


The oil paint is applied in dabs, freely painted direct from the brush, without blending. Outlines are reduced to a minimum, allowing changes of colour to create the forms. The brush marks are particularly clear in the highlights on the mother’s dress.


Influences


Orpen’s understanding of Impressionism can clearly be seen in this painting, though he generally painted in more earthy colours and a more traditional manner.


The influence of the literary movement and the Celtic Revival


By the early 20th century there was a search for a national Irish identity in literary circles. Plays, poetry and novels sought ‘the real people of Ireland’. This subject soon found its way into art. Themes from mythology, the people and the landscape of Ireland were taken up by the younger generation of artists. The art of the past, particularly from the Christian Celtic period, became a popular reference for artists and craft workers.


New techniques from French art were combined with the older academic training in composition and drawing.


Jack Butler Yeats (1871–1957)


Son of the portrait painter John Butler Yeats and brother of the poet W. B. Yeats, Jack was born in London but spent much of his childhood in Co. Sligo with his grandparents.


He went to art school in London and spent his early career as an illustrator of magazines,


papers and books. These illustrations were tightly composed, drawn in strong line. An impish sense of humour sometimes appears.


From the 1890s to the early 1900s Yeats painted watercolours of everyday characters and events in England, such as races, markets and street scenes. The Man from Arranmore (Fig. 7.12), made on a trip to the Aran Islands, is in this style.


In the early 1900s Yeats moved back to Ireland and began painting in oils. His subjects were still everyday scenes. The Double Jockey Act from 1916 is typical of the moments of tension and action that he liked to paint.


By the 1920s he had developed a more fluent painting style. The Liffey Swim (Fig. 7.13) won a silver medal in the Arts and Culture section of the Paris Olympics of 1924 (Arts and Culture are no longer part of the Olympics). The painting shows the strong brush marks and brighter colours of this stage of his development.


Yeats began to paint more from memory than direct observation in the 1930s. He was developing a style with bold brush marks, thick paint and strong colours, which combined to create a sense of movement and change. In Memory of Boucicault and Bianconi (1937) recalls a scene from Yeats’s childhood in Sligo.


Yeats was a very private person. He did not allow anyone to watch him paint, he took no pupils and he gave no lectures, allowing his art to speak for him.


Grief Subject


This painting may be based on one of Yeats’s sketches, Let There Be No More War. There are buildings in the background suggesting a street. The central figure is a man on a white horse surrounded by armed soldiers. In the right foreground is a figure of a woman holding a blonde child, while to the left an old man reaches out his


CHAPTER 7: IRISH ART IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES 133


ART IN IRELAND


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93