Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) GLENCAR, SLIGO, 1949 oil on panel signed lower left; inscribed on reverse; also with exhibition labels on reverse 9 by 14in., 22.86 by 35.56cm. Waddington Galleries, London; Whence purchased by Capt. C. S. Collinson, Jan. 1950; Harold Diamond, New York, 1958; Joseph H. Hirschhorn, New York, 1958-66; Hirschhorn Museum, Washington DC; Christies, London, 10 May 2007, lot 93; Whence purchased by present owner Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings II, London, 1992, p.876, no. 968 (illustrated) and III, p.497 (illustrated) Glencar Waterfall is situated north of Sligo town and is made up of three falls, the highest of which is fifty feet. It flows into the lake of Glencar, inland from Drumcliffe, where Yeats`s grandfather was rector for many years and where his brother, William was buried. Jack Yeats and his siblings visited Glencar as children when they were staying with their mother`s family in Sligo. There are two crannógs in the nearby lake, adding to the sense of mystery evoked by the waterfall and the surrounding countryside. W. B. Yeats used the locality as a setting for his early poem, The Stolen Child - Where the wandering water gushes From the hills above Glen-Car, In pools among the rushes That scarce would bathe a star ... (W. B. Yeats, The Stolen Child, 1886) The waterfall became an important symbol of Jack`s youth and of the beauty of the West in his oil paintings. Glencar Waterfall appears in a number of works, most famously as the backdrop to In Memory of Boucicault and Bianconi, 1937 (National Gallery of Ireland). Glencar is known for its rich vegetation. According to Hilary Pyle`s description of the waterfall, it flows through fields of wild garlic and rhododendrons and tall trees surround it.1 Yeats` painting, with its use of rich blues and greens, and its touches of yellow and deep red, recreates the sensuous experience of standing in such a place. The pale form of the water contrasts with its verdant surroundings. Yeats uses a low viewpoint which brings the viewer into the centre of the landscape. Rather than setting the waterfall in the middle of the composition, Yeats sets it to the left-hand side and frames it with the surrounding shrubbery, as if one had suddenly come across this wondrous sight. In its evocation of the lushness of the Irish countryside the painting is prophetic of the later treatment of the Irish landscape as an intimate and mysterious subject by such artists as Seán McSweeney and Barrie Cooke. Yeats` treatment of the pigment in the painting is also interesting in terms of later Irish landscape painting. He is very concerned with the handling of the paint surface. The waterfall is painted, at least partly, over the dark green pigment of the foliage. It is a flat, opaque element in the composition which differentiates it from its surroundings. Yeats departs from all the usual landscape conventions and creates, instead, a remarkable painting in which his complex treatment of the surface takes precedence over other pictorial concerns. Dr Róisín Kennedy 1 Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Biography, 1970, p. 19. "
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Susan Mary (`Lily`) Yeats (1866-1949) and R. Brigid Ganly (neé O`Brien) HRHA (1909-2002) THE PROUD AND CARELESS NOTES LIVE ON BUT BLESS OUR HANDS THAT EBB AWAY" c.1919-1921 embroidered threads on green silk; (framed) signed by Yeats within the design lower right; signed "B. O`Brien" lower left 11.5 by 14.5in., 29.21 by 36.83cm. This extremely rare, well preserved embroidered panel illustrates the final refrain intoned by the Three Voices in unison at the end of W.B. Yeats` poem entitled The Players ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and themselves from his collection of lyrical poems, In the Seven Woods: being Poems chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age, which his sister Elizabeth had published as her first Dún Emer Press hand-printed volume in 1903. In 1902, Elizabeth Yeats and her elder sister Lily had returned to Ireland from London at the invitation of Evelyn Gleeson, to set up workshops in the Arts and Crafts venture Gleeson was establishing at Dún Emer, a large house in Dundrum, south of Dublin. While Elizabeth Yeats set up a handpress and began printing and binding books advised by her literary brother, William Butler Yeats, Lily Yeats, a skilled needlewoman (who had been trained by William Morris` daughter, May), focussed on embroidery, often designed by their younger artistic brother, Jack Butler Yeats. By 1904, she had seven girls working with her. In 1908, the sisters seceded from Dún Emer and set up their own Cuala Industries nearby, where Lily Yeats continued to run her embroidery workshop, often adapting the designs of other artists, and producing a wide range of embroidered domestic and autonomous panels. After continual ill health, she became so ill that production was considerably diminished in the mid 1920s. The last sale of embroidery under her direction was held in 1931, under great financial duress, and in 1932 the Cuala embroidery department wound down in its Baggot Street home. This panel (described by Lily Yeats as one of her `needle pictures`) was designed by Brigid O`Brien, daughter of the painter Dermod O`Brien, who was trained at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, under Oliver Sheppard, Seán Keating, Patrick Tuohy and Oswald Reeves, and at the RHA Schools. In 1928, she was elected an ARHA. Barbara Dawson has noted her willingness to apply her training to various projects and media, including caricature and book illustration. Joseph McBrinn records that she won the Taylor Scholarship in 1929 and in 1930 while she was completing her first mural illustrating St. Patrick, for the Presentation Convent school on George`s Hill, Dublin. Her first major commission, completed in 1930, was for a painted frieze over 120 feet long illustrating James Stephens` version of The Boyhood of Fionn (published with Arthur Rackham`s illustrations in 1924) for the Carnegie Trust`s Child Welfare Centre on Cork Hill, Dublin. Although this major work is now no longer visible, having been vandalised by being over-painted, it is directly analogous with this fine little tableau. A later, primitivistly stylised, predominantly black and white embroidered version (unsigned by O`Brien) illustrating the same lines from Yeats` poem was dated by the artist to 1935 in the Hugh Lane exhibition catalogue (p.8). The Yeats` were neighbours of the O`Briens, who lived in Fitzwilliam Square, and frequented the nearby United Arts Club, where the paths of W.B.Yeats and Brigid O`Brien`s father, the painter Dermod, often crossed. In 1929, W.B. Yeats had commissioned the young painter to try and boost his sister Lily`s precarious income by designing Stations of the Cross for her to embroider on Irish silk poplin. What is unusual about this very beautifully worked panel is the delicate fineness of the pale green silk ground and the lively, evocative portrayal of each of the three figures depicted between the two scrolls bearing the text they illustrate. There is much more attention to narrative detail and to the range and application of stitches carefully chosen than in any other Cuala embroidery of this late period. Not since the embroidered sodality banners of 1902-3 for Loughrea Cathedral had Lily Yeats produced such successful and expressive figurative work. Although the scale is small, close attention reveals the variety of couched and stemmed stitches used to outline and fill in the costumes, hands and features (particularly expressive), hair and musical instruments of the imaginatively dressed, lamenting musicians. The direction the stitches follow is an intrinsic part of the success of this panel`s design, as they emphasize the volume of the surface they are describing, and draw the viewer`s attention to the positions of the hands plucking the chords on each musical instrument. Despite the obvious graphic influences of Beatrice Elvery, Mary Cottenham Yeats and Wilhelmina Geddes (particularly the latter`s St. Brendan embroidered panel of 1924) and that of Jack Yeats in his early predilection for figures standing high above a low, recognisably Irish, horizon, this design is strikingly original. The colours are distinctive with their soft pinks, turquoise, jade and gold, even though there may be some fading on the golden-haired girl player`s delicately worked spotted dress, flouncy petticoat and slippers. The welcome appearance of this panel makes it all the more important that others, such as Tobias and the Angel, similarly designed by O`Brien and worked by Lily Yeats, be traced and documented. Dr Nicola Gordon Bowe November 2012 Literature: R. Brigid Ganly, H.R.H.A.: born 1909: retrospective exhibition, Gorry Gallery, Dublin December 4th -17th 1987; Maureen Murphy (ed.), I call to the Eye of the Mind: A Memoir by Sara Hyland (Dublin 1995); Nicola Gordon Bowe and Elizabeth S. Cumming, The Arts and Crafts Movements in Dublin and Edinburgh 1885 - 19325 (Dublin 1998); Barbara Dawson in Christina Kennedy & Maime Winters (eds.), Brigid Ganly retrospective: catalogue of an exhibition at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin 1998; Joseph McBrinn, Mural Painting in Ireland 1855-1959, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Volume II, N.C.A.D. (N.U.I.), Dublin 2007"
William Percy French (1854-1920) CONTEMPLATION oil on board inscribed on reverse with title and medium; also with Oriel Gallery label on reverse 15 by 12in., 38.1 by 30.48cm. The Oriel Gallery, Dublin; Private collection Further inscription on reverse reads: "panel from Percy French door". A rare oil by French, best known for his watercolours. This was one of four panels on a door."
A Geo V infantry officer’s service sword, plain, slightly curved, fullered blade 32½”, with owner’s name “A N Bain” etched on backstrap at forte, non standard pierced semi basket guard incorporating crowned GVR cypher, broadly thickened inner edge, plain pommel, backstrap with hatched panel, wirebound fishskin grip, with leather knot in its brown leather scabbard (tip AF) with frog; see lot 1286 for related items
A WWII period Japanese naval officer’s sword, plated shallow fullered blade 25½”, with narrow back fuller, gilt hilt with turn down inner portion which locks to scabbard, flaral panel into knucklebow, cap shaped floral pommel and backstrap, wirebound fishskin grip, in its leather scabbard with gilt floral mounts and 2 rings. See Gregory pp 58/59. GC (hilt loose) Plate 3
A late 17th century sword, DE blade 30½”, with short central fuller, hilt of Hounslow hanger type with pierced turn down outer shell guard and similar turned up inner guard, flattened knucklebow with central lion’s head panel, floral embossed pommel, leather grip. GC for age (some wear and pitting, dark patina to blade) Plate 7
A 19th Century Mahogany Apothecary`s Box, with hinged lid enclosing four compartments for bottles (only one freeblown bottle in box), above the hinged front panel enclosing seven drawers and six bottle compartments, with a hinged panel to the back enclosing eight bottle compartments (containing three bottles), brass carrying handles to the side, raised on bracket feet, 38cm tall by 28.5cm wide
Two Persian camel bags, two further camel bags converted to cushions, various other Nomadic textiles, a hand mirror with Persian polo scene to back, and a floral jacket CONDITION REPORTS All with wear and dirt and some damage and losses. Square embroidered panel extremely worn, dirty and with losses, and fabric deteriorating.
A 19th Century French gilt spelter mantel clock, the circular dial with blue and white enamel Roman numerals flanked by dog head urn supports to a shaped base on claw feet, surmounted by figure of Diana, the Goddess of Hunting, under a glass dome CONDITION REPORTS Glass dome with large chunk broken off and some chips and losses. General wear and scuffs. Base with scratches and scuffs. Clock with back panel missing. Some damage to the top where the figure appears to have broken off or been added and there are splits and holes to the top of the drum section of the clock. Overall with tarnish, dirt and scuffs and some losses. The clock does not have a glass face. Generally some chips and scuffs. We can make no guarantees as to whether or not complete nor whether in working order.
An 18th Century Dutch brass tobacco box with foliate scroll decoration, the front with a white metal portrait bust of a gentleman in military uniform, an 18th Century Dutch brass/copper tobacco box, the lid decorated with a Bacchanalian feast with figures playing music, a couple in flagrante and further figures with script, an early 19th Century Dutch copper and brass tobacco box with foliate scroll decoration of cherubs, beehives, figures with two script panels, the base decorated with figural panel depicting courting couple and Cupid, an 18th Century Dutch brass tobacco box, the lid embossed and decorated with a stag hunting scene bearing inscription, the base with a view of Rotterdam, signed "I:H:Hamer" flanking a heraldic shield with four rampant lions and an 18th Century brass rectangular lidded box with foliate engraved decoration to the lid inscribed "A. Walker" (5) CONDITION REPORTS All with quite heavy wear and scuffs, various knocks and dents. Some splits and repairs.
An 18th Century Dutch brass and copper tobacco box, the hinged lid decorated with central medallion depicting a figure with stag's head and further figures looking on, inscribed "Vartwel", the base with further figural panel decoration, script and sunbursts, an 18th Century Dutch copper tobacco box, the hinged lid decorated with central figural panel flanked by further figures with scrolling foliate edge and an 18th Century brass and copper tobacco box, the hinged lid depicting Christ with the Apostles in various scenes over plain sides, the base depicting Paul and other Biblical figures and a 19th Century brass snuff box, the hinged lid with embossed decoration depicting a stag hunting scene with huntsmen and hounds, the base inscribed "A Bladen Furnace Lane" (4)
A figured mahogany slim single door cupboard on splayed feet, three table top display cases, two fold-over card table tops, a butler's tray stand, pine wall rack, shell decorated cornice, octagonal occasional table, Victorian walnut work table top (base missing), Victorian rosewood Canterbury base, an ebonised and marquetry inlaid table top, rosewood occasional table (legs cut down), painted pedestal occasional table, Victorian rosewood framed footstool, six various stools and a carved wall panel section
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