Adams
Lot 84
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
A Rose (1936)
Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14")
Signed
Provenance: Senator Joseph Brennan from the sale of whose collection purchased 1942 by John P. Reihill Snr; Deepwell, Blackrock, Co. Dublin
Exhibited:
-Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, Dublin, 1939, Cat. No. 355
-Exhibition by Irish Artists, presented by Victor Waddington Galleries in Waterford and Cork
-Paintings and Sculptures by Irish Artists, presented by Victor Waddington Galleries, RDS, Dublin, May 1941
-Jack B. Yeats: National Loan Exhibition, National College of Art & Design, Dublin, June-July 1945, Cat. No. 104
-Irish Art from Private Collections 1870-1930, Wexford Arts Centre, 1977, Cat. No. 40
Literature:
Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raissoné of the Oil Paintings, Hilary Pyle, 1992, Vol I, p.438, further illustrated Vol III p.207
Jack B. Yeats by Bruce Arnold, 1998, p.278-280, illustrated p.279
This is one of a series of four paintings of roses begun by Jack B. Yeats in the late summer of 1936. All are of the same proportion and three of them were shown together in the major Jack B. Yeats National Loan Exhibition in Dublin in 1945. But each work is a separate study and they were never intended to be shown together. Another The Rose in the Basin, (Private Collection, 1936) belonged to Kenneth Clarke and was included in the exhibition of Yeats's work that he curated at the National Gallery of London in 1942.
In 1936 when he began working on the series, Yeats wrote to the then director of the National Gallery of Ireland Thomas Bodkin, an old friend, telling him that he had 'painted a new subject for me - a rose'. The flower had in fact appeared in an earlier work, the Scene Painter's Rose, (Private Collection, 1927), where a rose in a vase stands on a table in the artist's studio, as a symbol of natural beauty in contrast to the artificiality of the artwork.
In A Rose he concentrates on the flower, rather than its surroundings. At the centre of the composition is the dark red form of the rose, drooping over the edge of a white basin on a mantelpiece. The blossom takes on a theatrical quality contrasting dramatically with its muted backdrop. The apparent simplicity of this traditional subject, a still-life painting of a flower, is challenged by the complex handling of colour and light in the work. The white wall against which the bowl is placed is constructed of vibrant flecks of blue, yellow, pink and green made from diverse brushstrokes. This suggests movement and life as opposed to the solemnity of the dark sculptural rose. It is testament to Yeats's ability as a painter that he can draw so much drama from such a simple device. Samuel Beckett was much taken with the paintings when he saw them on a visit to Yeats's studio. He referred to this work, the first to be completed, as 'the tyranny of the rose'. There is in fact something tyrannical or at least compelling about A Rose which while full of potent symbolism and beauty is at the same time fragile and transitory. The work subtly conveys both aspects of the subject while retaining its integrity as a complex painting in its own right.
Dr. Róisín Kennedy
Dublin September 2014
