Beschreibung:

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) Low Water, Spring-Tide, Clifden Oil on canvas board, 26.5 x 38cm (10½ x 15'') Signed Provenance: Sold in 1906 to Oliver St. John Gogarty; Miss Brenda Gogarty, later Mrs. Desmond Williams Tullamore; Adam's, Sale 13/12/84, Lot 120; With Hendriks Gallery Dublin; Adam's, Sale 7/12/2005, Lot 90; Private Collection Dublin. Exhibited: Jack B. Yeats exhibition 'Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland', Leinster Hall Dublin, 1st-20th October 1906, Catalogue No.25 (this was the only oil shown); Jack B. Yeats National Loan exhibition, Dublin June-July 1945, Catalogue No.1; Jack B. Yeats Loan Collection, Sligo town hall, August 1961, Catalogue No.26; 'Jack B. Yeats, A Centenary Exhibition', National Gallery of Ireland, September-December 1971, Ulster Museum Belfast, January-February 1972, New York Cultural Center, April-June 1972, Catalogue No.26. Literature: 'Jack B. Yeats, A Centenary Exhibition', illustrated p.43 plate 26; 'Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonneé of the Oil Paintings', Hilary Pyle, vol.1, page 5, Catalogue No.4, illustrated, illustrated again vol. III, page 2, figure 4. Yeats referred to Low Water, Spring-Tide, Clifden, in a letter to its owner Brenda Williams, as his first oil landscape. The artist stayed in Connemara and sketched the scenery on several occasions in his career. This work was painted on one of his earlier expeditions in the late summer of 1906 when he stayed in Clifden. It was probably painted on the spot unlike his later oils which were constructed entirely in the studio. The paint is thin and evenly applied, rather in the manner of a watercolour, a technique that Yeats was more familiar with at this time. The view is of Clifden bay with rivulets of sea water and muddy banks left behind by the outflowing tide. The horizon is dominated by the high forms of the surrounding mountains. A large stack of seaweed is mirrored by the conical shape of the white stone bollard on the quayside in the extreme foreground of the composition. This creates a dramatic contrast between the man-made environment, barely seen in the foreground, and the vagaries of the natural world that prevail in this view of Connemara. The dominant tones are pale blue-white and deep brown but these colours contain a myriad of shades and variations indicating the richness of the landscape and the intensity of the scenery. Through the flatness of the perspective and the rich working of the brushstrokes which is particularly evident in the treatment of the sea-water, Yeats also stresses the physical surface of the painting and its construction. The subject of the coast-line was to become an important theme in Yeatss later works where low and high tides allow for an exploration of the liminality of such spaces, belonging neither to land nor sea. Low Water, Spring-tide was the only oil painting included in Yeatss one man show, Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland, at Leinster Hall, Dublin in 1906. It was bought by the surgeon and writer, Oliver St. John Gogarty who went on to acquire several other works by Yeats. Gogarty was an admirer of Connemara, acquiring Renvyle House in 1917. His daughter, Brenda, later Mrs Desmond Williams inherited this work along with other paintings by Yeats. Róisín Kennedy May 2019 1. Letter of Jack B. Yeats to Mrs. Desmond Williams 19 May 1945, quoted in Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, André Deutsch 1991, I, p. 5. Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) Low Water, Spring-Tide, Clifden Oil on canvas board, 26.5 x 38cm (10½ x 15'') Signed Provenance: Sold in 1906 to Oliver St. John Gogarty; Miss Brenda Gogarty, later Mrs. Desmond Williams Tullamore; Adam's, Sale 13/12/84, Lot 120; With Hendriks Gallery Dublin; Adam's, Sale 7/12/2005, Lot 90; Private Collection Dublin. Exhibited: Jack B. Yeats exhibition 'Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland', Leinster Hall Dublin, 1st-20th October 1906, Catalogue No.25 (this was the only oil shown); Jack B.