NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND

ARTISTS

JACK B. YEATS

JOHN B. YEATS

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

WILLIAM HOGARTH

LOUIS LE BROCQUY

GABRIEL METSU

HENRY RAEBURN

JOSHUA REYNOLDS

JOHN S. SARGENT

JACK B. YEATS

Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was an Irish artist.

Yeats's early style was that of an illustrator and almost a cartoonist (he produced the first cartoon strip version of Sherlock Holmes in 1894); he only began to work regularly in oils in 1906. His early pictures are simple lyrical depictions of landscapes and figures, predominantly from the west of Ireland (especially his boyhood home of Sligo). There is a certain element of Romanticism in this work, but it is grounded in fine observation and brilliant draughtsmanship. Beginning around 1920, Yeats developed into an intensely Expressionist artist, moving from illustration to Symbolism. He was sympathetic to the Irish Republican cause, but not politically active. However, he believed that “a painter must be part of the land and of the life he paints”. Yeats's favourite subjects include the Irish landscape (and sky), horses, the circus and travelling players. His early paintings and drawings are distinguished by an energetic simplicity of line and colour, his later paintings by an extremely vigorous and experimental treatment of often thickly applied paint. He was deeply interested in the expressive power of colour. Despite his position as the most important Irish artist of the twentieth century (and the first to sell for over £1m), he took no pupils and allowed no one watch him work, so he remains a unique figure.

Besides painting, Yeats had a significant interest in theatre and in literature. He designed sets for the Abbey Theatre, but three of his own plays were also produced there. He wrote novels in a stream of consciousness style that Joyce acknowledged, and also many essays. Yeats's paintings usually bear poetic and evocative titles. He was the youngest son of Irish portraitist John Butler Yeats, and the brother of the Nobel Prize winning poet William Butler Yeats, both of whom fully acknowledged all his talents.

WORKS: The Liffey Swim

JOHN B. YEATS

Born in March 16, 1839 in Tullylish, County Down, Ireland. John Butler Yeats attended Trinity College, Dublin and studied law at King’s Inn. He was admitted to the bar in 1866 and had a short-lived career as a barrister before pursuing his love of drawing in 1867.

John Butler Yeats attended Heatherleys Art School in London and his portraits were frequently commissioned. A poor businessman, however, he and his family were never financially secure. The father of poet William Butler Yeats and painter and illustrator Jack Butler Yeats, the artist’s portrait of the former is one of his most famous. It is housed among others in the Yeats museum in the National Gallery of Ireland. His 1904 portrait of John O'Leary is considered to be his masterpiece.

John Butler Yeats moved several times between England and Ireland throughout his life. At age 69 in 1907, he moved to New York City, where he lived for 14 years. While there, he roomed in a boarding house and communed with artists, intellectuals, and writers, among them the Ashcan School of painters. John Butler Yeats never returned to Ireland, though he stayed in contact with his family and friends through extensive correspondence.

WORKS: Portrait of John O'Leary

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727, the son of John Gainsborough, a cloth merchant living in Sudbury, Suffolk. It was not long before the younger Gainsborough showed a marked talent for art, and at the tender age of 13 he was sent to London to study.

For the next 8 years Gainsborough studied in London under the engraver Gravelot. He also became familiar with the Flemish style of painting which was then very popular with art dealers.

During his stay in London, Gainsborough painted the King George III and Queen Charlotte. Before his death in 1788, he turned from portraiture to pictorial compositions, producing in all some 200 landscapes in addition to his prolific output of about 800 portraits of the English aristocracy.

Gainsborough himself considered landscape painting to be his strong suit, although it is his portrait work that gives him lasting fame.

Gainsborough is unique as an artist in that he neither sought nor accepted students. Nor did he undertake the almost obligatory Grand Tour of Italy and France to study classical art and antiquities.

WORKS: Mrs. Christopher Horton

WILLIAM HOGARTH

William Hogarth was born in 1697 in Smithfields, London, the son of Latin teacher Richard Hogarth. The elder Hogarth later opened a coffee house, but the venture was a disaster, and he was jailed in Fleet Street prison when he was unable to pay his debts.

William later apprenticed as a silverplate engraver to master engraver Ellis Gamble. When his apprenticeship period ended, Hogarth went into business for himself. It was at this period of his life that Hogarth met a man who was to prove an inspiration for his future career, artist Sir James Thornhill. Hogarth attended classes at Thornhill's free art academy in Covent Garden, became friends with the artist, and eventuially married his daughter, Jane.

Hogarth worked for print sellers, and also published his own work, notably the moralistic tale The Harlot's Progress (1732). The following year he began his famous series The Rake's Progress, showing the decline of a young man into a life of drunkeness and immorality.

A successful artist in his own right now, Hogarth managed to use his influence to press passage of a law aimed at preventing publication of artist's works without payment of royalties. He also helped found the St. Martin's Lane Academy for young artists.

WORKS: - The Western Family

- The Mackinen Children

LOUIS LE BROCQUY

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Louis le Brocquy is one of the foremost Irish painters of the twentieth century. His work has received much international attention and many accolades in a career that spans seventy years of creative practice. In 1956, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale, winning the Premio Acquisito Internationale with A Family (coll. National Gallery of Ireland), subsequently included in the historic exhibition Fifty Years of Modern Art at Brussels World Fair 1958. In recent years le Brocquy’s early Tinker subjects and Family paintings, have attracted headline attention on the international marketplace marking him as the fourth painter in Ireland and Britain to be evaluated within a very select group of artists, alonside Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Francis Bacon. Recognised by many as the greatest Irish artist of the twentieth century, and one of the greatest of any era, the recent realisation of over £1 million for one of his works at auction is not merely a record but an acknowledgment of his genius and international appeal. Acknowledged by museum retrospectives worldwide, the artist’s work is represented in numerous public collections, from the Guggenheim in New York City to the Tate Gallery in London. In Ireland, he is honoured as the first and only living painter to be included in the Permanent Irish Collection of the National Gallery.

WORKS: - Image of Bono

- A Family

GABRIEL METSU

Dutch painter, active in his native Leiden, then in Amsterdam, where he had moved by 1657. Houbraken says he trained with Dou, but Metsu's early works are very different from his - typically historical and mythological scenes, broadly rather than minutely painted. Metsu also painted portraits and still-lifes, but his most characteristic works are genre scenes, some of which rank among the finest of their period. He concentrated on scenes of genteel middle-class life, fairly close to de Hooch and Terborch in style, but with a personal stamp. One of his best-known works, The Sick Child (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), is often compared with Vermeer. His work is rarely dated, so his development and relationships with other artists are difficult to trace.

WORKS: Woman Reading a Letter

HENRY RAEBURN

Sir Henry Raeburn is a Scottish portrait painter. In spite of his status, Raeburn’s career is surprisingly little documented. He was born in 1756, in Edinburgh, was orphaned, educated at Heriot’s Hospital in Edinburgh, and brought up under the general supervision of his elder brother William. In 1772, he was apprenticed to James Gilliland, an Edinburgh goldsmith; while he was still an apprentice he began to paint miniatures, first in watercolors, then in oils. In 1780, he married Anne Leslie, widow of Count Leslie, who was 12 years his senior and the mother of 3 children. In 1782, he joined the class under the supervision of Alexander Runciman. In April 1784 he left Edinburgh for Italy, where he stayed until 1887. We do not know how he spent his time in Italy.  On his return he settled in Edinburgh, and soon attained pre-eminence among Scottish artists. He was knighted by George IV in 1822, and appointed king’s limner for Scotland a few days before his death. His style was to some extent founded on that of Reynolds, but his bold brushwork and brave use of contrasting colors make his works original. Among his sitters were the writer Sir Walter Scott, philosopher Hume, songwriter and printer Boswell, critic and essayist John Wilson and other outstanding men of Scotland.

WORKS: Sir John and Lady Clerk of Penicuik

JOSHUA REYNOLDS

Joshua Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devonshire, on July 16, 1723, the seventh child of Reverend Samuel Reynolds and Theophilia Potter. At the age of 17 Joshua became apprenticed to Thomas Hudson, the most popular portrait painter of the age.

After 3 years with Hudson, Reynolds moved to London and tried to establish his own practice, only to return to Devon after two years. From there he graveled to the Mediterranean, and spent several years studying the works of Italian masters such as Raphael and Michelangelo, and classical Roman art.

When Reynolds returned to London he made an immediate impact, especially after his formal portrait of Commodore Augustus Keppel in the guise of the Apollo Belvedere became known. With the aide of his patron, Lord Edgecumbe, Reynolds became the most popular portrait painter of his day, supplanting his old master Hudson.

Reynolds was able to afford a coach and a grand house in Leicester Fields. He was so busy that his students became responsible for painting the background of his portraits, leaving him to concentrate on the principle subject. His major paintings were also reproduced in mezzotint, a fine engraving process.

Reynolds exhibited regularly at the Society of Artists, and he was named the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. As his eminence grew, he was knighted in 1769, and in 1784 he was appointed principal royal portrait painter.

Sir Joshua Reynolds died on February 23, 1792, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.

WORKS: Omai

JOHN S. SARGENT

Born in Florence in 1856 to expatriate American parents, John Singer Sargent received his first formal art instruction in Rome in 1868, and sporadically attended the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence between 1870 and 1873. In 1874 he was accepted at the Paris studio of the portraitist Emile-Auguste Carolus-Duran, and the next fall entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study drawing. He began to exhibit at the Salon in 1877. Over the next few years several experiences had a significant impact on Sargent's artistic development: during a trip to Spain in 1879 he copied paintings by Velázquez at the Prado; in 1880 he visited Belgium and Holland, where he copied works by Frans Hals; and in 1881 he met James McNeill Whistler in Venice. During the 1870s and 1880s, Sargent painted genre scenes, based in part on his travels to Spain and Venice, but it was his remarkable skills as a portraitist upon which his reputation rested.

By the turn of the century Sargent was recognized as the most acclaimed international society portraitist of the Edwardian era, and his clientele included the most affluent, aristocratic, and fashionable people of his time. Sargent chafed in later life at the limitations of portraiture, and around the turn of the century he worked increasingly at other subjects and in other mediums, particularly watercolor, in which he was extraordinarily gifted.

WORKS: The Bead Stringers of Venice

JOHN O’LEARY

Born in Co. Tiperary, O'Leary became a medical student at Trinity College. In 1863, after a trial, being convicted of treason and felony he was sentenced to twenty years penal servitude in England, but was released in 1870 on condition he did not return to Ireland for fifteen years. On his return after his exile, he met Yeats and a wonderful friendship grew between the two.

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THE LIFFEY SWIM

This painting of the annual swim down the River Liffey through Dublin was the first Yeats painting acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1931. There is some evidence of the looser line of his paintings during this period, but the treatment is generally traditional and completely successful - the total involvement of the watching crowd is beautifully caught.

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THE BEAD STRINGERS OF VENICE

The painting, an unfinished sketch, shows bead stringers assembling the beads as they sit outside in a small alley or corridor. The two nearest women face an open door. Apparently whatever he was planning for the doorway, he grew frustrated and scraped, or literally cut it away, taking part of a woman leaning against the wall with it.

Although never finished, it's one of maybe just a couple of Sargent's paintings showing bead-stringers sitting outside while they work. That women worked this way is well documented in photographs of the period. The women towards the back are only roughly sketched in at this stage of the painting.

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SIR JOHN AND LADY CLERK OF PENICUIK

This was Raeburn's first picture to be exhibited in London, being shown at Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in 1792. The background is the estate at Penicuik.

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OMAI

Mai, or 'Omai' as the British called him, was a young Polynesian, brought to England from Tahiti in 1774. British scientists wanted to evaluate his responses to 'civilised' Western virtues; Omai wanted British support against those who had driven him from his native island, Raiatea. However, he also became a source of curiosity and amusement to his British hosts. Reynolds shows Omai in a pose which echoes his earlier portrait of Augustus Keppel; this, in turn, was based on a classical sculpture of Apollo.

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MRS. CHRISTOPHER HORTON

Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland (1745-90), the King's youngest brother, known for his viciousness and defiant behavior. He married Mrs. Christopher Horton, a widow so notorious that Queen Charlotte refused to meet her. Gainsborough painted the Duke and Duchess on several occasions.

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A FAMILY

This painting was conceived in 1950 in very different circumstances, in face of the atomic threat, social upheaval and refugees of World War II and its aftermath .The female figure in A Family may be seen to take on a very different significance.The man, replacing Manet's black servant with bouquet, sits alone. The bouquet is reduced to a mere wisp held by a child.

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IMAGE OF BONO

“I have made a number of similar studies of Bono, whose spirit and whose radiant energy I admire so much. But a painting destined for the National Portrait Gallery presents a different challenge; to make a recognisable image of Bono's outward appearance, while attempting to portray what I conceive to be the wavelengths of his inner dynamism."

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WOMAN READING A LETTER

Here letter writing and reading are most likely associated with love. The discreet waiting maid pulls aside a curtain hanging from a rod to reveal a choppy seascape, possibly but not demonstrably a reference to the popular adage that love is as hazardous as

a sea voyage.

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THE COTTAGE GIRL

Among Gainsborough's subjects were cats and pigs, which friends recalled seeing loose and racing around his studio. Some of his most popular works were those he called his "fancy pictures of peasant life," and these usually included animals. In his Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher, Gainsborough painted a lovely child of the rural poor, reminding his aristocratic contemporaries that the poor are just as human as the wealthy elite whose portraits secured his fortune. It's a powerful image, and was widely admired in 1785 when he first exhibited it.

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THE MACKINEN CHILDRENThis elegant painting, set on the terrace of a fictionalised country villa, fuses a sentimental, pastoral imagery of childhood innocence and devotion with a more contemplative engagement with themes of devotion, absence and time. Hogarth’s two subjects are Elizabeth and William Mackinen, born into a wealthy West Indian sugar dynasty. The portrait was painted while they were being educated in England. The sunflower had been deployed by previous artists – Van Dyck in particular – as a symbol of devotion and its presence in this picture might well allude to the relationship between brother and sister, or the devotion of their parents living in Antigua.

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THE WESTERN FAMILY

This picture, which offers a perfect counterpart to The Strode Family, in its handling of figures, themes and paint, depicts various members of the Western family socialising with the clergyman – probably Archdeacon C. Plumptre – shown sitting on the right. As in the Strode painting, Hogarth captures the moment just before this group of individuals gather together for tea. The artist’s patron, Thomas Western is pictured carrying a trophy of the hunt and his hat suggests he has just come in from outside. His wife Anne Callis, who is placed directly under the coat of arms that surmounts a distant doorway, stands expectantly at his side.

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