"Light to the Issueless Predicament of Existence"

Recently the works of Irish painter Jack Butler Yeats(1871-1957) have caught my eye.

"Memory Harbour"


"Two Travelers"



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 frequently abandoned the brush altogether, applying paint in a variety of different ways, and 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 £1 m), he took no pupils and allowed no one watch him work, so he remains a unique figure. The artist closest to him in style is his friend, the Austrian painter, Oskar Kokoschka.


"Quay Worker's Home"


"Mountain Path"


He was the youngest son of Irish portraitist John Butler Yeats, and the brother of the Nobel Prize winning poet William Butler Yeats.

"Cavalier's Farewell"


"Blackbird Bathing in Tir Na Nog"


Samuel Beckett wrote that 'Yeats is the great of our time...he brings light as only the great dare to bring light to the issueless predicament of existence."