Jack B. Yeats R.H.A.

(Irish, 1871-1957)

Crossing the City 35.6 x 45.7 cm. (14 x 18 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Maurice Collis, 1945
With The Waddington Galleries, London
Mrs Iris Winthrop, Ipswich, Mass. (later Mrs Freeman)
With The New Grafton Gallery, where acquired by
Sir Andrew Carnwath, 1971
Private Collection, Ireland
Sale; Whyte's, Dublin, March 2012, lot 65, where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
London, Alpine Club Gallery, Jack B. Yeats: Paintings, 6-23 February 1929, cat.no.29
Dublin, Contemporary Picture Galleries, Jack B. Yeats: Paintings, 28 October-12 November 1940, cat.no.16
London, Wildstein, Jack B. Yeats: Oil Paintings 13 February-9 March 1946, cat.no.16
London, The New Grafton Gallery, November 1971, cat.no.84

Literature
Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume 1, André Deutsch, London, 1992, p.347, cat.no.380 (ill.b&w p.164 (Volume 3))

The painting shows an unusual view of Dublin's city centre looking south diagonally from O'Connell Bridge down D'Olier Street with a view of the grey edifices of Trinity College on the horizon. The foreground of the vista is dominated by the large blue form of a sculpture on a plinth. This is a mannered representation of Thomas Farrell's statue of William Smith O'Brien which was erected on this spot in the 1870s and moved to its current location on O'Connell Street in 1929, the year this work was painted.

The low viewpoint sets the trams and moving figures directly against the height of the surrounding buildings, which appear tall and imposing from this angle. The muddy tones of grey and brown used in this painting are typical of Yeats' work of this period. They are heightened by touches of bright yellow, blue and red put on with the tip of the brush to create a swirling texture.

During the late 1920s Yeats' style was developing dramatically, moving from his more realist early work to the fragmented, avant-garde methods of his later painting. A small group of paintings including this work, Going to Wolfe Tone's Grave (1929, Private Collection), and Jazz Babies (1929, Private Collection), rely on opaque dark colours applied in a wide range of textures. Their muted tonalities, as in Crossing the City, are suited to the urban nature of their subject matter which focuses on post-independence Dublin.

While trams, crowded with passengers, pass at speed along Burgh Quay, a figure on a bicycle whizzes along in the middle foreground. Our attention is focused on the rearing head of a horse in the right foreground, perhaps frightened by the bustle and noise of the traffic. A young man in a peaked cap gently tries to calm him down. This well observed vignette is reminiscent of some of Yeats' West of Ireland paintings of horse fairs and races. Both the figures of the horse and the boy are sculpted out of oil pigment. The shape of the animal's head and ears are gracefully constructed out of black impasto paint. A slight blurring of the left hand side of the horse's head suggests movement, as if captured by a slow speed camera. A fashionable lady watches the man and the steed with aloofness – her pale make-up, bright red lipstick and stylish cloche hat introduce a counterpoint of modernity to the scene.

The excitement of the crowds as they move through the city may be connected to such events as the Catholic Emancipation Centenary celebrations which took place in 1929. These temporarily transformed the city into a display of national and religious fervour. A small structure in the middle left foreground appears to be a religious statue consisting of a black gothic casing that contains a kneeling figure in blue. This devotion was to be even more forcibly expressed three years later at the Eucharistic Congress. The title 'Crossing the City' may even be a humorous pun and allusion to the newly independent state's enthusiastic embrace of Catholicism. Such a droll use of language is often found in Yeats' cartoons which frequently comment on the absurdity of modern life. Its more obvious meaning alludes to the busy thoroughfare of O'Connell Bridge, the centre of the city and its transport network.

The painting provides a rare example of expressionism in Irish art in its strong individual application of form and colour to a contemporary subject - the city. It was exhibited in London rather than Dublin when first painted. Its first owner was the author of the controversial Trials of Burma (1937), Maurice Collis, who through his long sojourn in India may well have recognised within it the tension between the traditional and local and a delight in the pleasures and spectacle of metropolitan life.


We are grateful to Dr. Róisín Kennedy for compiling this catalogue entry.