Three Historical Paintings by Jack B. Yeats

A Machine-Readable Version

Thomas MacGreevy

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[p.238]
By Thomas McGreevy

Every genuine work of art belongs in its essence to the period in which it is executed. The artist may set out to represent some incident or character of a hundred or a thousand or two thousand years ago, but inevitably he can only state the attitude which he, living in his own time, holds to the subject. Experience of life in his own time determines his capacity to understand what has happened in the past. And often too, it determines his choice of theme. Thus in Poussin's paintings of the story of the much misunderstood Athenian patriot, Phocion, it is more than permissible, it is quite legitimate to see the artist as translating the history of his own troubled experience of the rivalries of the Paris of 1640-1642 into terms of classical antiquity — the only terms in which a noble mind like Poussin's could then state that experience without exacerbating already over-embittered passions.

Sometimes, on the other hand, circumstances of character or environment or both, have made it possible for artists to tell the truth more directly. In the exhausted and despairing Spain of the seventeenth century, for instance, Velazquez, with the liberty of speech which the friendship of the king gave him, could go so far as to suggest that the hitherto idealised god of war, far from being a figure of youthful beauty was, in reality a tough-looking old ruffian with shifty eyes glancing covertly out of the shadow cast by the magnificent helmet of classical tradition. Finally, during the upheavals arising out of the hostility of the sovereigns of England, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and to the French Revolution, Gros, in his picture of the Battle of Eylau, could make it quite clear — for the first time in the history of painting — that wars, instead of being the series of royal triumphs they had hitherto been made out to be, were a series of ghastly adventures in which men went through such physical and mental strain as, living and dead, made them look hideous. With that, what was traditionally called historical painting, the painting that found it necessary to express the feelings of one epoch in terms of another, may be said to have died. The world was ready to face up to every aspect of itself as reflected in the most truthful of all mirrors, the mirror of art. Historical painting had to become contemporary.

The task of the artist endowed with the gifts that had made historical painting one of the greatest branches of art was consequently altered. There was no longer any necessity to force contemporary reality into costume. Later attempts to do that resulted either in theatricality — Delacroix's Crusaders at Constantinople, in which a relatively limited sense of expressive form has to be compensated for by excess of movement and flamboyance of general effect, is the most obvious example by an artist of genius — or in an entirely unimaginative materialism, emphasising mere archaeological superficialities such as we see in The Marriage of Strongbow and Eva by Daniel Maclise in the National Gallery. The task, as it presented itself in the altered conditions of the nineteenth cen [p.239] tury, was not successfully performed by either the genius or the dunce. For the would-be painter of histories now, it was a question of throwing away the inessential elements of the historical picture, the antique trappings, and yet retaining, in a contemporary scene, the combination of generalised statement and nobility of temper which, in a former age, had given the historical picture its quality.

Cynics would not agree, but for the intelligent student of history it goes without saying that nobility of temper prevails to as great an extent in modern as in ancient times. The sum of original virtue in humanity is probably as constant as the sum of original sin. For anybody with eyes to see, there is heroism everywhere, every day, and not least in outwardly lowly lives in the world of the under-dog. But, inevitably, communities seize on and commemorate certain manifestations of nobility that have a more than usually comprehensive significance.

Very early in his career Jack B. Yeats turned to the life of the people in Ireland for the material, the subject-matter, of his art. In point of time, he was the first painter to do so. Here and there, an English or Anglo-Irish artist had, in the course of his ramblings, seized on the pictorial, the mere aesthetic, possibilities of the Irish scene. But Jack Yeats's work showed a whole-hearted sympathy, what it is no exaggeration to describe as a sense of identity, with the life of the common people in Ireland which had not been perceptible in the work of any painter before him. Looking back now, it is evident that the statement in terms of painting of that sympathy and that sense of identity with the people, amounted in his case to a vocation. He has stuck to it consistently for forty years and more, since before the beginning of this century. And as he was a born artist, a man who had the mysterious gift of being able at all times to make line and colour expressive, it was inevitable that as his experience and understanding deepened and matured, his interpretations of Irish life should become more and more comprehensive, should, nationally speaking, "signify," to an ever greater degree. In his young manhood, when, for him, as for the youthful Irish Ireland movement of the time, hope was high, he seized on incident after incident and character after character in such a manner as to emphasize and develop the awareness Irishmen had of themselves as a people. And not merely in the matter of superficial appearances but in the more essential matter of the temper of his approach. Sometimes there was gaiety in it, sometimes pathos, some-times pageantry. There was never complacency. The Irish were an under-dog people, but, clearly, for Jack Yeats, the humanities prevailed amongst them to a greater extent than they did amongst the inhabitants of the world that was represented in the more academic and official art of the governing class. He gave his greatest gifts to the depicting of the finest qualities of the people, their capacity for work and play, their endurance, their abnegation, their tenderness, their laughter. A farmer ploughing or riding a horse, a labourer digging in a field or cutting turf, a youth sailing a boat, a boy driving an ass-cart, a girl on her way to market, or any or all of them enjoying themselves at a dance or at the circus, or assisting gravely at a meeting or at a funeral — in the drawings and pictures by the early Jack Yeats they are presented appropriately, sympathetically, against their own marvellously coloured background of Irishness, in town and country, the animated eighteenth-century street, the solitary country cabin, on main-land [p.240] and island, mountain and plain, against rock and tree, sea, lake and river.

Unquestionably this was national art, national art in terms of what, in art criticism, is called genre, the lovely but incidental art of the everyday scene in a given environment, an art made up of many particular, rather than of a few general, statements. Being the work of an artist of genius who was aware of himself as an Irishman, it was, nationally and humanly, precious, and of great historical value every step of the distance it went — though the distance it went was, of course, limited by the conditions of Irish life at the time. And Irish life in those peaceful days was, for the most part, gracious and easy-going. Even then, however, Jack Yeats painted pictures that were at once reflections and reminders of the wider issues that, behind the routine of daily existence, preoccupied Irish minds. Many people in Dublin still recall the stir that was created in the early years of the century by a picture called The Green Above the Red in which the young artist integrated popular, political sentiment into serious painting. It was the first time such a thing had happened in Ireland. Here, as in other similar pictures painted during those years, was the embryo of an Irish "historical" or heroic art which might come to maturity if and when occasion demanded.

In actual fact, a heroic period of modem Irish history was evolving at the time. At once inspiring and being inspired by art such as that of Jack Yeats, a new phase of the ages-old national movement was taking shape. A summary of the circumstances is all that is necessary to explain the immediate historical implications of the three pictures I have to discuss here.

Though the I.R.B. was ever on the watch for the moment that would constitute England's difficulty and thus Ireland's opportunity, the founding of the Citizens Army for the defence of the workers in the course of the 1913 strike was the first outward sign that the people were again stirring in the military sense. Then, in reaction to the armed revolt against Irish Home Rule which had been organised for the authoritarian elements of Great Britain and north-eastern Ireland by two lawyers — the then Mr. F. E. Smith and Sir Edward Carson — came the formation of an all-Ireland people's movement, the nationalist Volunteers. The situation created in Ireland by the outbreak of the Great War of 1914-1918 led to the alliance of the Volunteers and the Citizens Army, to the Rising of 1916 and the struggle that went on from then up to 1921. With the offer of the Treaty by England, the issue was confused for the people as a whole, and in fratricidal civil war the Irish armies disintegrated into elements that could only be said to correspond ultimately, if at all, to the old units of Citizens Army and Volunteers. The Civil War came to an end in 1923.

Those years constituted a tragic and heroic phase of Irish history. And in the pictures commemorating them, Jack Yeats lifted the art of painting in Ireland on to a plane of heroic tragedy it had never before attained to. Being the artist he is, he did it sensitively, comprehendingly, humanly. There is nothing grandiose or pompous about his pictures. There is no flourish in them. Exalted, yet mournful in mood, their combination of quivering sensibility and perfectly tempered statement in the presentation of tragic events produces something of the Greek catharsis, of purification of the emotions. Thus looking at the picture called Bachelor's Walk — In Memory, in which a flower-girl casts a few blooms from her basket in a street doorway, even a person unaware of the implications of the gesture might easily, in view of the girl's graceful figure, bowed head and [p.249] sad expression, find himself thinking of some Hellenic maiden at an altar, perhaps a Chrysothemis bearing offerings from her half-crazed sister, to the tomb of their murdered father. And in actual fact, the Jack Yeats picture does represent a sacrifice offered at a spot where innocent people fell upon tragedy. The flower-girl is casting her blooms on the ground at the point in Bachelor's Walk, Dublin, where in the late afternoon of Sunday, July 26, 1914, a detachment of the King's Own Scottish Borderers fired at the people on the pavement, wounding thirty-two and killing three, a youth of eighteen and a middle-aged man and woman. The flower-girl may or may not have known the dead, but impelled by the instinctive yet mysterious poetry of her own nature, unheeded by her own world, a world of street-urchins, of loungers leaning against the river parapet, of men on carts driving spirited horses along the quays, of people crossing the Metal Bridge to the other side of the Liffey — with the life of the city going on around her, and unaware that an artist who had eyes to see and hands to immortalise her gesture was looking on, she offered her sacrifice. The urchin in the huge cap and skimpy trousers beside her is looking for excitement elsewhere but he is represented with such intentness of expression and refinement of feature that it is not unreasonable to assume that before the ten years of the struggle were over he too must, in his own way, have become as involved in it as the flower-girl and as the artist who so understandingly painted him

Considered technically, the picture may, I think, be said to mark a transition from genre to history. The main theme is "historical," the incidentals are everyday. Actually, the incidentals heighten the significance of the main theme. By contrast, they emphasise its isolation. And that, by the very fact of its success here, proves itself to be as legitimate as the more traditional method of establishing parallels rather than contrasts in the matter of detail. What, on the other hand, is quite in the tradition of historical painting is the introduction of buildings and monuments appropriate to the chief event depicted. In pictures of the ancient world by Mantegna and Poussin classical buildings play an important part in the composition. In the Jack Yeats picture, the Dublin quays with the towers of Christ Church Cathedral and the Church of the Augustinians are introduced, and though they constitute only a secondary feature in the aesthetic of the picture as a whole, they nevertheless serve their "literary" purpose, that of "placing" the scene, topographically and historically.

With the picture of The Funeral of Harry Boland,     Jack Yeats may be said to have completed the task of achieving "historical" art 'in terms of contemporary Irish life. Harry Boland opposed the Treaty of 1921 but, a much loved figure, he was nominated a member of the Committee of Ten, appointed by Dáil Éireann with a view to discovering a peaceful solution of the differences which existed. A very short time after the Civil War broke out in 1922, he died of wounds sustained while he was being arrested at the Grand Hotel, Skerries. He was carrying no arms at the time of his arrest and before he died he said simply, "I forgive everybody." He was thirty- eight. They buried him in the Republican Plot at Glasnevin. In spite of the risks they ran, soldiers of the Irish Republican Army attended and fired a salute of three volleys to the memory of the dead. In Jack Yeats's picture they are seen beyond the heaped-up flowers with hands resting on their rifles. To the right of the picture stands the Republican who was in charge of the proceedings. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that, no less grave [p.250] of expression than the other figures, he is the only one whose head is unbowed. All around are the members of the Cumann na mBan carrying wreaths. On the left stands a group of faithful priests. Earlier they had assisted at the Requiem Mass celebrated by Doctor Patrick Browne of Maynooth at the Carmelite Church in Whitefriars Street. Refusing to surrender to despair, with heartbreaking confidence, they sang the Canticle of Zachary from the Gospel of St. Luke: Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel — Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people: and hath raised up an horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant. As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who are from the beginning. Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us . . . the Orient from on high hath visited us. To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death: to direct our feet into the way of peace.

In the background of the picture, beyond the mourners and the silvery green trees, is the Round Tower that rises above the grave of the great O'Connell, and farther back still, other monuments and monumental buildings may be seen. It is because of the occasion it commemorates and because of the manner in which it commemorates it, the solemn horizontal lines, the gravely preoccupied figures, the fully emphasised symbols, the women's uniforms, the purely Irish architecture, etc., that this picture may, I think, be rightly considered as marking the complete and masterly restatement in terms of modem Irish life of the great European tradition of historical painting. With it, Irish art enters, on its own terms, in its own trappings, right into the mainstream of European painting. It keeps the spontaneity of actual, localised observation, yet unfailingly sustains the dignity of the classical mood. The exalted approach, the sense of the nobility of sacrifice and the spirit of humble reverence it evokes in generous-minded men and women, were clearly as present here in the "under-dog" Irish Republican world of 1922 as in the most "metropolitan" and consecrated phases of European history. That it was so is, of course, quite well-known. But it is not always admitted. Jack Yeats's picture constitutes an undying affirmation of the fact. Thus it fulfils a function which the greater works of art have always had to fulfil, that of giving adequate statement to essential, even if not always superficially acceptable, truth.

In the course of these troubled years no woman was executed. For this reason alone, one feels less unhappy in discussing women's share in the history of the times or studying a work of art consecrated to their part in the struggle. Actually, of course, they did everything except get executed. Many of them gave all they had, they suffered they fought, they went to gaol, they hunger -struck . . . . And as women have always tended to do, they showed a magnificent lack of respect for the silliness of many man-made rules. Thus when numbers of them were incarcerated high up in Kilmainham Gaol, they quite simply broke the windows that gave on to the world, so as to be able to engage in direct conversation with their friends who, they knew, were sure to be keeping vigil outside. Jack Yeats's picture Communicating with Prisoners     recalls the scene as viewed from the street. The sinister building towers up on the right. On this side of the fosse, a group of free [p.251] women are listening for the messages coming from the crowded window recesses above, messages cryptic and uncryptic, about prison needs, about hunger-strikers, about gaolers and wardresses, friendly and unfriendly, messages that will have to be delivered and acted upon as far as the difficult times allow.

The splendid design is completed and given further animation and topographical significance by the huge hoarding on the left and Dublin sky and the line of eighteenth-century Dublin houses in the centre. And the classical line of what merely seems to be the effortlessly differentiated members of the group of listening women is one of Jack Yeats's loveliest discoveries. Incidentally, it seems to me that the artists feeling for feminine grace is peculiarly in the native Irish tradition. Peculiarly, for painting is a modern art in Ireland, yet looking at the women in the foreground of this picture, and at the girl in the Batchelor's Walk     picture, it is very easy to link them up with the exquisite figure evoked in, for instance, the old poem, She moved Through the Fair: "And then she moved homeward, with one star awake,
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake. . ."
Which is only one of the touching feminine figures that Mr. Colum has added to our great heritage of Irish poetry. Now Jack Yeats has brought them over into the sister art of painting.

I have not, in these notes, dwelt on Jack Yeats's mastery of colour and atmosphere as shown in these pictures. It is hardly necessary, for, after all, he is known over two continents as one of the greatest of all colourists. What is important in the pictures I have been discussing is that, in them as in others of his pictures akin to them, he has consecrated his superb gifts to immortalising the spirit of Irishmen and Irishwomen, no matter how lowly, who fulfilled themselves in sacrifice, who gave and gave and gave, all that they had, flowers, freedom and life itself, for what they believed in. It is not the least of their rewards that there was an artist amongst them who could and did rise to the unprecedented heights of understanding and interpretation that were necessary to commemorate them worthily. And it is part of their glory and of the glory of the Ireland that was to come after them, as it was the artist's glory, that in commemorating them he lifted modern Irish art to such a mood of historical and spiritual exaltation and to such an æsthetic plane as it had never reached before.