John Butler Yeats, Irish, 1839-1922
Title: Portrait of The Artist's Wife, Susan Mary Pollexfen (1841-1900)
Date: c. 1875
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
61 x 91 cm
Credit Line: Presented, Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1949
Object Number: NGI.1179
ProvenanceMiss Lily Yeats; bequeathed, Friends of the National Collections of Ireland; presented, Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1949
Exhibition HistoryW.B. Yeats: A Centenary Exhibition, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1965
Jack B. Yeats and his Family, Sligo; Dublin, 1971
John Butler Yeats and the Irish Renaissance, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1972
Yeats; Portrait of a Family, The Model, Sligo, 09 June - 16 December 2018
Jack B. Yeats and his Family, Sligo; Dublin, 1971
John Butler Yeats and the Irish Renaissance, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1972
Yeats; Portrait of a Family, The Model, Sligo, 09 June - 16 December 2018
Label TextIn 1863 John Butler Yeats married Susan Pollexfen, the daughter of a wealthy Sligo merchant family. He drew numerous tender portraits of her, but this is the only known oil portrait, painted when she was in her early thirties. Susan was dismayed when her husband abandoned the legal profession to become an artist. The strain and uncertainty of life with an improvident painter exacerbated her natural frailty. Having suffered two strokes, she grew weaker with each passing year. In this sober portrait the artist depicts his wife as melancholic and distant.