Title: The Small Weir, Coole
Date: 1923
Medium: Oil on panel
Signed: lower right: Jack B Yeats
Credit Line: Bequeathed, Evie Hone, 1955
Object Number: NGI.1309
ProvenancePurchased from the Artist, Father Dempsey, Clontarf, 1933; Mrs Josephine MacNeill; Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Evie Hone; bequeathed, Evie Hone, 1955
Exhibition HistoryJack B. Yeats: Paintings of Irish Life, Gieves Art Gallery, London, 1924
Jack B. Yeats: Pictures of Irish Life in the West of Ireland, Engineers' Hall, Dublin, 1924
Jack B. Yeats: National Loan Exhibition, National College of Art, Dublin, 1945
Jack B. Yeats in the National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1986
Label TextThis oil sketch is unusual among Yeats’s depictions of Coole Park, Co. Galway, in that it appears to have been done in situ. Most of the sketches he produced there were in coloured crayon or pencil and executed with future oil paintings in mind. The lakeside setting is, however, typical. The vigorous quality of the sketch, and the mundane subject, two cows grazing among boulders, suggest that it is a spontaneous record of a moment encountered on a ramble. Jack was a less frequent visitor to Coole Park, home of the celebrated writer Lady Gregory, than his brother W.B.