Jack B. Yeats, Irish, 1871-1957
Title: Morning in a City
Date: c.1937
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
61 x 91 cm
Signed: lower left: Jack B. Yeats
Credit Line: Presented, Trustees of the Haverty Bequest, 1941
Object Number: NGI.1050
DescriptionFrom 1929, Yeats lived in Fitzwilliam Square, in the centre of Georgian Dublin. His city subjects assumed a romantic mood, especially in the last years of the 1930s, and reminiscence became an important element of his compositions.
Morning in a City depicts the artist strolling in a place of past and present memories. The classical houses that line the street in which he walks glow a dull red in the early morning light, and the warm colour of the brickwork stains the light and mood of the city. Dim figures hurry, or walk collectedly, through the streets: an efficient girl going towards the office, a man bent over his barrow, the postman with his sack, a businessman and, beyond him, a newspaper boy (a favourite subject with Yeats). From a lighted doorway in the house to the left another vague figure emerges. All are ghosts, elements of a continuosly fluctuating life beneath the distant sky, whose pink fingers of light are breaking through to the blue of daytime.
The artist joins the busy procession of the various professions- some lowly, others more privileged- but he is also separate. He can contemplate the mass around him, and soak in the scene from his cocoon of loneliness as he wanders in isolation through the indigo shadow of the old houses beyond and the green of the trees in the square. In some paintings Yeat's manner of reminiscence is more personal and idiosyncratic, but here is mood is Worsworthian, quickened to the spirit of the city itself and of the people who inhabit it. He is endorsing his identification with city life and, at the same time, making his artistic detachment evident.
(National Gallery of Ireland: Essential Guide, 2008)
Morning in a City depicts the artist strolling in a place of past and present memories. The classical houses that line the street in which he walks glow a dull red in the early morning light, and the warm colour of the brickwork stains the light and mood of the city. Dim figures hurry, or walk collectedly, through the streets: an efficient girl going towards the office, a man bent over his barrow, the postman with his sack, a businessman and, beyond him, a newspaper boy (a favourite subject with Yeats). From a lighted doorway in the house to the left another vague figure emerges. All are ghosts, elements of a continuosly fluctuating life beneath the distant sky, whose pink fingers of light are breaking through to the blue of daytime.
The artist joins the busy procession of the various professions- some lowly, others more privileged- but he is also separate. He can contemplate the mass around him, and soak in the scene from his cocoon of loneliness as he wanders in isolation through the indigo shadow of the old houses beyond and the green of the trees in the square. In some paintings Yeat's manner of reminiscence is more personal and idiosyncratic, but here is mood is Worsworthian, quickened to the spirit of the city itself and of the people who inhabit it. He is endorsing his identification with city life and, at the same time, making his artistic detachment evident.
(National Gallery of Ireland: Essential Guide, 2008)
ProvenancePurchased from the Artist by the Trustees of the Harverty Bequest, February 1938; presented, Trustees of the Harverty Bequest, 1941
Exhibition HistoryRoyal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 1937
Contemporary Art of 79 Countries, World Fair, International Machine Corporation, San Francisco, 1939
Jack B. Yeats, National College of Art, Dublin, June - July 1945
Jack B, Yeats: A First Retrospective American Exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, March 1951; Phillips Gallery, Washington; De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Springs Fine Arts Centre, Colorado; Toronto Art Gallery, Toronto; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; National Academy, New York, 1951-1952
An Tóstal: Irish Painting 1903-1953, Municipal Gallery, Dublin, April - July 1953
Loan Exhibition, Municipal Gallery, Waterford, 26 June - 10 July 1965
Jack B. Yeats in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 26 March - 20 April 1986
Jack B. Yeats: Selected Works from the Niland Collection, Sligo, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 8 March - 30 November 2008
Lines of Vision. Irish Writers at the National Gallery of Ireland, 8 October 2014 —12 April 2015
Contemporary Art of 79 Countries, World Fair, International Machine Corporation, San Francisco, 1939
Jack B. Yeats, National College of Art, Dublin, June - July 1945
Jack B, Yeats: A First Retrospective American Exhibition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, March 1951; Phillips Gallery, Washington; De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Springs Fine Arts Centre, Colorado; Toronto Art Gallery, Toronto; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; National Academy, New York, 1951-1952
An Tóstal: Irish Painting 1903-1953, Municipal Gallery, Dublin, April - July 1953
Loan Exhibition, Municipal Gallery, Waterford, 26 June - 10 July 1965
Jack B. Yeats in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 26 March - 20 April 1986
Jack B. Yeats: Selected Works from the Niland Collection, Sligo, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 8 March - 30 November 2008
Lines of Vision. Irish Writers at the National Gallery of Ireland, 8 October 2014 —12 April 2015
Label TextFrom 1929, Yeats lived in Fitzwilliam Square in the centre of Georgian Dublin. This picture, painted in a heavy impasto, depicts city streets bustling with people. At the centre, a lone man smoking a cigarette stands out between rows of red buildings. It has been suggested that this figure represents Yeats. The idea of the urban artist as a detached observer or flâneur was one that developed in art and literature during the nineteenth century. It later found particular appeal with Expressionist artists in the early twentieth century.