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Jack B. Yeats , Irish, 1871-1957

Title

In the Tram

Date1923

MediumOil on board

Dimensions

23 x 36 cm

Signedlower left: Jack B. Yeats

Credit LineBequeathed, Mr R. Best, 1959

Object numberNGI.1408

ProvenanceWaddington Galleries; purchased, Richard Irvine Best, 1942; bequeathed, Mr R. Best, 1959 Exhibition HistoryDrawings and Pictures of Life in the West of Ireland, Stephen's Green Gallery, Dublin, 25 April - 9 May 1923

Paintings of Irish Life, Gieves Art Gallery, London, 7-18 January 1924

A Borough Portrait, Town Hall, Dun Laoghaire, 14-22 October 1980

Jack B. Yeats in the National Gallery of Ireland, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 26 March - 20 April 1986

Yeats at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 26 June - 15 Ocotber, 1988

Images in Yeats, Centre de Congres, Monaco, 11-16 June 1990; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 9-31 July 1990

Label TextDuring the early 1920s Yeats produced vivid impressions of the life of ordinary Dubliners in the early days of the Free State. This work, painted in 1923, shows three women deep in conversation on a Lucan tram, while a solitary man sits hunched up in the corner. The faces of the women carry subtleties of expression typical of Yeats’s work at this time, but such a close study of women represented a new departure. It anticipates the more overtly romantic rendering of women present in his later work.