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John Butler Yeats , Irish, 1839-1922

Title

William Butler Yeats (1865-1839), Poet

Date1886

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensions

15 x 23.5 cm

SignedLower left: JBYeats

Credit LinePresented, Miss A. Digby, 1944

Object numberNGI.3256

DescriptionJBY tended to produce romanticised images of his elder son William. In this intimate profile portrait, the poet, aged twenty-one, is portrayed deep in thought, hands clasped in his lap. His face is sensitively described and his eye gleams with an intensity that reveals something of his intellectual vigour. The remainder of the sketch is built up with firm strokes of thick soft lead. WB Yeats’s daughter Anne Yeats (1919-2001) recollected how her father would sit by himself, apparently lost in a trance, as he composed.
ProvenancePresented, Miss Alice Digby, 1944Exhibition HistoryAt a Glance - Portraits by John Butler Yeats, National Gallery of Ireland, 24 October 2015 - 17 January 2016
Label TextJBY tended to produce romanticised images of his elder son William. In this intimate profile portrait, the poet, aged twenty-one, is portrayed deep in thought, hands clasped in his lap. His face is sensitively described and his eye gleams with an intensity that reveals something of his intellectual vigour. The remainder of the sketch is built up with firm strokes of thick soft lead. WB Yeats’s daughter Anne Yeats (1919-2001) recollected how her father would sit by himself, apparently lost in a trance, as he composed.