Lot Essay
Hilary Pyle writes of this work 'From an early period in his career, Yeats painted the seasons and the times of day, factually rather than romantically, according with the background that he know where the rural was urbanised - he grew up in a thriving sea-port in the West of Ireland. The association of the passing of time, and its equation with the ephemerality of human life, added a richness to such settings during his late metaphysical period.
'Autumn', a picture of 1945, is undoubtedly a view of Sligo, with the silhouette of a sailor and a moored ship taking the centre background, while a fishseller in a shadowy corner tidies up in the dying evening light. Yeats had captured splendidly the light that dims suddenly as the evenings draw in. In the foreground, a young woman looks into a shop window that dances with colour, inviting dreams. Its light surrounds her and spills on the pavement between her and the figures beyond, mere shadows in the autumn air, their lives reaching towards winter. She is still in her spring.
It is perhaps significant that this picture was painted as the Second Great War was drawing to a close. Yeats frequently expressed his hope in the future through images of youth like this'.
(private correspondence, March 1996).
'Autumn', a picture of 1945, is undoubtedly a view of Sligo, with the silhouette of a sailor and a moored ship taking the centre background, while a fishseller in a shadowy corner tidies up in the dying evening light. Yeats had captured splendidly the light that dims suddenly as the evenings draw in. In the foreground, a young woman looks into a shop window that dances with colour, inviting dreams. Its light surrounds her and spills on the pavement between her and the figures beyond, mere shadows in the autumn air, their lives reaching towards winter. She is still in her spring.
It is perhaps significant that this picture was painted as the Second Great War was drawing to a close. Yeats frequently expressed his hope in the future through images of youth like this'.
(private correspondence, March 1996).