Lot Essay
'Jack B. Yeats's earliest know works are drawings of horses, in races and hunts in Sligo during his boyhood. When working for 'Paddock Life' in London (1891-4) he regularly attended race meetings in Ireland, and the Dublin Horse Show, which he reported for the paper in pen and ink drawings.
'The Paddock, Leopardstown', first exhibited in London in 1924, is one of the artist's race course scenes which he painted in oil throughout his life. Leopardstown Race Course is about 7 miles south of Dublin, at the foot of the Dublin mountains. A beautiful brown skittish mare tosses her head while a small boy talks to a man, probably one of the race course officials. The tall man looking on in the right foreground is perhaps the owner, and his position, half in and half out of the picture, is a device Yeats employed from an early period as an aid to involve the spectator in the pictorial event, and increase the sense of actuality.
A man beside the shelter may be an interested racegoer, studying form; or he may be the artist himself, who tended to include himself in scenes as an objective viewer, especially at this date, when his work was in transition from a purely objective approach to a mood of total subjectivity. Two men, typical characters seen at Irish race meetings, walk along the fence on the thick clean grass, away from the mud at the centre of the paddock.
The style is loose and relaxed, as is typical of Yeats in 1923/4, with long smooth brush strokes, skilfully and economically used, to gain the maximum of expression. Colour is muted, conveying realistically the open countryside and the fresh damp air, the moment made more vivid in the brief glimpse of the jockey's bright costume. Beyond the paddock is the heathery rise of Stepaside, and beyond that again is the blue range of the Wicklow hills'
We are grateful for Hilary Pyle for her help in cataloguing this lot
'The Paddock, Leopardstown', first exhibited in London in 1924, is one of the artist's race course scenes which he painted in oil throughout his life. Leopardstown Race Course is about 7 miles south of Dublin, at the foot of the Dublin mountains. A beautiful brown skittish mare tosses her head while a small boy talks to a man, probably one of the race course officials. The tall man looking on in the right foreground is perhaps the owner, and his position, half in and half out of the picture, is a device Yeats employed from an early period as an aid to involve the spectator in the pictorial event, and increase the sense of actuality.
A man beside the shelter may be an interested racegoer, studying form; or he may be the artist himself, who tended to include himself in scenes as an objective viewer, especially at this date, when his work was in transition from a purely objective approach to a mood of total subjectivity. Two men, typical characters seen at Irish race meetings, walk along the fence on the thick clean grass, away from the mud at the centre of the paddock.
The style is loose and relaxed, as is typical of Yeats in 1923/4, with long smooth brush strokes, skilfully and economically used, to gain the maximum of expression. Colour is muted, conveying realistically the open countryside and the fresh damp air, the moment made more vivid in the brief glimpse of the jockey's bright costume. Beyond the paddock is the heathery rise of Stepaside, and beyond that again is the blue range of the Wicklow hills'
We are grateful for Hilary Pyle for her help in cataloguing this lot