In a Liverpool Christy Mintrels' show, singing 'The Irish Emigrant'

Details

Jack Butler Yeats, R.H.A. (1871-1957)
In a Liverpool Christy Mintrels' show, singing 'The Irish Emigrant'
signed 'JACK.B.YEATS' (lower right)
coloured chalks
12½ x 18½ in. (31.7 x 47 cm.)
Executed in 1904.

Provenance

Purchased directly from the artist by John Quinn, New York, 1904.
His sale; American Art Galleries, New York, 11 February 1927, lot 397, where purchased by Ernest Boyd.
Dr. Padraig Quinn, Newry.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 22 May 1997, lot 301.

Literature

The Gaelic American, 5 April 1904.
H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Dublin, 1993, p. 98, no. 298.

Exhibited

Dublin, Leinster Hall, Jack B. Yeats Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland and elsewhere, March 1900, no. 24.
Oxford, Clarendon Hotel, Jack B. Yeats Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland, October 1900.
London, Walker Art Gallery, Jack B. Yeats Sketches of Life in the West of Ireland and elsewhere, February 1901, no. 17.
New York, Clausen Galleries, Jack B. Yeats Recent Watercolours, March - April 1904, no. 42.
Newry, 1943, untraced.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Lot Essay

Hilary Pyle (loc. cit) comments, 'The interior of a concert hall, the audience gazing up at the Christy Minstrels on stage, grouped in a semi-circle around the leading singer (a motif used by Yeats in the oil 'Singing Way Down Upon the Swanee River' in 1942). The single figure in the back row may be a self-portrait of the artist. '[There are] some Irish girls and a youth in the foreground who are about to emigrate themselves.' (Note by Yeats in the Gaelic American, 5 April 1904)'.

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