A Man Doing Accounts

Jack Butler Yeats came from an impoverished family, and yet under the care of his maternal grandparents, he lived, in contrast to his siblings at home, a rather affluent childhood. In his adult life he similarly had contradictory experiences with money. Although failing to sell oil paintings, which he deemed as a personal failure, he was able to live, with his wife's inheritance, a comfortable existence. It is therefore interesting to look at the subject of this painting, a man looking at his finances. The figure is seen confined in a brightly lit room, while another outside stands next to him. The artifical light contrasts with the evening outside. The dark silhouettes of buildings loom in the composition, creating a similar claustrophic feeling as the figure is hemmed into the walled space on the right. Light and dark, natural and artifical, both figures although so close remain apart, lost in their own separate worlds, divided by space and light.