Something Happening in the Street

Something Happening in the Street references Jack Butler Yeats’ contemplation of intimiste interiors during the 1940s. A young woman leans out of her bedroom window, enthralled by an unseen narrative occurring in the street below. There is an implacable sense of intrigue and excitement in what is happening beyond the picture plane, intensified by Yeats’ use of painterly brushstrokes to describe the scene. Employing a thick impasto, Yeats depicts the patterned wallpaper and crumpled bedlinen of the bedroom with deliberate texture and colour. The protagonist, with her pale pink skin and vivid auburn hair secured in a bun, invites comparison with the Rococo master, François Boucher’s odalisques.