The Grain Ship

Hilary Pyle writes of the present work, 'One of Yeats's most striking early watercolours, where he contrives a view of the hold of a ship from above. The feet, in one case, and the head and torso in the other, of two men looking down at a dusty workman below standing in the middle of the cargo of golden grain, create an uncanny angle into the picture plane. It is one indication of the effect of post-impressionism on the artist, perhaps at this stage mostly through posters. The tonal washes of grey and yellow pre-empt oils of the twenties such as The Ball Alley (1927) (Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin), as does the ghostly figure of the man in the foreground of the watercolour, half-in, half-out, drawing the spectator into the picture' (H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Dublin, 1993, p. 71).