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Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) - ILLUSTRATION TO CAMPEACHY PICTURE BY JOHN MASEFIELD, 1908

Currency:EUR Category:Art / General - Paintings Start Price:NA Estimated At:6,000.00 - 8,000.00 EUR
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) - ILLUSTRATION TO CAMPEACHY PICTURE BY JOHN MASEFIELD, 1908

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Auction Date:2011 Oct 10 @ 18:00 (UTC+1)
Location:Royal Dublin Society, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, Dublin, Dublin, ., Ireland
Artist: Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
Title: ILLUSTRATION TO CAMPEACHY PICTURE BY JOHN MASEFIELD, 1908
Medium: pencil, pen and ink on card
Signature: signed lower left
Dimensions: 12 by 17cm., 4.75 by 6.75in.
Provenance: Provenance:Whyte's, 17 February 2004, lot 54; whence purchased by the present owner
Exhibited:
Literature: Literature:Pyle, Hilary, Different Worlds of Jack B. Yeats. His Cartoons and Illustrations, Irish Academic Press, 1994, p.243 (catalogue no. 1743 & 1744)
Note: A buccaneer is at sea, steering his ship. There is an aura of romance in the taut image, enhanced with strong brief details of the wheel, the carved prow, the choppy waves, an island or land behind. His eyes are dreamy. Yeats indicates the earrings, the sailor's muscular hand, and the pirate scarf knotted about his head. The Gulf of Campeche, or Campeachy, lies within the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Yucatan, a mecca of romance for Yeats and his friend, the poet John Masefield (1878-1967). In his book On the Spanish Main (published in 1906 and dedicated to Jack B. Yeats), Masefield describes the rise of the buccaneers, who in between their attacks on the Spanish Main, when trade was slack, would repair to Campeachy to cut logwood, construct new vessels (and have a rest). Masefield's poem, Campeachy Picture, an ideal subject for Yeats, was the first poem in his new venture, A Broadside, launched at his sister's Dún Emer Press in June 1908. This image of the buccaneer adorns the title page of the three page quarto-size art publication. 300 copies were printed. The following month, July 1908, the Yeats sisters parted company with Evelyn Gleeson who had set up the Dún Emer Industries to found the Cuala Industries from which A Broadside continued to be published monthly (A Broadside no. 1, June 1908, is the only number with the Dun Emer imprint). The first edition of A Broadside was also the only issue to be illustrated solely by Jack B. Yeats.
Dr Hilary Pyle, Yeats Curator Emeritus at the National Gallery of Ireland (edited extract from The Gorry Gallery catalogue entry)
With thanks to both the author and to The Gorry Gallery for their kind permission to reprint.