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Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) SAINT KEVIN signed in monogram lower left watercolour...

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:15,000.00 - 20,000.00 EUR
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) SAINT KEVIN signed in monogram lower left watercolour...
Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
SAINT KEVIN
signed in monogram lower left
watercolour heightened with white
76 by 51cm., 30 by 20in.
Provenance:
Miss Lily Yeats;
Miss Hyland;
Purchased by Thomas MacGreevy c.1958;
Private collection, Dublin
Literature:
Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Irish
Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, catalogue no. 450, p. 123; Eoin Neeson,The Book of
Irish Saints, Mercier Press, Cork, 1967;
Bruce Arnold, Jack Yeats, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1998,
pp.123-127.
In 1903, Yeats, along with several other Irish artists was commissioned to
produce banners for the new St Brendan’s Cathedral in Loughrea, Co. Galway.
Parish administrator, Fr. Jeremiah O’Donovan, was deeply committed to the
cultural renaissance in the revival of Irish crafts at the time and so called on
the skills of Sarah Purser, Beatrice Glenavy, George Russell and Jack B. Yeats,
to name but a few, to produce work for the new cathedral. The original order for
ten banners increased substantially resulting in Yeats being commissioned to
design and produce twenty-four using the embroidery expertise of his wife Cottie
and his sisters at the Dun Emer workshops. The banners were known as Soldality
banners, designed for the Sodalities of the Sacred Heart. Each named after a
different saint, they were hung in the pews to indicate where each sodality
would congregate. The present work is a cartoon for the St. Kevin banner. The
simple, clearly defined outlines of the designs re-produced well as embroidered
banners at the Dun Emer workshops and were considered modern and vigourous in
design, receiving considerable contemporary publicity. A reviewer for The Irish
Homestead in 1904 wrote, "..they represent an entirely new departure in Irish
ecclesiastical art work".
€15,000-€20,000 (£9,800-£13,000 sterling approx.)
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