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John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922) PORTRAIT OF GRAC

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:8,000.00 - 10,000.00 EUR
John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922) PORTRAIT OF GRAC

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Auction Date:2005 Feb 22 @ 18:00 (UTC)
Location:Ireland
John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922) PORTRAIT OF GRACIE YEATS (MRS MATTHEW YEATS) with a label on reverse inscribed in a later hand: “A.G.M. Yeats (Mrs Matthew Yeats) by John Butler Yeats RHA” oil on canvas 61 by 51cm., 24 by 20in. Provenance: J. Edwin Yeats (the sitter’s son), Toronto, Canada; Thence by descent; Sotheby’s, Billingshurst, August 2001; Private collection, Nottinghamshire A.G.M. Yeats, or ‘Gracie Yeats’ as she was known, was John Butler Yeats’ aunt by marriage. Born Grace Drew, her father was for many years an archdeacon in the Bahamas; he later became rector at Skibereen, Co. Cork. Grace married Matthew Yeats, the ninth and youngest son of the Rev. John Yeats (1774-1846), rector of Drumcliffe in Co. Sligo and John Butler Yeat’s paternal grandfather. Matthew Yeats (1819-1885) worked as a land agent, initially in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, and later in Sligo. William M. Murphy records that John Butler Yeats “often went out of his way” to visit his youngest uncle Matt, who was “yet another affectionate Yeats” and later acted as John’s agent when he inherited property in Thomastown, Co. Kildare (William M. Murphy, Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats, Cornell University Press, 1978, p. 30). Matthew and Grace married late in life, thus their children were similar in age to John’s own family. When John’s family were spending a summer with the Pollexfen relations in Sligo, Willie, Lily and Lolly (Jack was too young) would walk to Matthew and Grace’s house, ‘Fort Louis’, there to play in the “enchanted” garden and jointly terrorise the neighbouring children (Murphy, op. cit., p. 92). John was evidently very fond of Matthew, Grace, and his young cousins. During the summer of 1874 he tutored Matt’s eldest son Frank and described it as “the pleasantest time” he had ever spent in Sligo (Murphy, op. cit., p. 102). Yet when the same child was much younger, Grace had “deliberately put her young baby Frank out of sight when John Butler Yeats visited them at Celbridge”, for John did not respond well to babies, who were “conversationalists and thinkers only potentially” (pp. 495-496). William Murphy’s biography of John Butler Yeats refers frequently to Matthew Yeats, particularly in his capacity as John’s land agent, and as a relation whom John consistently favoured over his dreaded in-laws, the Pollexfens. Three of Matthew and Grace’s children - Frank, Edwin and Elizabeth - later emigrated to Canada, but John remained in touch with them. Indeed, when Elizabeth’s daughter the poet Norah Holland (1876-1925) visited Ireland in 1904, John drew a sketch of her, which was later reproduced in an anthology of Canadian poetry. The present portrait of Matthew’s wife Grace was no doubt painted as a tribute to his favourite uncle and by way of thanks for his efforts in managing John’s complicated financial affairs.
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