Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
The Fern (1943)
Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14")
Signed

Provenance: Sold through Leo Smith, The Dawson Gallery to Senator Joseph Brennan and thence by...

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957)
The Fern (1943)
Oil on panel, 23 x 35.5cm (9 x 14")
Signed

Provenance: Sold through Leo Smith, The Dawson Gallery to Senator Joseph Brennan and thence by descent.

Literature: "Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings", by Hilary Pyle, Andre Deutsch 1992, Volume I, Catalogue No.565

This still-life painting centres on the vivid form of a fern, its leaves conveyed through thick impasto paint. The plant sits in a large lustre jug whose shiny handle is constructed out of strong reds and yellows. The shadowy outline of a window frame on the left reflects blue light onto the plant. Touches of bright blue and yellow convey the impact of light and shade on the delicate fronds. Beyond the edge of the brown wooden board on which the fern is sitting, an area of greys and greens indicate moving water. Yeats returned to the same motif in a later painting, The Fern in the Area, (1950, Private Collection).

The work is a complicated exercise in paint and illusion. It brings together two distinct types of painting - the visceral surface of the jug and plant, and the flat surface of their surroundings. The latter by contrast appear obscure as if in motion. Their subtle gradations of colour and shape are reminiscent of the work of the French post-impressionist painter, Pierre Bonnard. Yeatss work was compared to that of Bonnard by several contemporary commentators, including his close friend, Thomas MacGreevy. The Dublin based artist May Guinness owned an important example of Bonnards work, A Boy Eating Cherries, which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. A work by Bonnard was included in a group exhibition at the Contemporary Picture Galleries in Dublin in 1939, directly before Yeats held a solo show at this venue. Bonnard, like Yeats, enjoyed the physical quality of paint and used it to create perplexing and highly decorative compositions that provoke the viewers curiosity, encouraging them to make sense of the intriguing perspective and arrangement of form within the work. Yeats uses a similar strategy in his painting, although in The Fern, the three-dimensional quality of the central motif disrupts the otherwise tranquil nature of the work.

 

The Fern was bought from the artist by the dealer Leo Smith, a prominent admirer and supporter of his work during the Second World War when this work was painted. The collector Senator Joseph Brennan acquired the painting from Smith and it has since remained in the familys possession.

Dr Roisin Kennedy

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