ANNE YEATS – Out of the Shadows

by Valerie Alexander

ISBN 978 1910140 376    112 pages (hardback)   24 x 17 cm   144 illus

This monograph introduces the artist Anne Yeats (1919-2001), painter, printmaker, book illustrator, stage designer and arts administrator. A pivotal figure in Irish modernism, Yeats’s life and work reveal her as someone of great erudition, talent and significance in the history of twentieth- century Irish art.

As her career progressed, Yeats developed a distinct style of her own. Her artistic themes embraced women, aspects of nature, animals and birds, and also images of patterning, which would lead her ultimately towards abstraction. Until the late 1960s, she was considered one of Ireland’s avant garde artists, at which stage, like many others, she was sidelined for various reasons, not least political.

Anne Yeats – Out of the Shadows is an invitation to become acquainted with this gifted artist. This is an extensively illustrated book, enlivened with anecdotes that convey the artist’s intelligence and quirky sense of humour. It asserts that this Yeats merits recognition in her own right, rather than as an adjunct to her poet father or artist uncle.

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EXTRACT

"A consummate professional, Yeats tested herself constantly. She berated herself in one of her sketchbooks (1952) with ‘Why am I dissatisfied with my work? Because I have let other people’s vision of the object come between me and the object.’ By the early 1960s, she was an accomplished painter in oils, and her work embraced many of the influences to which she had been exposed. Works such as The Letter Writer (1950s), Woman Dreaming in a Chair (1964) and The Knitter (1950s) resonate with the influences of Picasso and Modigliani. Her interest in pattern, Cubism and the tonal ‘putty’ influences of Johnson is illustrated in many works. For example, in Chairs on the Terrace (1960), painted in oil on canvas, the graphic outlines of the furniture visually engage and challenge the viewer. As with ‘magic’ paintings, the artist plays optical games: the longer you look, the more tables and chairs of different shapes you see.

         Yeats’s works tell the story of an artist’s sensitive observations of the world around her. Like le Brocquy, in Standing About Doing Nothing (1965) and Two Men Talking (1960s) she conveys a sense of ‘human isolation within the community’. Explored through Cubism and the Surreal, they are imbued with the prevalent uncertainty of the time in the wake of World War II and the atomic threat following Hiroshima. Notwithstanding that the figures are grouped, there is a sense of emptiness and isolation in a scene reminiscent of Johnson’s Sunday Morning Toss School, Lower Kevin Street. Curiously, Morning in a City (1937) by Jack Yeats, although different in style and composition, also conveys this sense of aloneness, of many people present but separately engaged in their individual space. In 1997 Yeats confided that she ‘had tried to avoid being influenced by either her father or by the work of her Uncle Jack ... wanted to strike out on my own’. However, although she demurred in various interviews at any deliberate influence on her work by her uncle, her sketchbooks and various works reveal that both were experimental artists with some mutual stimulus of style and of theme."

— from ch. 5: An Avant-Garde Artist

CONTENTS Foreword   Brian Lalor    6 Preface   Ann Saddlemyer    9 Prologue     10 Acknowledgements    13 Chapter 1    Great Expectations: Early life, education and career    14 Chapter 2    Early Career, 1930s    22 Chapter 3    Travels, Themes and Exhibitions    32 Chapter 4    selected works, 1940s onwards    46 Chapter 5    An Avant Garde Artist, 1950s and 1960s    56 Chapter 6    A Growing Reputation – Graphic Studio Dublin, 1960s    74 Chapter 7    “Events, dear boy, Events”, 1960s–1980s    80 Chapter 8    A Late Flowering, 1990s    88 Endmatter:  Endnotes / Chronology / Exhibitions / Bibliography / List of Illustrations

published 2023