YEATS, Jack B. Life in the West of Ireland. Drawn and painted by Jack B. Yeats.

A new edition. Dublin and London: Maunsel and Company, 1915. Crown quarto. pp. [vii], 120. Blue buckram, title in gilt on upper cover and spine. Occasional light foxing. A very good copy. Scarce.
Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957), undoubtedly Ireland’s most famous painter, a committed nationalist and brother of one of Ireland’s greatest poets, W.B. Yeats, was born in London and at the age of eight returned to Sligo where he was brought up by his grandparents, the Pollexfens. “Sligo was my school and the sky above it” - so wrote Jack B. Yeats to a friend. He lived in Sligo during his boyhood and all his life he went back to people and events in the west for inspiration in his paintings. He began his life as an artist with black and white illustrations for books and magazines. At this time photography was not widely used and many artists made a living in this way. In 1910 he returned from England where he lived for several years and began to paint seriously in oils. In his paintings the love of the common people shines through. It was the
everyday life of Ireland which sparked his genius - the fairs, circuses, race meetings, sailors and farmers, tramps and beggars, trams and city streets, shop keepers, coachmen, boxers and ballad singers, etc., all feature in his work, in which he expresses an intense sympathy for the underdog, the outcast and the outsider. The present volume illustrates all those scenes in his beloved West of Ireland.

[L4 8B]