Launch of ‘Yeats Collection Exhibition’

New NUI Galway exhibition features art from controversial Yeats sale

NUI Galway is delighted to announce the launch of its Yeats Collection Exhibition. Following controversial sales in the UK and Ireland of material from ‘Ireland’s greatest literary and artistic family’ – as described by London auctioneers Sotheby’s – the university is proud to confirm that its recent acqusitions ensure many valuable artefacts are to remain in Ireland. Now newly on display at NUI Galway’s James Hardiman Library, the art and culture on show enhances the university’s existing special collections in the visual arts, and in English and Irish literature and theatre, showcasing its vibrant holdings of Irish cultural life.

Most of all the exhibition highlights the art and culture of the west. It draws attention to the work of women in renewing Ireland’s culture, and the early years of Ireland’s theatrical renaissance. In an exquisite drawing by Jack B. Yeats, the Roscommon poet and Irish-language playwright Douglas Hyde is shown acting with characteristic gusto and moustachios – a companion sketch depicts the Irish National Theatre’s greatest comic actor William G. Fay shouting at actors mid-rehearsal. Fourteen original drawings of human and animal island life by Elizabeth Rivers reveal the sensitivity of an artist who spent more time on the Aran islands than all the Yeatses and Synges combined. Shown alongside original woodcuts and fine art books, these drawings, unusually, were made as illustrations for the very last Cuala Press book Stranger in Aran. Cuala Industries, founded by sisters Elizabeth and Lily Yeats as a feminist artistic collective, had by then become the foremost design workshop in Ireland. Its contributions to embroidery and printing are honoured by a unique handpainted banner used for publicity in art fairs. Further rarely-seen items highlight the contributions to the west of Lady Augusta Gregory and her son Robert Gregory, whose untimely death one hundred years ago in the First World War is remembered as part of forthcoming Armistice Day commemorations.

The Yeats family collection is the most important to come out of Ireland this century. It featureds an entirely unique trove of material relating to the poet and Nobel Prize-winner W.B. Yeats, his brother Jack B. Yeats, their father the artist John Butler Yeats, and their sisters Susan (Lily) and Elizabeth (Lolly) Yeats. More than a family collection, it describes the making of modern Ireland by telling the story of the collaborations of the Irish Revival. Its open sale was therefore controversial. A group of academics, writers, artists, and concerned citizens, including the poets Paul Muldoon, Vona Groarke, Michael Longley, Nick Laird, and Marie Heaney, widow of Seamus Heaney, led by NUI Galway’s Dr Adrian Paterson and Trinity College’s Dr Tom Walker wrote an open letter to then Minister of Culture Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphries (also published in the Irish Times), calling on her to save the collection for the nation. The sale and the controversy attracted worldwide interest, with questions asked in the Oireachtas, and feature articles published in the New York Times, the Irish Times, and other outlets. While it is clear that some items were saved, the sale still went ahead with all items available to the highest bidder.

The rescue of such important items for the nation and future generations in the west by NUI Galway is thus cause for celebration. To mark the acquisitions and to highlight existing artwork the new Yeats Collection Exhibition runs until Christmas. The exhibition is launched at 5pm on Friday 9^th November at the James Hardiman Library’s Special Collections Reading Room, and all are cordially invited to attend.

Contact the exhibition curators Adrian Paterson adrian.paterson@nuigalway.ie and Barry Houlihan barry.houlihan@nuigalway.ie

NOTES ON SELECTED EXHIBITION ITEMS

Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957). Drawings of Douglas Hyde and W.G. Fay (c. 1903)

Born in Roscommon, the rich literary and cultural achievements of Douglas Hyde resulted in him becoming Ireland’s first President in 1938. As well as founding the Gaelic League and producing poetic translations of genius, Hyde was a scholar and playwright in the Irish language, and a fine actor. He is depicted in character in one of his own plays, wide-eyed and mid-speech in a vibrant sketch by Ireland’s greatest artist Jack B. Yeats. William G. Fay was the finest comic actor in the early Abbey Theatre, and is shown by the same artist in rehearsal mode with the company exhorting them to one more effort. ‘Now are ye ready’ says Jack Yeats’s caption: ‘Then let us go again’. These fine works of art record the renaissance of Irish theatre, complement the university’s holdings from Jack B. Yeats’s 1900 Galway sketchbook.

Elizabeth Corbett Yeats (1868-1940). Banner for Cuala Industries (c.1920)

In such an astonishing artistic family the Yeats sisters are often overlooked. However they were fine artists in their own right. Lily Yeats (like her mother christened Susan Mary) trained in needlework with May Morris (daughter of William Morris) and set up a pioneering all-female embroidery workshop in Dublin; with her team of assistants on the other side of the curtain Elizabeth Corbett Yeats (known to the family as Lolly) established a printing press, the Cuala Press, with her brother W.B. Yeats as literary editor, both workshops also featuring frequent input from their brother the artist Jack B. Yeats. Cuala Industries shows the overwhelming cultural importance of the Yeats family, and is proudly represented by a banner naming the sisters and both integral parts of the organization. The banner is the only known survival of its kind, handpainted on textiles, and was probably intended for marketing the collective at artistic fairs in Ireland, England, and America. Its presence at NUI Galway highlights existing strengths in literature and publishing and underscores cultural achievements of women working for the new nation.

Robert Gregory (1881-1918). Drawings of figures and landscapes (c.1912-4)

Robert Gregory’s death in a fighter plane robbed the nation of one of its finest artistic talents, described by W.B. Yeats as ‘a great painter born […] to Galway rock and thorn’. Never-before seen original drawings highlight on this centenary his visionary eye and his close connection to the west’s landscape of myth and stone.

Elizabeth Rivers (1903-1964).14 original ink and pencil drawings for Stranger in Aran (1946).  Under Elizabeth Corbett Yeats the pioneering Cuala Press become the foremost art printers in Ireland. A full collection of its unique hand-painted broadsides at the university features art by Jack B. Yeats, Harry Kernoff, Maurice McGonigal and lyrics from W.B. Yeats, F.R. Higgins and Dorothy Wellesley. Yet its valuable printed books, each produced entirely by hand, are its finest achievement, and NUI Galway’s collection features poets from George Russell (A.E.) to Louis MacNeice, and writers from Lady Augusta Gregory to Lord Dunsany. Very few however feature illustrations: one that does, providing a unique record of island life, is Stranger in Aran, by Elizabeth Rivers, the very last book to be published by the Cuala Press in 1946. The newly-purchased original drawings from the artist, born in London but increasingly drawn to the west of Ireland, represent depictions of Galway hookers, fishermen, birds, scenery, and other characteristic details from island life. With jotted notes to the printer they also make a significant contribution to our understanding of Cuala’s pioneering printing process and the book history of Ireland.  –ENDS–