Jack B. Yeats draws Spreading the News
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Samhain, November 1905
Dublin, Maunsel and Co.; London, A. H. Bullen
With pencil drawings by Jack B. Yeats of scenes from Spreading the News
The vivid sketches by Yeats’s brother Jack, of two characters from Spreading the News, done in this first publication of the play in Samhain, show his abiding interest in movement, crowds, and theatrical scenes. “Jack Smith with his hayfork” stands at attention, very much alive, pugnacious, and ready to defend himself, with “W.G. Fay as Bartley Fallon” innocently seated to the right. Jack Yeats’s first surviving watercolor sketch, of two of his grandfather’s ships at Rosses Point, with Ben Bulben behind, was made when he was 12 or 13 years old. Images of the West of Ireland, focusing on sailors and peasants, ponies and riders, and faces at county fairs and along the docks would be central to his early career.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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