William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865, the son of John B Yeats, a renowned painter, as was his younger brother Jack. He studied at the School of Art in Dublin, where he met George Russell (AE) and developed an interest in mysticism. He abandoned art at twenty-one and began writing. He founded the nationalist Irish Literary Society, and subsequently applied himself to the development of an Irish national theatre with the help of Lady Gregory. His early studies of Irish lore resulted in his 'Celtic Twilight' period. The poet's traditional, nationalistic themes, and his unrequited love for Maud Gonne, a beautiful and ardent revolutionary, were the subjects of The Wandering of Oisín (1889) and The Wind among the Reeds (1899). Responsibilities (1914) and The Wild Swans at Coole show his mounting disillusionment with Irish politics, which came to a head over the controversy about the Hugh Lane bequest of paintings. He served as a senator in the Irish Free State, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923. He died in 1939.

Le Brocquy describes his quest towards a definitive image of Ireland's greatest twentieth-century poet:

...when painting, I try not to impose myself. Discoveries are made - such as they are - while painting. The painting itself dictates and, although the resultant image may seem rhetorical to some, it appears to me to be almost autonomous, having emerged under one's hands and not because of them. A subjectively conceived image, deliberately imposed by the painter, may be represented easily enough. A conventional, popular image of W B Yeats is immediately recognisable to those who share it. Such a conceived image may be sought and repeatedly rediscovered in the flux and movement of life, but what of a photograph where factual appearance is momentarily and permanently stilled and which thus sometimes defies identification with the known conceptual image? If two contemporary photographs of Yeats provide acceptable images of him, a third does not ... In the 100 studies towards an image of W B Yeats, which were exhibited in 1976 at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, I therefore tried as uncritically as I could to allow different aspects of Yeats's head to emerge. These I recalled largely from photographs taken throughout his lifetime and, for the most part, without referring to them directly. Where I have worked from them directly, I have consulted two or more at the same time and - since these photographs bear little consistent resemblance to each other - I have encouraged differing and sometimes contradictory images to emerge spontaneously.

[CO'S]

Lit. - Walker, 1981 / le Brocquy, 1987 / Madden, 1994 / Morgan, 1995