JACK YEATS had such a powerful love of the world
(like that of his big brother the poet, it seemed to grow with age) that his re-creations of it on canvas became 'positively three-dimensional, so sumptuously would he pile on the whorls and swirls of juicy paint. I see in one of the tributes to him the implication that his work was not 'modernist.' He certainly didn't have a fashion- able label round his neck, being Yeats and nothing but Yeats, but the corollary is by no means that he was 'old-fashioned.' There was an astonishing vigour in his vision and a splendid extravagance in the way he got the very light of Ireland into the picture frame : to let the eye run over the glisten- ing ridges of the impasto is as exhilarating as a ride on a switchback. I met him only once and thought him a quiet, humorous and modest man, but one with a strong spring curled up inside him ready to uncoil with a snap whenever a picture was in the making.
Previous page
