John Butler Yeats was an active member of the Dublin Painting and Sketching Club in the 1880s and William Butler Yeats then a student in the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art attended the Club's annual exhibitions
Because of this connection with the Yeats' family the Club marked the 150th anniversary of his birth, by holding an exhibition of paintings inspired by his life and work in the City Assembly House, in conjunction with the Irish Georgian Society in March. These paintings were subsequently included in the Club's 137th Annual Exhibition in the Concourse Gallery County Hall Dun Laoghaire in April.
Now in June, the month of his birth, we post some of these paintings with the relevant poem in celebration of Yeats' 150th.
The first painting celebrates his long association with the Abbey Theatre.
Yeats and the Abbey
Theatre
Painting by Thomas Ryan PPRHA
In 1899 W.B. Yeats, Lady
Gregory and Edward Martyn founded
the Irish Literary Theatre, to perform
Irish and Celtic plays.
In 1902 they joined with
Frank and Willie Fay to form The Irish
National Theatre Society.
From this activity, in
1904 the Abbey Theatre opened, following the
generous patronage of Miss Annie Horniman,
with productions
of Yeats’ play ’On
Baile’s Strand’ andLady Gregory’s
‘Spreading the News’.
Yeats became actively
involved in all aspects of the Abbey Theatre in
the early years and remained involved until
his death in 1939.
The Song of Wandering Aengus .
Painting by Aidan Hickey
I went out to the hazel
wood
Because a fire was in my
head
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a
stream
And caught a little
silver trout.
When I laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a
glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name
and ran
And faded through the brightening
air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where
she has gone,
And kiss her lips and
take her hands;
And walk among long
dappled grass,
And pluck till time and
times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the
sun.
Wild Swans at Coole
Painting by Kate Bedell
The trees are in their
autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are
dry,
Under the October
twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water
among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I made the first count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings........
But now they drift on
the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes they
build,
By what lake’s edge or
pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz
Painting by Janetta Mellet
The light of evening,
Lissadell,
Great windows open to
the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a
gazelle.
But a raving autumn
shears
Blossom from the
summer’s wreath;
The older is condemned
to death,
Pardoned, drags out
lonely years
Conspiring among the
ignorant.
I know not what the younger
dreams
Some vague Utopia—and
she seems,
When withered old and
skeleton gaunt,
An image of such politics,
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian Mansion, mix
Pictures of the mind recall
That table and the talk of youth
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a
gazelle...........
An Irish Airman Foresees his Death
Painting by Jan Hyland
I know that I shall meet
my fate
Somewhere among the
clouds above;
Those that I fight I do
not hate,
Those that I guard I do
not love;
My county is Kiltartan
Cross,
My countrymen
Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could
bring them loss
Or leave them happier than
before.
Nor law, nor duty bade
me fight,
Nor public men, nor
cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of
delight
Drove to this tumult in
the clouds;
I balanced all, brought
all to mind,
The years to come seemed
waste of breath,
A waste of breath the
years behind
In balance with this
life, this death.
Red Hanrahan's Song About Ireland
Painting by Barbara Graham
The old brown
thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen Strand,
Under a bitter black
wind that blows from the left hand;
Our courage breaks like
an old tree in a black wind and dies,
But we have hidden in
our hearts the flame out of the eyes
Of
Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea,
And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say.
Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat;
But we have all bent low and low and kissed quiet feet
Of
Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Clooth-na-Bare
For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air;
Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood;
But purer than a tall candle before the Holy Rood
Is
Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
Memory
Painting by Margo Banks
One had a lovely face,
And two or three had
charm,
But charm and face were
in vain
Because the mountain
grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain
hare has lain.
When You are Old and Grey
Painting by Niamh Harding Miller
When you are old and
grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire,
take down this book,
And slowly read, and
dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, of
their shadows deep;
How many loved your
moments of glad grace
And loved your beauty
with love false and true
But one loved the
pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of
your changing face;
And bending down beside
the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly,
how Love fled
And paced upon the
mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a
crowd of stars.
The Stare's Nest by My Window
Painting by Brian Gallagher
The bees build in the
crevices
Of loosening masonry,
and there
The mother birds bring
grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening;
honey-bees,
Come build in the empty
house of the stare.
We are closed in, the
key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a
house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be
discerned:
Come build in the empty
house of the stare.
The Dolls
Painting by Ursula Klinger
A doll in the
doll-maker’s house
Looks at the cradle and
bawls:
‘That is an insult to
us.’
But the oldest of all
the dolls,
Who had seen, being kept
for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole
shelf: ‘Although
There’s not a man can
report, Evil of this place
The man and the woman
can bring
Hither, to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing’.
Hearing him groan and
stretch
The doll-makers wife is
aware
Her husband has heard
the wretch
And crouched by the arm
of his chair,
She murmers into his
ear, Head upon shoulder leant:
‘My dear, my dear, O dear. It was accident.’
The Fiddler of Dooney
Painting by Tomas King
When I play on my fiddle
in Dooney.
Folk dance like a wave
on the sea
My cousin is priest in
Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee…..
For the good are always
the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the
fiddle,
And the merry love to dance
And when folk there spy
me,
They will all come up to
me,
With ‘Here is the
fiddler of Dooney’
And dance like a wave on
the sea
