Yeats 2015

 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