- 37
John Butler Yeats
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Log in to view results
bidding is closed
Description
- John Butler Yeats
- Portrait of a Gentleman, thought to be William Morris
- watercolour and gouache
- 49 by 39cm., 19¼ by 15¼in.
together with a pencil sketch reputedly of William Morris and two unidentified figures (inscribed in Lily Yeats' hand l.r.: William Morris)
Exhibited
New York, Albany Institute of History & Art, The Drawings of John Butler Yeats, 11 April - 31 May 1987, no.11 (for the pencil sketch, illustrated in exh. cat.)
Catalogue Note
John Butler Yeats certainly met William Morris - the designer, socialist and reformer poet - both in London and Dublin when he visited the Contemporary Club in 1886. A sketch of Morris on that occasion is in the National Gallery of Ireland Collection [NGI 6078]. While the present work bears similarities to Morris and has always been described as a portrait of him, attribution has not been confirmed.
In London, WBY visited Morris often at his home Kelmscott Manor in the late 1880s, and it was here that he met George Bernard Shaw, Walter Crane, Henry Hyndman the socialist, and Prince Krootkin the anarchist. WBY admired William Morris the most, reminding him of his grandfather William Pollexfen. He once wrote that if he had been given the choice of living another man's life, Morris' would be the one (WBY, Autobiographies, pp.140-41).