Hilary Pyle takes a fresh look at John Butler Yeats, the patriarch of Ireland’s leading artistic family.
Since William Murphy published his biography of John Butler Yeats (JBY) Prodigal Father, critical assessments of the artist have tended to stress the pejorative quality embedded in the title. ‘Prodigal’ is generally used to describe those who are ‘recklessly wasteful, extravagant, or spendthrift’ – though no doubt with the underlying possibility of redemption – and may suit to describe a small element of the subject’s character. To the modern mind, particularly, JBY’s total disinterest in money led him to be neglectful of those who depended on him, and temporarily importunate on those who were more wealthy than himself. On the other hand, to his own way of thinking, he was giving his family – his children anyway – more than money can buy, by abandoning a secure profitable profession to pursue a life where natural gifts were his resource and livelihood, and he enabled and indeed exhorted them to do the same.
As Europe confronts its current refugee crisis, Kathryn Milligan looks back to 1916 when a Belgian artist was one of the 2,300 Belgian refugees who sought shelter in Ireland.
Peter Murray reflects on the cool Nordic aesthetic of Patricia Burns whose work is on view in January at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
Recent excavations at Rathfarnham Castle have brought the former inhabitants into focus, prompting Simon Loftus to recall some vivid episodes from the family’s history.