Saint Francis of Assisi by Jack Butler Yeats Rha
Saint Francis of Assisi by Jack Butler Yeats Rha (1903)
This gouache was intended as a design for an embroidered sodality banner for Loughrea Cathedral, Co. Galway. It was executed in 1903 as part of a commission awarded to the fledgling Dún Emer Guild, which was founded in 1902 by Evelyn Gleeson. Her two principal partners in the venture were Jack Yeats' sisters, Susan and Elizabeth (or Lily and Lolly as they were known to family and friends). When the Guild received this prestigious commission, they invited Jack and his wife Mary (known as Cottie) to supply designs for the banners. Jack designed the Sacred Heart banner and the banners for all the male saints bar two (these were designed by Æ), whilst Cottie supplied designs for nearly all of the female saints. In all, twenty-nine banners were completed, with a further four designs being executed but ultimately not used.
In the present work Yeats depicts St. Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Ecology celebrated for his great love for animals and the environment. The scene depicted would suggest a reference to his Sermon to the Birds. In common with other Loughrea designs, the figure is drawn in heavy black outline silhouetted against a pale background. They wear monastic dress or Old Irish garments and their movement is created by the different attitudes or poses they adopt and by the vigorous lines or the folds of their garments. At the time of the commission, The Irish Homestead described the banners as displaying 'freshness and quaint naturalness', combined with 'sympathy and native feeling' and hailed them as the start 'of a new epoch in art work of this kind, wherein originality of design shall replace vulgarity and simple beauty replace tawdriness' (13 February 1904, p. 134).Examples of these designs can be found in the National Gallery of Ireland and Áras an Uachtarain.For further reading see: Pyle, Hilary, Jack B. Yeats: His watercolours Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1993, nos. 447-459, p. 121-125.
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