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The Swinford Funeral

Jack Butler Yeats1918

The Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum
Baltimore, United States

Jack B. Yeats, son of the portraitist, John B. Yeats (1839-1922), and brother of the poet William B. Yeats (1865-1939), is generally acknowledged as the greatest Irish painter of the first half of the 20th century. Initially an illustrator, he accompanied the writer John Millignton Synge (1871-1909) on a walking tour of Mayo County in western Ireland in 1905. A sketch made at that time served thirteen years later as the basis for this painting. The women whose brightly colored dresses contrast with the drab clothing of the other mourners are presumably Irish-Americans who have returned home. In referring to the scene in an article he wrote for the "Manchester Guardian," Synge alluded to several young women in the funeral procession who seemed by their dress to be "returned Americans."

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  • Title: The Swinford Funeral
  • Creator Lifespan: 1871/1957
  • Creator Nationality: Irish
  • Date Created: 1918
  • Type: painting
  • Rights: Gift of the Honorable Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., 1987, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
  • External Link: The Walters Art Museum
  • Medium: oil on fabric
  • Provenance: C. P. Curran, 1921, by purchase [from the artist]; Mrs. Josef Solterer, United States [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; The Dawson Gallery, Dublin, Ireland [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; The Honorable Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., Baltimore, 1975 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1987, by gift.
  • Place of Origin: Dublin, Ireland,
  • Inscriptions: [Signature] Lower left: Jack. B Yeats.
  • ExhibitionHistory: When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Twentieth Century Figurative Painting from Ireland. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley. 1998-1999
  • Artist: Jack B. Yeats
The Walters Art Museum

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