California

This is one of a series of fantasy paintings that Jack B. Yeats painted in 1937. The others are A Race in Hy Brazil (Crawford Art Gallery, Cork) and Once in a Day (Private Collection). Hilary Pyle interprets the painting as ‘a young woman emigrant from Ireland, whose arrival in California arouses nostalgia and yearning for the land from which she has come, among those who welcome her’ (H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume I, London, 1992, p. 459). Thomas MacGreevy, the poet and critic, referred to this work in his 1945 monograph on Yeats, when he described it ‘as an imaginary representation of the effect of the arrival of a young woman amongst the men settlers in Western America of seventy or eighty years ago’ (T. MacGreevy, Jack B Yeats: An Appreciation and an Interpretation, Dublin, 1945, p. 29. Accessed via Susan Schreibman, The Thomas MacGreevy Bibliography, http://www.macgreevy.org). It depicts a young woman accompanied by a sailor in an elaborate white suit being greeted by a group of figures at the water’s edge. California was for Yeats an exotic and imaginative location which he had never visited but which he had read about in the writings of Bret Harte. As in his painting of Hy Brazil, a mythical island off the west coast of Ireland, California evokes a world of pleasure and escapade. The painting subtly conjures up a place of ‘adventure, struggle, the glamour of achievement in a world where the things that mattered were a man’s own strength, goodwill and intelligence' (ibid.). This, according to MacGreevy, was what California represented to Yeats.

The woman is the key figure in the painting. She is separated from the other people in the composition both physically and psychologically. Her presence has a civilising and feminising effect on the image. She is dressed in a turn of the century costume and not of the 1930s when the painting was made. She carries a stylish and impractical handbag and her splendid hat is decorated with blue pommels and two large exotic pink flowers. As she steps ashore in her delicate gold shoes, her pose and diaphanous beauty allude to the classical myth of the birth of Venus. Behind her the prow of a white and gold ship at anchor suggests the importance of the figure in its grandeur and opulent decoration. Another classical figure that Yeats also painted, Helen of Troy, is playfully evoked by this allusion.

The chaotic welcoming party is made up of musicians and an elderly gentleman who leans on a stick and who greets the woman’s male companion. One of the men, wearing a dark Mexican style hat, is playing a saxophone. Behind him another figure carries a mandolin. Seated on a bollard on the quayside is another musician. This delightfully informal gathering exudes friendship and the exoticism of California in the mixed races of its inhabitants. The notion of relaxed pleasure is extended in the composition by the sailing boat in the middle distance and the colourful seaside buildings in the background to the left of the composition.

The bright Californian light and gentle climate are conveyed by the rich blues and yellows of the painting, especially the turquoise blue of the sea. The figures are formed out of broad brushstrokes of mainly blue and white pigment. Shade is denoted, as in the figure on the extreme left, in mauve. The fall of intense sunlight on the forms is expressed in touches of yellow and gold. The latter is also used to pick out the brass buttons that some of the figures have on their costumes. Above all the open space and the happy demeanour of the characters convey an air of relaxation and good humour. MacGreevy’s appraisal of the qualities of the work, made when it was first painted, still hold true:
‘In this different world of the imagination landscape and figures can be and are at one with each other. The colour harmonies, the drawing, the composition, the expression, even the high comedy sense revealed in the untidy though extraordinarily beautiful white garments of the man in the centre of the picture, are all fused into a single mood of glowing, yet tender imaginative sympathy' (ibid.).

We are very grateful to Dr Róísin Kennedy for preparing this catalogue entry.

Zoltan Lewinter-Frankl (1894-1961), the previous owner of this painting and the father of the present owner, was Northern Ireland’s only significant patron of the arts in the post-war period during which the Irish art movement was forming. Born in Hungary and educated in Budapest, Frankl fought for Germany in the First World War, during which he was awarded the Iron Cross, and later joined the knitwear industry in Vienna. He met and married Anny Lewinter there who owned her own couture business, and by 1930 the couple ran a thriving factory. In 1938, they fled Vienna for London, planning to settle with contacts in Australia. While in London, they were courted by Sir Basil Brook on behalf of the Northern Irish government and were persuaded to move to Belfast to set up Anny Lewinter Ltd at Newtownards.

In Belfast, Frankl immediately became an enthusiastic collector or Irish art, and by 1958, when Belfast Museum held an exhibition of the highlights of his collection, it numbered nearly 250 works, including no fewer than 9 oils by Jack B. Yeats. Frankl enjoyed the company of artists and became close friends with many, including Stanley Spencer, who’s work he collected and commissioned, including a portrait of Anny (Private Collection).

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