With Childhood Drawings by Jack Butler Yeats Yeats (Jack B....

Hammer

€1,500

With Childhood Drawings by Jack Butler Yeats

Yeats (Jack B.) ‘A Broth of a Boy’ [Michael Joseph Barry]. The ‘‘Kishoge Papers’’, Tales of Devilry and Drollery. Dublin, Gill 1877. First edition. Sm 8vo pictorial boards, much used, inscribed in ink by Fredr. Pollexfen and Jack Yeats, and with characteristic sketches and drawings on a number of pages by the youthful Jack Yeats. In a recent folding cloth case.

Fredr. H. Pollexfen, who signs twice on f.f.e.p., was evidently the original owner of this book. Directly under his signature is ‘J.B.Y.’, and opposite, on the glued
endpaper, Jack Yeats has signed his full name twice in a childish hand. There are also eight or ten lines of ballad poetry in a pencilled hand, possibly Fred Pollexfen’s. The
book itself is a collection of droll stories told in ballad verse.

On the half-title is a pencilled drawing, ‘The Irish Bat’; on contents page a drawing of a reclining figure, possibly a tramp; at head of preface, ink signature ‘J. Yeats’; at
head of page [1] ‘F.H. Pollexfen’; on p. 31 drawings of a mounted knight and a huntsman; top of p. 35 an ink drawing of a ship; top p. [63] ink drawing of shoe, foot
and calf (only).
At rear, the blank after p. 202 has drawings of a huntsman, a woman’s head, stars and a pitchfork; on rear e.p.’s caricatured drawings of two men, and a striking ink drawing of a couple dancing or skating – all evidently by the young Jack Yeats, aged perhaps eight or ten, who also signs his name on back of rear e.p.
Frederick Henry Pollexfen was the ninth of the 12 Pollexfen children of Sligo, born 1852, eleven years after his sister Susan, who married John Butler Yeats. Her son
Jack Yeats, born in 1871, spent most of his childhood in Sligo with his Pollexfen relations. Evidently, he acquired this book from his uncle Fred.
There is nothing to suggest that Fred Pollexfen was an artist, and there is no doubt that the sketches in this book are by a youthful Jack Yeats. From his early childhood he drew compulsively, on any paper that came to hand, and even his earliest drawings – as here – often have an element of exaggeration or caricature which is very distinctive. In this he differs from his father, who drew exactly what he saw. One wonders if the Pollexfen household contained copies of Punch.
A remarkable survival. Dating from probably the early 1880s, these childhood sketches may be the earliest by Jack Yeats that have been preserved. Jack Yeats’
early sketches (including those sold at Sothebys 2017) are unlike any other childhood drawings we have seen, showing that Jack’s humorous and quizzical view of life took shape very early.  (1)