![]() ‘Country of the Young, for age and death have not found it neither tears nor loud laughter have gone near it’. Yeats, Jack’s elder brother, described it in his Fairy Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) as the: Tir na nÓg is the legendary land of youth, a mythological island, believed to be off the west coast of Ireland, to which according to folklore, the lovers Niamh and Oisín, eloped. Yeats - An Appreciation and an Interpretation, Waddington, Dublin 1945, p.15). The writer Samuel Beckett, a close friend of Yeats, noted the comparison between the two artists when he referred at the time, to Yeats’s work as becoming ‘ Watteauer and Watteauer’ (Thomas MacGreevy, Jack B. The works suggest the transience of human emotions. In this and other paintings by Watteau, noblemen and women travel to Cythère, the place where the goddess of love, Venus was said to have been born. It calls to mind the works of the French rococo painter, Antoine Watteau such as his Pilgrimage to Cythera, (1718-19, Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin). This is reminiscent of other fantasy paintings of Yeats such as A Race in Hy Brazil (1937, Crawford Art Gallery) which also makes reference to a mythological island. Men and women stand on the shoreline or embark in their boats while an elegant, antiquated galleon marks the horizon line. Behind the reader, on the banks of the river, a fantastic scene of figures and ships takes place. Above his head the cascading branches of a tree, create a natural canopy. He glances away from the pages, towards his vibrant surroundings of flowers, grasses and water. In Tir na nÓg depicts a boy lying on a grassy bank, reading a book. ĮVENING HERALD, 20 APRIL 1936, ‘ROYAL HIBERNIAN ACADEMY EXHIBITION REVIEW’ Here we feel the essential Tir na nÓg, that dream world of loveliness and youth’. ‘It is not only delightful and original in its technique and in its superb craftsmanship, but there is a whimsical, imaginative quality in this picture that puts it in harmony with the most poetic conceptions of Tir na nÓg. Yeats (Irish, 1871-1957), oil on canvas, The O'Brien Collection
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