Anne Yeats (1919-2001)

Yeats was the next generation of the extraordinary talented Yeats family. Her father was William Butler Yeats, the poet and playwright, her uncle Jack Butler Yeats, one of Ireland’s best-known painters, both her aunts were active in the Irish arts and crafts movement in Ireland and her grandfather, John Butler Yeats was an accomplished portrait painter.

Yeats studied at the Royal Hibernian Academy Schools and later worked as chief stage designer for the Abbey Theatre, an institution her father had helped found. She painted brightly coloured landscapes, still-lifes, and figure paintings, in an expressionistic style, largely using oils. The influence of her uncle Jack B. Yeats can be seen in her bold, thick application of paint. Yeats' expressionist style of painting also owes to her time as a set designer for the stage as her works have a sense of drama and monumentality. She was active in the move towards modernism in Ireland and her first solo exhibition was in the Dublin Painters gallery, in 1946. From 1947 she was a member of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art committee where she also exhibited regularly.

Yeats’ work has featured in many national and international exhibitions and a major retrospective of her work was held in the RHA in 1995. A memorial exhibition was held in the National Gallery of Ireland in 2002, the year after her death. It included sketchbooks, which had been donated by her brother Michael to the gallery.