Press Release 25 June 2002

The Jack B. Yeats Archive Room has opened this week in the new Millennium Wing of the National Gallery of Ireland, and scholars may view the material by appointment. The Archive, which houses the artist's sketchbooks, library, literary manuscripts and private papers, will be fully operational by September /October next.

In April 1996, the artist Anne Yeats donated the Archive of her uncle Jack B. Yeats to the National Gallery of Ireland with the express wish that a special archive room be created to contain the material.

'The Horn of Plenty'- A tribute to Anne Yeats (1919-2001)
To celebrate the opening of the Archive, a small exhibition of 20 paintings and drawings by Anne Yeats, covering four important themes in her work, is on view in Room 20 of the Milltown Wing, just off the Yeats Museum. Her brother Michael Yeats has donated a large collection of her personal sketchbooks, and examples of these are shown in the exhibition. The exhibition is open from 26 June to 2 October 2002. Admission is Free. An illustrated exhibition brochure written by Hilary Pyle and Síle Yeats is available from the Shop (€3).

'Irish hands in the making of beautiful things'
Another mini-exhibition marking the centenary of the Dun Emer Guild and Press, under the title 'Irish hands in the making of beautiful things', may be seen in the Yeats Museum. The exhibition includes embroideries and printed matter. The Yeats Museum is open during Gallery hours. Admission is Free.

The Jack B. Yeats Archive
The Archive consists of a prestigious collection of Jack B. Yeats sketchbooks, covering over fifty years of his career, and forming a diary of his activities as well as tracing the stylistic changes and the nature of his subject matter; the remains of his extensive library, a collection of nearly 500 books, with a notebook describing the original whole library; as well as boxes of material ranging from collections of journals and theatre programmes to the original manuscripts for his plays, Synge photographs, and old postcards, sketches and designs from various periods. There is a collection of memorabilia of his wife, Mary Cottenham Yeats, also an artist, and an extensive gathering of old ballads and ballad books and maps.

Material from the Archive is exhibited from time to time in the Yeats Museum which opened to the public in March 1999 and has continued to be one of the most popular exhibition areas in the Gallery, showing all the national collection of Jack B. Yeats paintings, and the majority of his father's portraits of the Yeats family, and of the leading figures of the Irish cultural renaissance.

Donations of additional material to the Archive began to flow in after the opening of the Museum, and include a collection of embroideries by Jack's sister Lily, from the collection of their niece Ruth Pollexfen, who worked at the Yeats sisters' craft workshop in Dun Emer in Dundrum, before marrying and emigrating to Australia. With the embroideries came first editions of WB Yeats and other writers from the Dun Emer and Cuala Presses run by Elizabeth Yeats.

Other collectors have donated letters, manuscripts and holographs of the writings of John Butler Yeats and Jack B. Yeats, an Elizabeth Yeats fan, and other Yeats memorabilia. Now the Museum, inaugurated to honour the artist, Jack B. Yeats, is commonly known as the Yeats family Museum. Michael Yeats has also donated to the Yeats Archive the easel used by Jack B. Yeats and latterly by Anne Yeats, as well as his painting smock.

Dr Hilary Pyle is Yeats Curator of the National Gallery. Those wishing to view items in the Yeats Archive should contact her directly by telephoning
(01) 663 3537.

Further Information: Valerie Keogh / Bill Maxwell
Press & Communications Office
National Gallery of Ireland
Telephone (01) 663 3598 / 663 3519
Email: press@ngi.ie