Lot 91: John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922) ILLUSTRATION TO A FAIRY TALE, circa 1886-1887 signed with initials lower right; inscribed on reverse watercolour

John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922) ILLUSTRATION TO A FAIRY TALE, circa 1886-1887 signed with initials lower right; inscribed on reverse watercolour heightened with white 44 by 27cm., 17.5 by 10.5in Provenance: Purchased from the artist by a friend of the Yeats family; by whom given in 1936 to Mrs Buckley, Sandymount, Dublin; thence to her daughter Enid, by whom given in 1994 to the present owner Inscribed on reverse with the instructions to a printer to reduce image to 7.5 x 4.75 inches, and with the artist's name and address, 58 Eardley Crescent, Earls Court (Yeats' address in 1886- 1887), crossed out and replaced below with 3 Blenheim Road, Bedford Park, Chiswick (his address from mid-1887). Struggling to support his large family on the unreliable income of a portrait painter, Yeats left Dublin for London in late 1886 to attempt a living doing black and white illustration work1. From his initial residence in Eardley Crescent he submitted woodcuts and drawings to such publishing firms as Atalanta, Cassell's, Harper's and the Tract Society. However, an unprofessional approach and a distinct lack of marketing skills resulted in many such works not selling and consequently remaining with the family. Contrary to his son Jack's illustrative work, JBY's work in this field has been largely undocumented. The present work represents a rare - possibly unique - example of this part of JBY's oeuvre. 1 William Murphy, Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats (1839-1922), Cornell University Press, Ithica & London, 1978, p. 159. E8000-10000 George Campbell RHA (1917-1979) George Campbell RHA was one of Ireland's best known figurative painters of the twentieth century. Several retrospectives of his work have revealed his talent for capturing a sense of place, whether it be of his home county Wicklow, the streets of Dublin or Belfast, the wilds of Connemara or his adoptive heartland in Malaga, Spain. What is not perhaps as widely acknowledged is the incessant nature by which Campbell drew and painted. He seems constantly to have had a sketch pad at the ready to jot down the features of a drinking companion or the rythyms of a group of folk musicians. When times for artists were somewhat lean in the forties and fifties, he would happily swap a drawing or two in exchange for some more marketable commodity, which he could then sell to support himself and Madge. The following lots (92 to 98) were given by Campbell to his friend William Baird and have remained since in the latter's family.