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Dimensions: 46 by 61cm., 18 by 24in.
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Provenance: Victor Waddington Galleries, London, whence purchased by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, 1951
Victor Waddington, London, by 1973
Professor William Kearney, Cork
Private collection, Yorkshire
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 28th January 1986, lot 221
Waddington Galleries, London, 1987
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Exhibited: Dublin, Victor Waddington Galleries, Jack B. Yeats, Paintings, 1951, no.8;
London, Victor Waddington, Jack B. Yeats, Oil Paintings, 1973, no.20, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue;
London, Waddington Galleries, Jack B. Yeats, 1987, no.23, illustrated in colour in the exhibition catalogue.
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Literature: Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, André Deutsch, London, 1992, p.941, no.1037, illustrated.
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Notes: Painted in 1947. A small boy stoops to launch his toy boat in a rock pool. Held safe by an encircling dam of small stones, the quiet of this harbour is in contrast to the rushing torrent of a waterfall situated directly behind the boy, as it crashes down from what appears to be an upper level over four times his height. The mysterious dankness of the dense forest setting is offset by the pure clean spume, given off by the water as it falls. Dappled yellow sunlight is caught and bounced back towards the viewer through the prism effect of the mist hanging low over the broken water. Labelled by Hilary Pyle as "one of the artist's most powerful symbolic paintings", this painting recalls youth, with an additional nostalgia inherent in the title itself. Having painted numerous meditations on 'childhood', and with many more straight narrative scenes simply recalling young life in Sligo, Quiet Harbour pulls an added emotion from the presence of the waterfall, a subject that Yeats painted eight other times, although not generally with the dominance indicated here. Both the title and the power of the natural phenomena suggest that this painting may represent more than a reference back to the past: Jack's wife had died 1947 and, notwithstanding the sureness of touch here, he himself was only to live another seven years. Thus the 'quiet harbour' could equally symbolise hope for what lay ahead, a tacit acknowledgement that the force of life flows on, through and beyond the reach of any individual. The artist himself began in 1950 to spend a far greater proportion of his time secluded at the old Portobello nursing home, and gradually appeared to friends increasingly weary of the fight to keep afloat on such a tide.
