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Provenance: with Willard Gallery, New York, 1950.
with Victor Waddington, Dublin, where purchased by the present owner's parents in 1951.
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Exhibited: Massachusetts, Institute of Technology, The New Gallery, Charles Hayden Memorial Library, Jack B. Yeats, 1965, no. 50.
Birmingham, Alabama, Alabama Museum of Art, Jacks Yeats: Irish Expressionist, March - April 1980, no. 36.
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Literature: H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Volume II, London, 1992, p. 929, no. 1023, illustrated.
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Notes: VARIOUS PROPERTIES
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.
'The Music' was the local name given to travelling musicians who wandered throughout the West of Ireland to play at festivities and events. In 1905 Yeats toured the Gaelic-speaking West of Ireland with the playwright John Millington Synge to illustrate some articles that Synge was writing for the Manchester Guardian. Synge was also a very accomplished fiddler and no doubt entertained the locals around the firesides at night. Just four years later Yeats referred to Synge as 'The Music' in his personal tribute to the writer on his untimely death in 1909. In this work a musician stands proud, gently holding his precious whistle lit by the daylight streaming through an open door. The man in total concentration on his instrument is totally unaware of the shadowy figure standing just inside the door. Yeats was in his late 70's when he painted this picture and although he was the last one of his family still alive - he was producing some of his best works - he was not afraid of anything. He was now an international renowned artist and some of his major works were now hanging in National Galleries around the world.
