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Provenance: Sold in 1950 to Mrs Oliver Chesterton.
Private collection, UK.
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Literature: H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings Volume II, London, 1992, p. 903, no. 999, illustrated.
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A classic example from the late 1940s when Yeats's expressionistic style was characterised by his use of dynamic brushstrokes and thick impasto, Yeats's treatment of the medium, as seen in the present work, can readily be compared to the paintings of his contemporary European Expressionists, most notably that of the artist's good friend, Oskar Kokoschka. With background, horse, and human merging and dissolving into one another, Until We Meet Again takes on an almost visionary or dream-like quality. It has been suggested that the wealth of emotion in the gestures and expressions within this picture are representative of the reflections on mortality of an ageing artist, affected by the death of his wife, Cottie, who died in 1947, and the death of his brother and sister in 1948 and 1949 respectively, as well as by the war which had ended only a few years earlier. The title of this canvas, Until We Meet Again, may be a further indication of this. The metaphor of this deep spiritual kinship that exists between horse and man, at the meeting point of land and ocean, looking past the material realm of the everyday to a world beyond where they can be reunited has a deep universal resonance.
Until We Meet Again depicts a quiet moment of intimacy between the male figure and his equine companion. The composition is more abstracted since the artist has chosen to focus in on the subject matter and thus incorporate the viewer closely into the pictorial space. Yeats focuses exclusively upon the head and shoulders of the man - who is partially turned away from the viewer - and the horse's head. Behind the figures is a loosely depicted landscape, with suggestions of the sea in the middle distance. Compositionally, this painting can be likened to an earlier picture executed by Yeats in 1936, titled The Eye of Affection, (private collection, Bermuda; see H. Pyle, no. 475), in which only part of the head of the horse is depicted, very similarly to the creature in the present painting and it may well have been a source of inspiration to the artist.
The enigmatic relationship between horse and human, as considered in this work, was a theme which continually fascinated Yeats throughout his career as an artist. Reared in the Irish countryside, he credited his love for animals, especially the horse, to his rural upbringing. Comparable works of this period, such as Come, 1948 (sold in these Rooms, 9 March 1990, lot 261; see J. Booth, A Vision of Ireland: Jack B. Yeats, Hong Kong, p. 118, pl. 64), My Beautiful, My Beautiful, (private collection, Ireland); and The View, 1949 (private collection, USA; see J. Booth, pl. 4), likewise show Yeats's interest and exploration of this subject matter.
