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Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) The Hard Stuff. Watercolor and pencil. Signed lower right 'Jack B. Yeats '98'. 13.25 x 6.5 inches (33.5 x 16.5 cm). Provenance: Mrs. Campbell (purchased from Waddington Galleries, London); Mrs. Patrick Moynihan (Wife of Senator Patrick Moynihan, purchased from Waddington Galleries, London); Private Collection (purchased from Moynihan Estate). A strongly executed watercolor which depicts a confident man standing before several figures at an impromptu outdoor bar, this early Yeats is enhanced by the inclusion of an American flag hanging before a blue sky. Yeats painted the American flag into his work occasionally, particularly after his initial visit to the United States in 1908. In this early period though, the portrayal of an American flag shows the Irish affinity for the independence of the United States. Throughout Ireland in the 1890s, the American flag sometimes appeared in Yeats' work as an allusion to the then popular advertising posters which promised emigration to the United States via inexpensive passage to New York through travel agents. It is possible that these agents would have set up a tent at a race meeting such as the one depicted here. Hilary Pyle, in the entry regarding this picture, writes: 'A man regales himself in a race-course tent in the West of Ireland. The whiskey tent was to appear in a more symbolic way in the late landscapes, such as Shouting (1950).' Reference: Hilary Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: His Watercolors, Drawings, and Pastels, #112.