John Butler Yeats

John Butler Yeats RHA (16 March 1839 – 3 February 1922) was an Irish artist and the father of W. B. Yeats, Lily Yeats, Elizabeth Corbett "Lollie" Yeats and Jack Butler Yeats. The National Gallery of Ireland holds a number of his portraits in oil and works on paper, including one of his portraits of his son William, painted in 1900.

Career

Yeats was born in Lawrencetown, townland of Tullylish, County Down to an Anglo-Irish family. His parents were William Butler Yeats (1806–1862) and Jane Grace Corbert; John Butler Yeats was the eldest of nine children. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, and a member of the University Philosophical Society, John Butler Yeats began his career as a lawyer and devilled briefly with Isaac Butt before he took up painting in 1867 and studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art. After John Butler Yeats returned to Ireland in 1881, he began to exhibit paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy, which elected him a member (RHA) in 1892. There are few records of his sales, so there is no catalogue of his work in private collections. It is possible that some of his early work may have been destroyed by fire in World War II. It is clear that he had no trouble getting commissions as his sketches and oils are found in private homes in Ireland, England and America. His later portraits show great sensitivity to the sitter. However, he was a poor businessman and was never financially secure. He moved house frequently and shifted several times between England and Ireland.