Hilary Pyle

Jack B. Yeats was the son of portrait painter John Butler Yeats and younger brother of the poet William Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in Sligo, which remained a permanent source of inspiration for his painting. He studied art in London and soon earned a high reputation for pen and ink drawings in magazines. In 1910, after a period in Devon, he settled in Dublin where he devoted himself to painting in oils. Yeats was closely connected to the literary personalities of his day; John Masefield and J. M. Synge became his close friends. In the 1930s and '40s he published novels and plays which won the admiration of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. His paintings have been exhibited in many major galleries, and continue to be exhibited thirty years after his death.… (meer)

The Titian-haired beauty, Susan L. Mitchell, described by W. B. Yeats as 'the nearest approach they have to a true poet', was friend of Lily Yeats, Seumas O'Sullivan and Constance Markiewicz. Her name was linked in Dublin society with that of painter and mystic, AE. Originally from Carrick-on-Shannon and raised by her Unionist aunts in Dublin, she rebelled against privileged society and the Protestant Church in which she was reared.

By a trick of fate she exchanged life as a gentlewoman in provincial Birr for that of journalist on Plunkett's far-sighted publications, The Irish Homestead and The Irish Statesman, at a time when Home Rule was imminent. Objective despite her republican views, contemporary politics and the literary world were lampooned by her at enthusiastic gatherings of statesmen and fellow writers.

Her life preceding her Republican renaissance, one of privilege and stability, is now revealed through previously unpublished correspondence and papers. Dublin in the tumultuous years from Easter week 1916, the signing of the Treaty and the Civil War, is seen through her… (meer)