Work of Noted Irish Artist On Display

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University recently acquired the landscape painting “Derrynane” by Jack Butler Yeats, one of the best known Irish painters of the 20th century, and it is currently on view at the museum.

“We are thrilled to have Jack Yeats’ remarkable landscape “Derrynane” join the Museum’s growing collection of Irish paintings,” said Grace Brady, executive director of the museum. “It is fitting that a work of such historical significance and quiet beauty find its permanent home at Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum. We look forward to sharing it with our visitors today and for generations to come.” 

Yeats’ biographer Hilary Pyle described “Derrynane” as “the most important landscape painting of Yeats’ middle period, depicting Derrynane, Co. Kerry, from memory.”

“Jack B. Yeats stands head and shoulders above other Irish artists of his time,” said Niamh O’Sullivan, curator. “When Yeats stood in front of his easel in 1927 to paint “Derrynane,” he knew this was no ordinary place, but a charged landscape whose associations with O’Connell were rife with contradictions.”

Yeats painted more than 1,100 works in oil alone. He illustrated books, newspapers and periodicals, and designed for the theater. He also wrote for both children and adults: novels, poetry and plays. O’Sullivan said Yeats easily segued from one art form to the other; “the poetic is evident in his paintings, and the visual in his writings.”

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University is home to the world's largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the Irish Famine. The museum preserves, builds and presents its art collection in order to stimulate reflection, inspire imagination and advance awareness of Ireland's Great Hunger and its long aftermath on both sides of the Atlantic.

The museum, located at 3011 Whitney Ave., is open Wednesdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sundays 1-5 p.m. Please visit www.ighm.org or call 203-582-6500.