Jack B Yeats: Assembled Memories 1871-1957

Synopsis

The life and work of Jack B Yeats, the painter. For the first 25 years of this century his work reflected the mood of a country during a crucial phase of its history. Yeats spent much of his youth in England and returned to Ireland in 1910 where he saw the Rising of 1916, the partitioning and independence of Ireland in 1920-22 and the Civil War. Throughout this period Yeats’ work revealed his nationalist sympathies. After the Civil War, Yeats moved away from political subjects to produce a bolder, richly coloured and less figurative style. This development met with little understanding in Ireland and only in the late 1940s when Yeats was in his seventies did the reappraisal begin. The film shows many of Yeats’ graphic works and paintings including the landscape of Sligo, the strand races and the travelling fairs that were so important in his work.

Language

English

Country

Great Britain

Medium

Film; Video; Film. 16mm. sd. col. 34 min. Videocassette. Standard formats. col. 34 min.

Technical information

Black-and-white / Sound

Year of production

1981

Availability

Hire

Uses

Art students and those with an interest in the general cultural development in Britain and Ireland during this period.*

Subjects

History

Keywords

biographies; Ireland; paintings - Irish; Yeats, Jack Butler

Credits

Director

Thaddeus O’Sullivan

Producer

Margaret Williams

Cast

Sebastian Shaw

Distribution Formats

Type

Film

Format

16mm

Production Company

Name

Arbor International

Distributor

Name

Arts on Film Archive, University of Westminster

Notes

Arts on Film Archive offers on-line access to a large range of films on art produced in the United Kingdom since the 1950s, and is a unique record of British and international post-war art, as well as of documentary film-making in the UK. In its first phase, the archive offers a complete database and an on-line video streaming of all 450 films made by the film department of Arts Council England between 1953 and 1998 and several films produced till 2003 by the dance Department of ACE. The collection is only available streamed to ac.uk domain addresses.