On Tuesday evening a large gathering in the National Gallery awaited Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and the opening of the Yeats Museum. Dedicated primarily to the work of Jack B. Yeats, it also contains paintings by his father John Butler Yeats and his niece Anne Yeats. There are also works by Jack's sisters, Lily and Lolly (Susan and Elizabeth Yeats), and his brother, the Nobel-prize-winning W.B. Anne Yeats gave by far the most spirited speech, which raised chuckles among the attendees. She revealed that her father, the poet, W.B., liked to work in solitude, so that, contrary to what the reader might imagine, when he composed his famous poem in her honour, A Prayer for My Daughter at Thoorballylee ("Under this cradlehood and coverlid/My child sleeps on"), she was not actually present: "I was not in the room with him, I was on the other side of the river."
She also said that when she paints, she likes to listen to cricket on the radio. She regretted that her brother, Michael Yeats, could not be there, as he was recovering from a heart valve replacement operation.
Thanks to Anne's donation of her uncle's archive, the museum is now the repository for Jack Yeats's sketchbooks and personal memorabilia. "I am so glad to see it happening in my lifetime; it's absolutely splendid," she said. Knight of Glin and Christie's rep Desmond Fitzgerald, grinning like the cat who got the cream, revealed how he had just snapped up a Walter Osborne painting which he said was "worth the bones of half a million" after a fierce battle with an international agent.
Jack Yeats's biographer, Bruce Arnold, was much in demand at the gathering but confided his misgivings. "While it's far better that his works are here and not in the hands of private collectors, I'm concerned about this being a separate, family museum. That distorts the purpose of a national gallery."
Gallery director Raymond Keaveney admitted to being relieved that the opening had passed off without a hitch and that the long-awaited project was finally off the ground: "The timing has been tremendous. Jack Yeats's work has been opened up to the public just when his paintings have been priced beyond the means of most people." Those who attended included actor Bosco Hogan, who has toured his one-man show about W.B. Yeats all over the world, and recited some of W.B.'s poetry in honour of the occasion. Other guests included Sile de Valera, Minister for Arts, Culture, the Gaeltacht and the Islands; Seamus Heaney and Marie Heaney; poet Anthony Cronin; novelist Anne Haverty; artist T.P. McKenna; and art critic Brian Fallon.