work, which at its best has a primitive intensity. The lines have
a kind of Gothic quality, reminding one of the rude glooms, the
lights and lines of some half-barbarian cathedral. They are very
expressive and never undecided. The artist always knows what he
is going to do. There is no doubt he has a clear image before him
when he takes up pen or brush. A strong will is always directing
the strong lines, forcing them to repeat an image present to the
inner eye. In his early days Jack Yeats loafed about the quays at
Sligo, and we may be sure he was at all the races, and paid his
penny to go into the side-shows, and see the freaks, the Fat Woman
and the Skeleton Man. It was probably at this period of his life
he was captured by pirates of the Spanish Main. My remembrance of
Irish county towns at that time is that no literature flourished
except the Penny Dreadful and the local press. I may be doing Jack
Yeats an injustice when hailing him at the beginning of a fascinating
career I yet suspect a long background of Penny Dreadfuls behind it.
How else could he have drawn his pirates? They are the only pirates
in art who manifest the true pride, glory, beauty, and terror of
their calling as the romantic heart of childhood conceives of it.
The pirate has been lifted up to a strange kind of poetry in some
of Jack Yeats' pictures. I remember one called "Walking the Plank."
The solemn theatrical face, lifted up to the blue sky in a last
farewell to the wild world and its lawless freedom, haunted me for
days. There was also a pen-and-ink drawing I wish I could reproduce
here. A young buccaneer, splendid in evil bravery, leaned across
a bar where a strange, beastly, little, old, withered, rat-like
figure was drawing the drink. The little figure was like a devil
with the soul all concentrated into malice, and the whole picture
affected one with terror like a descent into some ferocious
human hell.