About John Butler Yeats

  • Biography

    John Butler Yeats RHA (1839-1922)

    The Irish portrait painter and illustrator John Butler Yeats was born in County Down in 1839. He was the father of William Butler Yeats and Jack Butler Yeats.

    Best known for his portrait of the young WB Yeats - one of several of his paintings in the Yeats museum in the National Gallery of Ireland - his masterpiece is generally considered to be his portrait of John O'Leary (1904).

    John Yeats was educated in Trinity College Dublin and started a career as a barrister. When he was 23, his father died leaving him a small estate in County Kildare.

    In 1863 he married Susan Pollexfen and took up residence at 5 Sandymount Avenue Dublin, where WB Yeats was born in 1865. In 1867...

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