Magic Words, Magic Brush: The Art of William Butler and Jack Yeats

Introduction Overview Equipment & Materials xxxx
Instructional Objectives Standards Content Acquisition Process Skills xxxx
Curriculum Influence of Landscape on William Butler Yeats Influence of Environment on Jack Yeats Influences and Change for Both Brothers The Individual Fingerprints: the Mature Years Selections of Yeats' Poetry Related to his Involvement in the Irish Nationalist Movement Jack Yeats: A Few Samplings From The Mature Years xxxx
Strategies Author xxx

Curriculum

Overview:
T. J. Rosenthal, in his biographical account, The Art of Jack Yeats, makes several connections between specific JackYeats' paintings and sources of literature. He also makes references to ways aspects of Jack Yeats's works align with that of other painters. Rosenthal's observations are the springboards for the following suggested lesson designs.

Suggestion one:
Rosenthal (pg. 43) gives some background on Jack Yeats's painting, Helen. He cites the family legend that the Yeats's maternal grandparents' name, Pollexfens, was derived from that of Helen of Troy's brother, Pollex. He notes that the Pollexfen's business, when young Jack (as indicated in Lesson II), spent summers at his maternal grandparents' home in Sligo, was ships. Rosenthal, in this account, also mentions Marlowe's Helen.

Jack Yeats' painting, Helen, could be the centerpiece for several integrated instructional designs incorporating literature, music and dance. For instance:

Christopher Marlowe' s The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus is a rich classroom source for initiating discussions and brief writing assignments, based on close textual analysis of passages of the text that probe such topics as: the cultural ethos of the late Medieval/Early Renaissance time period, especially the implications of the rise of universities; the breakdown of the Medieval Church; the growth of humanism; the Faust legend and the extension of "the Faustian aspiration"; the nature of necromancy ; the use of alchemy as part of necromancy; the structural pattern of drama that breaks with the Greek Unities, and becomes the pattern for Shakespeare, incorporating subplot, comic relief, etc.; the resonating elements of the text in relation to Shakespeare's Henry, the Fourth, Part I. One of the richest moments in the text, however, is Faustus's last request before being dragged down to Hell: his request to have Helen of Troy as his paramour. The famous segment in which he addresses the shade of Helen as she passes before him is often lifted out of the text and printed as a separate poem.

Based on the reading of the poem, encourage students to sketch a profile of Helen, either in words or in studio art idiom (drawing, painting, sculpture).

Other poems on Helen could be included. As inspiration for developing the above profile. Edgar Allen Poe's, "To Helen," for instance, could be added. A collaborative assignment could send students to the Web and/or print media to find other depictions of Helen.

The culminating experience of the above activities would be an exercise in visual literacy, in which students would draw a comparative analysis of various other profiles of Helen with that depicted in Jack Yeats' painting, focusing on delineation of characteristics of her "supreme" beauty; how the projection of the general aura of Helen as a woman is achieved; overall tone quality tone; the "rhythm" of the canvas in relation to the "rhythm" of the various poems.

William Butler Yeats' poem, "No Second Troy," would be another provocative companion source to the painting. This emphasis could broaden the conversation to include reminding students that William Butler also spent a lot of time at Sligo with his grandparents and that the "Helen", "Troy" images are undercurrents in Leda and the Swan and occur in many other of William Butler's poems.

Rosenthal's reference to Breughel's painting, The Fall of Icarus, brought to mind W. H. Auden's, Musee des Beaux Arts. This poem could be the centerpiece for examination of several of Jack Yeats's paintings. For instance:

Yeats's painting, The Scene Painter's Rose, mentioned by Rosenthal in relation to Breughal, could be examined by students from the point of view of Auden's theme in Musee Des Beaux Arts. What statement emerges from the juxtaposition of the red rose in relation to the backstage "props" and flats?

a companion source to the above activity could be an examination of the concept of the rose as a symbol as it emerges in William Butler Yeats's poem, "The Rose of the World."

Suggestions for topics for other comparative studies based on Jack Yeats's paintings:

• his depiction of horses, compared for instance, with those of Rosa Bonheur
• his studies of Ireland's traveling circuses to Barnum and Bailey posters (both past and present)
• his caricatures of Irish political figures and themes with those of
  other artists, American artists Peter Arno and Ben Shahn, for instance
• the depiction of his race track figures in alignment with Damon Runyon characters
• the themes of his depiction of war in comparison with the poetry of Seigfred Sasoon in "Attack" or Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth," for instance

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