CAG.2262 Anne Yeats, Eggs in a Basket, c.1959, mixed media, 26 x 35 cm. Presented, 2006 (Great Southern Collection). © the artist’s estate.

WORK OF THE WEEK!

As our MEAT AND POTATOES exhibition enters its final week, we’re taking a closer look at one of the featured works: Eggs in a Basket (c.1959) by Anne Yeats.

The artist brings her characteristic expressionist style to a simple subject: six brilliantly white eggs gleaming from within a grey-and-red, irregularly-shaped vessel. Aside from the wood patterning beneath, suggestive of a table, there is little else to draw the viewer’s attention.

Does the title allude to the old idiom of putting all your eggs in one basket?

Did You Know: Prior to entering the collection in 2006, this artwork was displayed at the Great Southern Parknasilla, near Sneem in County Kerry, where it was labelled with the number 9. Works now in collection by, among other, Pauline Bewick, Patrick Collins, Gerard Dillon, William John Leech, Anne Madden, Norah McGuinness, Daniel O’Neill, Patrick Pye, Nano Reid, Elizabeth Rivers, Camille Souter, Donald Teskey, also came from that hotel.

As her surname implies, Anne Yeats (1919-2001) was the daughter of Georgie Hyde-Lees and William Butler Yeats, and the niece of Elizabeth, Susan, and Jack B. Yeats. Taught from a young age by her aunt Elizabeth, Yeats became a costume and set designer at the Abbey Theatre. She was also associated with Cork Opera House, The Olympia, and The Gaiety Theatre. After 1941, she focused on book illustration and her own painting practice.

Eggs in a Basket (c.1959) by Anne Yeats is featured in MEAT AND POTATOES which must close on Sunday 6 November.

Open daily | Free entry

Tune into The Arts House with Elmarie Mawe on Cork’s 96FM and C103FM every Sunday morning as Conor Tallon chats with curator Michael Waldron about each WORK OF THE WEEK! Listen back to this week’s chat here:

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