Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871 - 1957) St. Agnes (Naomh Aedhnat )- Cartoon for a Banner (1903) Gouache and bodycolour, 85 x 53.5cm (33 ½ x 21”) Signed with monogram Provenance: Miss Lily Yeats; Miss Hyland; purchased by Thomas McGreevy c.1958; Sale, these rooms, April 1968; Private Collection Literature: Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats His Watercolours, Drawings and Pastels, Irish Academic Press 1993, cat. no.455, p.124 Hilary Pyle has written – ‘In 1903, Jack B. Yeats and his wife Mary Cottenham Yeats, were invited to design sodality banners for the new cathedral at Loughrea, in County Galway. These sodalities were in honour of the Sacred Heart, and met once a month in the Cathedral for mass, the men one Sunday, the women on the following Sunday. The sodalities were divided into groups; and banners, each depicting a saint, were put up among the pews to denote where each group should sit. Twenty nine banners in all were completed. The banners were embroidered at the Dun Emer workshop by Lily Yeats and her assistants, using wool and silk thread on linen; and the first twelve of the banners were exhibited at Dun Emer, Dundrum, Co. Dublin on 4 and 11 February 1904, before going to Loughrea. ‘Nothing is known about Naomh Aedhnat: and St Agnes is generally represented with a lamb or the symbol of one aspect of her martyrdom, a flaming pyre. Here the saint is represented crucified – head uplifted – in a low lying purple and dark green landscape. She wears a Celtic garment. Since there is no banner made from this cartoon in Loughrea, it seems the design was not used.’