domingo, 26 de febrero de 2012

Men of destiny, by Jack B. Yeats


Se trata de una pintura que lleva tiempo acompañándome, desde que la viera por primera vez en Dublín hace casi 20 años. Lo que sigue es la descripción que hace la propia National Gallery of Ireland:

Men of Destiny (oil on canvas, 51 x 69 cm) was painted in 1946. With this richly-coloured and nostalgic depiction of Sligo fisherman - fastening their boats - Yeats remembers men who had left their daily employment, at various times, to fight for freedom. Yeats has been typically economical in his description of the figures, and the masted boat in the background.
The painting is alive with exuberant colour, including royal blue, indigo, and various greens and heightened with vermillion, lemon yellow and white. The colours of the sky are echoed in the foam of the dark sea and amongst the more vibrant colours of the headland.

1 comentario:

  1. Un poema sobre pescadores, por otro Yeats:

    The Fisherman

    Although I can see him still—
    The freckled man who goes
    To a gray place on a hill
    In gray Connemara clothes
    At dawn to cast his flies—
    It's long since I began
    To call up to the eyes
    This wise and simple man.
    All day I'd looked in the face
    What I had hoped it would be
    To write for my own race
    And the reality:
    The living men that I hate,
    The dead man that I loved,
    The craven man in his seat,
    The insolent unreproved—
    And no knave brought to book
    Who has won a drunken cheer—
    The witty man and his joke
    Aimed at the commonest ear,
    The clever man who cries
    The catch cries of the clown,
    The beating down of the wise
    And great Art beaten down.

    Maybe a twelve-month since
    Suddenly I began,
    In scorn of this audience,
    Imagining a man,
    And his sun-freckled face
    And gray Connemara cloth,
    Climbing up to a place
    Where stone is dark with froth,
    And the down turn of his wrist
    When the flies drop in the stream—
    A man who does not exist,
    A man who is but a dream;
    And cried, “Before I am old
    I shall have written him one
    Poem maybe as cold
    And passionate as the dawn."

    WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

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