The Waterfall

Displaying delicate but fluid brushwork and emphasising subtle tonal shifts, the style of The Waterfall is an interesting contrast to the heavy impasto and complementary colours which characterise much of Yeats’ oeuvre, especially his later works. This reserved style is well suited to the quietly lyrical, narrative quality of the painting discussed by Hilary Pyle:

'This painting of Glencar Waterfall in County Sligo picks up and develops the romanticism of The Riverside (Long Ago), 1922, mingling past with present, as a couple who have been abroad revisit the haunts of former days. The painting is mainly dark, centring on the clump of rocks and trees in shadow beyond the fall. Through a gap the waterfall catches the light, as in a paler way do the man and woman (who resemble the pair in the earlier composition), continuing their walk along the woody path. The permanence of the waterfall is contrasted with the people, who are here today. They are only two, the painting seems to say, in the succession of those who have visited here in the past, and those who are yet to come in the future' (H. Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, London, 1992, p. 207, no. 232).