John Butler Yeats (Irish 1839-1922), Mrs Paget knitting

John Butler Yeats (Irish 1839-1922).

Mrs Paget knitting.

Inscribed in brown ink l.r.: Mrs Paget, pencil on laid paper, recto, with a portrait of a gentleman verso.

18 x 12.7 cm.

Provenance
By descent in the artist’s family until 2017.

Henrietta (Etta) Paget, née Farr, was a painter, the daughter of statistician, William Farr. The Pagets, a family of artists and illustrators, were neighbours of the Yeats family in Bedford Park in west London in the 1890s.

Etta and her sister Florence were members of a group called the Golden Dawn, who were involved with spiritualism and the occult. W.B. Yeats was also a member and Florence Paget was said to have had an affair with both W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw.

In 1879 Henrietta married a fellow artist Henry Marriott Paget, RBA, (1857-1936), a leading member of the Bedford Park circle of writers and artists. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1879-94.

They had four children, one of whom, Dorothy, became an actress. Henry Paget was a painter of historical subjects and portraits and his portrait of W.B. Yeats is in the Ulster Museum.

His paintings, especially his historical scenes, were illustrative rather than inspiring and he also painted mythological subjects. Paget worked as an illustrator for the ‘Sphere’ in Constantinople during the Balkan War of 1912-13.

Dimensions

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Stock number