Jack Butler Yeats, R.H.A. (1871-1957)

Fair Day probably dates from around 1905, the year Yeats toured the West of Ireland with the playwright John Millington Synge, commissioned by the Manchester Guardian, to record something of the tough life endured by the people of that area. The scene is typical of a fair day when the farmers descended en masse into the wide streets of a market town such as Clifden or Westport bringing with them stock, such as the cow the two characters in the foreground are shaking on, to the ponies running untethered down the Main Street. After the trading the spoils were spent in the street market buying eggs or confectionary as in the two stalls on the pavement or in the more permanent shops such as O'Malley the tailor or the hardware store next door which sold everything from passages to America to horse collars and turnip seeds.