As artist Jack B. Yeats describes in a circa 1901 letter to his sister Lily, “Cottie [his wife Mary Cottenham Yeats] has decorated the big box in the [drawing room] with a fine first class drawing of lords and ladies strolling on the green lawns[?] of Hy Brazil.” Hy Brazil (Isle of the Blest) was a mythic island said to lie west of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean. Irish academic Douglas Hyde characterized it as a “happy other-world, the Irish Elysium,” shrouded in mist and only visible once every seven years. Such lore resonated with Mary Cottenham Yeats, who was part of a tight network of artists who celebrated Irish identity and national aspirations in the decades leading up to the establishment of a free Irish state. On this chest, she rendered languid figures in stylized Renaissance dress against a backdrop of rolling hills, white cliffs, and flowering trees. A map inset on the lid likely references one in the Royal Irish Academy that gives Hy Brazil’s supposed latitude and longitude. The chest remained in the Yeats family until it was acquired by LACMA in 2017.
Born Mary Cottenham White, Yeats established the Dun Emer Guild, Cuala Press, and embroidery workshops together with her husband Jack, his brother the poet W. B. Yeats, and his sisters Elizabeth and Lily. In response to an increasingly industrialized society, these artists sought refuge in creating beautiful handcrafted objects, drawing on Irish history and traditional techniques. Mary also produced embroidery designs for Lily and illustrations for Elizabeth’s A Broadside, which featured classic Irish stories and contemporary writing.
Abbey Chamberlain Brach and Staci Steinberger
2017/2024
