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Artist: Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) Title: The Pirate Sentry Signature: signed lower right and titled Medium: pen and ink drawing Size: 24 x 17½cm (9.4 x 6.9in) Framed Size: 42.2 x 35cm (16.6 x 13.8in) Provenance: Sotheby's, London, Yeats - The Family Collection, 27th September 2017, Lot 196; Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} The character 'Theodore the Pirate' features in several early works by Jack Butler Yeats. Drawings from around 1903-04 include this fictional character on a prancing piebald pony, at the stern of a ship's boat, waving goodbye to an accomplice, and as an aged pirate, seated beside a fire, recounting ... Read more Jack Butler Yeats Lot 37 - 'The Pirate Sentry' Estimate: €5,000 - €7,000 The character 'Theodore the Pirate' features in several early works by Jack Butler Yeats. Drawings from around 1903-04 include this fictional character on a prancing piebald pony, at the stern of a ship's boat, waving goodbye to an accomplice, and as an aged pirate, seated beside a fire, recounting tales of the Spanish Main to a child. Yeats delighted in writing plays and inventing characters for miniature toy theatres: his 1901 James Flaunty or the Terror of the Western Seas, was followed two years later by The Scourge of the Guelph. He collaborated with his friend, the poet John Masefield, inventing stories of the high seas and the Spanish Main. His A Little Fleet recounts the adventures of a flotilla of model boats they built and sent down the river Gara in Devon, while in 1902 Masefield's Salt Water Ballads confirmed their love of the sea. In 1903 Yeats produced illustrations for A Broadsheet, published by Elkin Matthews, to which Masefield contributed. This publication is not to be confused with the Broadside publications that Yeats worked on a decade or so later. In April 1903 Masefield stayed with Yeats in Devon for two weeks. They stayed up late at night writing ballads and stories. One of the characters was a 'scoundrel named Theodor'. Over the years following, in letters from one to the other, they continued to invent stories in which the pirate pursued his adventures. Hidden inside one of Yeats's toy ships, recently donated to the Model Arts Centre in Sligo, conservators recently discovered a miniature figure of Theodore. In addition, pasted inside the lid of a wooden chest, also part of the donation, they found a watercolour depicting 'Theodore of the Gulf'. In the present drawing, reproduced in A Broadside (No. 7) December 1911, Theodore is seated on a stone ledge intently reading a broadsheet. Dressed in colourful costume of sea boots, pantaloons and a patched-up old naval frock coat, he points to a word, as if speaking it aloud. Propped against the wall is his cocked musket, which serves also as a hat stand. A decanter of rum stands on the stone floor. Scratched on the wall, a code, consisting of symbols such as a cannon (N) waves (S) or the Metal Man in Sligo (M), has been deciphered by Philip Errington as reading 'Constanza Pity Me'. Peter Murray, June 2021