Jack Butler Yeats’s Scrapbook in Boston

The Yeats archive consists of a prestigious collection of material donated to the Gallery by Anne Yeats in 1996 and additional collections acquired since. These collections relate to Jack B. Yeats and members of his extended family and include sketchbooks, library books, journals, manuscripts and postcards.

The National Gallery of Ireland has an ongoing partnership with The McMullen Museum in Boston on their exhibition Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts (read more here and here). As part of this collaboration, we have lent a scrapbook from our Library & Archives collection; a scrapbook previously belonging to Jack B. Yeats.

This volume originally began its life as a Greek dictionary. Over the course of nearly 30 years, Yeats collected and hand-pasted approximately 900 items into its pages. These items include magazine cuttings, advertisements, labels, wrappers, stamps and empty packets. The items collected by Yeats here offers today's viewer insights into his interests, personal aesthetics and the world around him.

The original text of the dictionary is still visible on some pages, beneath Yeats' work.

Yeats added some of his own original work to the scrapbook, such as this line print illustration on p. 99.

The full scrapbook can be viewed here.

The Centre for the Study of Irish Art holds a number of other scrapbooks in its collections. Please click here to see more.

Collaborating in Conflict runs from 1st February 2026 to 31st May 2026.