Jack B. Yeats was the son of portrait painter John Butler Yeats and younger brother of the poet William Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in Sligo, which remained a permanent source of inspiration for his painting. He studied art in London and soon earned a high reputation for pen and ink drawings in magazines. In 1910, after a period in Devon, he settled in Dublin where he devoted himself to painting in oils. Yeats was closely connected to the literary personalities of his day; John Masefield and J. M. Synge became his close friends. In the 1930s and '40s he published novels and plays which won the admiration of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. His paintings have been exhibited in many major galleries, and continue to be exhibited thirty years after his death.