John Butler Yeats

…Yeats was the son of John Butler Yeats, a well-known portrait painter, and he was the brother of the poet William Butler Yeats. He was privately educated in Sligo, Ireland, and he then attended various art schools in London, including the Westminster School of Art. His early work was mainly…

Yeats’s father, John Butler Yeats, was a barrister who eventually became a portrait painter. His mother, formerly Susan Pollexfen, was the daughter of a prosperous merchant in Sligo, in western Ireland. Through both parents Yeats (pronounced “Yates”) claimed kinship with various Anglo-Irish Protestant families who are mentioned…