William Butler Yeats died in January 1939 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France. Power made this portrait bust in the year of his death, producing one of the defining three-dimensional images of Ireland’s greatest poet. The bust captures Yeats in late age — the leonine head, the heavy-framed glasses, the expression of someone whose interior life had always been more vivid than the world around him.
Power had moved in overlapping artistic circles with Yeats throughout his career, both men central figures in the cultural life of the new Irish state. The portrait bust sits in the tradition of Power’s finest literary portraits — unheroic, specific, and quietly authoritative.
Significance: The definitive sculptural portrait of Ireland’s Nobel laureate, made in the year of his death.