In late 1974, Louis le Brocquy was invited by Swedish gallerist Per-Olov Börjeson to contribute to a portfolio of thirty-three aquatints depicting Nobel Prize laureates, created by international artists of the time. This ambitious project would later be published in book form. Le Brocquy chose W.B. Yeats as his subject. His mother had been a friend of the Yeats family, and as a child, le Brocquy recalled being struck by the poet’s commanding presence. In adulthood, he remained fascinated by what he described as Yeats’s “vast and mysterious personality.”

What followed was not a traditional portrait, but what le Brocquy called “a personal adventure to try to rediscover, to touch the fringes of his enormous personality; to enter perhaps into the interior landscape which lay behind his ancient glittering eyes.” (The Human Head: Notes on Painting and Awareness, Louis le Brocquy at the eighteenth International Health Lecture, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, November 14, 2005). The result was a series of studies.

In these works, le Brocquy turned to the poet’s head as a symbol of human consciousness. Using layered planes and interplay of colour, he sought to express multiple dimensions of Yeats’s identity. The studies were made in watercolour, charcoal, and oil, culminating in the final aquatint. Throughout, he referred to various photographs of Yeats taken over the poet’s lifetime, often consulting several simultaneously. He quickly discovered that these images bore little consistent resemblance to one another.

This inconsistency became a guiding principle. Rather than striving for a single, definitive likeness, le Brocquy allowed diverse and even contradictory impressions to surface. Each study revealed a different facet of Yeats’ complex character. It became clear to the artist that a true portrait could never be fixed in a single image. As he came to understand, no amount of technical skill could capture the fluid nature of identity – the fleeting emotions, interior reflections, and sense of self that coexist with external appearance.