THE GYRE, 1978
Enamel on paper. 17¾ x 12½in. (45.8 x 32.5cm.)
Inscribed on the reverse with the artist’s name, the title and year.
Provenance
National Trust bequest.
The work is unframed and has probably never been exhibited.
The title refers to the beliefs of WB Yeats, for whom the image of the gyre was of fundamental philosophical importance. Colquhoun was knowledgeable about Yeats and his beliefs and once visited his widow, who corrected an essay she had written on his book A Vision. (see The Crying of the Wind: Ireland, p. 112.)
A Vision (1925) was the book in which Yeats first expounded his theory of the gyres. They were imagined as two interlocking, spinning cones, one expanding as the other contracts. They symbolise the two opposing principles or competing urges, the objective and the subjective, that Yeats believed are within us all. They lie behind his view of the cycles of history: civilisations live out a 2000 year cycle of development, growth and decay before being replaced by another cycle of civilisation that goes through the same stages.
The best known instance of gyre imagery in Yeats’ work occurs in the poem The Second Coming.
References
Colquhoun, I. The Crying of the Wind: Ireland. Peter Owen, London, 1955.
Yeats, W.B. A Vision. Macmillan, London, 1937.