Signed 'JACK B YEATS' bottom right, inscribed with title verso, oil on canvas

Provenance

Sold to Miss. May Guinness at the Dublin Exhibition in 1945.
Mrs. Mabel Spiro, 1948.
Dr. Camille Jourdain, Quebec, 1965.
Dawson Gallery, Dublin.
J. Burke Wilkinson, Washington, D.C.
Private Collection, Virginia.

Exhibited

Dublin, Ireland, 1925.
London, United Kingdom, 1926.
Birmingham, United Kingdom, 1927.
Dublin, Ireland, 1945.
Leeds, United Kingdom, 1948.
London, United Kingdom, 1948.
American Retrospective, 1951-1952.
York, 1960.
Montreal, Canada, 1961(repro).
London, United Kingdom, 1963 (repro).
Massachusetts, 1965 (repro).
Dublin, Ireland 1966 (repro).
New York, 1971-1972 (color repro).
Birmingham, Alabama, 1980.

Literature

Thomas MacGreevy, Jack B Yeats: An Appreciation and an Interpretation, Dublin, Ireland, 1945 p. 27, plate 8.

Hilary Pyle, Jack B Yeats: A Biography, London, United Kingdom, 1970, p. 128.

Hilary Pyle, Jack B Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch Ltd., London 1992, p. 264 (illus.).

David Lloyd, 'Republics of Difference: Yeats, MacGreevy, Beckett', Field Day Review, 2005, p. 50.

Note

"Yeats used to explain that the 'breaker-out' is the man who signals to the crane manipulator where and when to lower the packages on to a boat - 'so as not to crush everyone to death'.
One of his greatest portraits of an ordinary man practising his profession, with the man of the dockyards assuming a universal importance and dignity as he raises his hand to the unseen crane manipulator. MacGreevy (op.cit) has described The Breaker out as 'timeless'; and the painting anticipates the more deliberately symbolic characters in the paintings of the 40's." (Hilary Pyle, Jack B Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Andre Deutsch Ltd., London 1992, p. 264).