The title of this newly acquired work references ‘The Dark Rosaleen (Róisín Dubh)’, a 19th-century adaptation by James Clarence Mangan of an Elizabethan poem, later set to music. In 1921, the same year Yeats painted this picture, Thomas P. Whelan described The Dark Rosaleen as “a passionate address in verse to Ireland, written for a nation that still drank from the cup of sorrow.”

Though Singing ‘The Dark Rosaleen’, Croke Park does not explicitly reference the violent events at Croke Park on 21 November 1920, known as Bloody Sunday, its title, setting, and sombre tone evoke the tragedy and its consequences. On that day, during a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary, Auxiliaries Crown Forces opened fire on spectators, killing 14 civilians, and injuring 60 others.

As one of Yeats’s few overtly political works, this painting stands as a deeply personal response from a keenly sensitive individual to a seismic moment in Irish history. While it is unclear whether the scene represents a specific moment Yeats observed, an amalgamation of separate sketches, or a product of his imagination is unclear. However, sketchbooks in the Gallery’s Yeats archive containing multiple depictions of hurling matches at Croke Park indicate Yeats’s familiarity with the setting.