Artists Oscar Kokoschka and Jack B. Yeats were not only friends but their art had a deep bond, writes SYLVIA VETTA

It is always a delight to visit Compton Verney. On the outside it is a Robert Adam mansion set in an idealised arcadian setting by Capability Brown, but on the inside it is a stunning contemporary art gallery designed by Stanton Williams.

Stephen Bayley in the Observer considers it one of the five best galleries in the country and is the setting for fine permanent and temporary exhibitions. Its collection of ancient Chinese bronzes is impressive. I suspect Kathleen Soriano's successful years as director were influential in her becoming heir to the formidable Norman Rosenthal as exhibitions secretary at the Royal Academy.

Compton Verney’s latest offering, featuring Oskar Kokoschka Exile and New Home 1938-1980 and Jack B.Yeats's Masquerade and Spectacle, is a particularly interesting combination. What is there in common between an Austrian who had no choice but to be an exile and an Irishman who loved travelling with circuses and fairs? Surprisingly, quite a lot.

Jack B. Yeats is regarded by many as Ireland’s greatest painter and curators John Leslie and Antonia Harrison discovered he was particularly admired by European expressionist Kokoschka.

John said: “When we were researching for this exhibition, it came as a surprise to discover that the two artists had corresponded and, in all probability, met. Kokoschka’s letters to Yeats were addressed 'Jack B.Yeats, the Last of the Great Masters in the World'.”

Kokoschka was born in 1886 and spent most of his youth in Vienna when it was a vibrant centre for artists and intellectuals. He survived the First World War after being seriously wounded in battle. The rise of National Socialism in the 1930s perverted the Austria of his youth and he was condemned as a ‘degenerate’ artist. In 1937, he made a moving poster called Help the Basque Children, following the bombings of the Spanish city that inspired Picasso’s Guernica.

Kokoschka was forced into exile in Prague where he became a Czech citizen. His love of the city is apparent in many of the paintings in this exhibition. He was forced to move on again in 1938 when the Munich Agreement surrendered the country to the Nazis.

He and his Czech wife, Olda Palkovska, came to London bringing with them the painting Bathers, which he renamed Summer II, a poignant reminder of happier days. Inspired by Hogarth and Gillray, he worked on satires about appeasement. In The Red Egg, Mussolini is Humpty Dumpty, Hitler is to one side and the British lion ignoring them feasting on a roast chicken (Czechoslovakia).

Kokoschka's exile from Czechoslovakia took a toll on his creativity. He recuperated in a fishing village in Cornwall and Polperro III is an oil of the inner harbour full of movement and the ruggedness of the coast. Kokoschka loved London and London, Tower Bridge II shows his interest in the dynamism and vitality of the city rather than its topography. His style is tremendously varied but all his work has energy. My favourites were the touching lithographs in his Lear series (1963).

The political context of Kokoscka’s work is more obvious than that of Yeats (1871-1957) . The Irish artist was obviously influenced by the European expressionism of not just Kokoschka but also of Munch and Ensor, yet his subject matter remained rooted in the everyday life of Ireland.

On the surfce the work chosen for this exhibition does not look at all political but Yeats grew up in Sligo at a time when the west of Ireland was desperately poor. Colonised people, to maintain pride and keep their identity intact, use culture to assert their nationalism. On this side of the Irish Sea, his brother, W. B. Yeats, is better known. W. B. wrote: "Know that I would accounted be True brother of a company That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong."

Despite being Anglo-Irish Protestants, they were nationalists. The brothers pursued their ideals through the Irish-Ireland Movement. Both used the arts, not in a polemical manner or to pursue a narrow dogma but to make Irish men and women aware and proud.

Yeats’s thick and colourful impasto images are theatrical. Maybe it is not surprising that he was also a dramatist. In his play Apparitions, he gave instructions that the audience was to be seated around the performance as in a circus. The exhibition opens with a sketch An Embryo of the Circus, inspired by memories of himself as a young boy alone inside the big top. It became a passion he often used as a metaphor in his painting.

The Singing Clown celebrates Johnny Patterson, a musician known as the Irish Singing Clown, who, after a successful tour in the US, returned home and, in reaction to the political situation, composed a song called Do your Best for One Another in which he urged Loyalists and Nationalists to put aside their differences. In this, as in many other paintings, the clown personifies man’s tragic situation, comical and courageous, yet pathetic and vulnerable, not unlike Kokoschka’s Lear.

I came away from this exhibition feeling that both these artists deserve to be better known. You have until December 14 to see for yourself.

Compton Verney is north of Banbury, take junction 12 of the M40 and follow the brown signs. The gallery is open Tuesday-Sunday, 11am-5pm. For further details call 01926 645500.