Seán Keating
| Seán Keating | |
|---|---|
| Born |
John Keating 28 October 1889 County Limerick, Ireland |
| Died | 21 December 1977 (aged 88) Dublin, Ireland |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Education | |
| Known for | Irish romantic-realist painter |
| Notable work | Men of the South, An Allegory, Night's Candles Are Burnt Out |
Seán Keating (born John Keating, Limerick, 28 September 1889 – Dublin, 21 December 1977) was an Irish romantic-realist painter who painted some iconic images of the Irish War of Independence and of the early industrialization of Ireland. He spent two weeks or so during the late summer on the Aran Islands and his many portraits of island people depicted them as rugged heroic figures. However, he ceased to visit the Aran Islands in 1965.
Seán Keating studied drawing at the Limerick Technical School before a scholarship arranged by William Orpen allowed him to go at the age of twenty to study at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. Over the next few years he spent time on the Aran Islands. In 1914 Keating won the RDS Taylor award with a painting titled The Reconciliation. The prize included £50.00 which allowed him to go to London to work as Orpen's studio assistant in 1915. In late 1915 or early 1916 he returned to Ireland where he documented the war of independence and the subsequent civil war. Examples include Men of the South (1921–22) which shows a group of IRA men ready to ambush a military vehicle and An Allegory (first exhibited in 1924), in which the two opposing sides in the Irish Civil War are seen to bury the tri-colour covered coffin amid the roots on an ancient tree. The painting includes a self-portrait of the artist.
Keating was elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1918, and a full member in 1923. One of the cardinal achievements of the Irish Free State in the 1920s was the building, in partnership with Siemens, of a hydro-electric power generator at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. Between 1926 and 1927 Keating, at his own volition, produced a considerable number of paintings related to this scheme. He exhibited several examples of the paintings in the RHA exhibitions in 1927 and 1928. Most of the paintings are now in the collection of ESB Group.
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