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Seán Keating PRHA (1889-1977)

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Seán Keating PRHA (1889-1977)

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Auction Date:2004 Sep 21 @ 18:00 (UTC)
Location:Ireland
Seán Keating PRHA (1889-1977)
AN ARAN MAN AND HIS WIFE
signed lower right; exhibition label giving title and date [1921] on reverse
gouache and pastel over pencil on buff-coloured paper
90 by 46cm., 35.5 by 18in.
Provenance:
Dawson Gallery, Dublin;
James Adam Salerooms, Dublin, 24 September 1997, lot 46 (illustrated on the front cover of the sale catalogue and on p. 13)
Exhibited:
‘Sean Keating, PRHA 1889-1977’, RHA, Dublin, 7 November - 17 December 1989, catalogue no. 75
By 1907 Keating was a student at the Municipal School in Limerick where his talent as an artist was formally recognised outside the confines of his family. While at school, Keating, as a prize winning student, came to the attention of the artist and art inspector, William Orpen, who had been teaching on a part-time basis at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) since 1902. It was Orpen who persuaded Keating to move to the DMSA, and having received a small scholarship, the young artist moved to Dublin in 1911.
While a student at the DMSA, Keating and the renowned stained glass artist Harry Clarke became lifelong friends. It was Clarke who introduced Keating to the Aran Islands in 1912, both travelling with little more than five pounds to Inisheer during their summer holidays from the DMSA. As an artist, Keating developed an intense relationship with the Islands, revelling in the strange Western light, dramatic cloud and sea movements and the inscrutable minds of the island people.1
Keating became well known and respected for his pictorial representations of the Aran Islanders, his best known painting being An Aran Fisherman and his Wife, 1916 (Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin). The prevailing political and social situation in Ireland sought a new art for an emerging state, a vision with which Keating became closely associated. However, with regards to the Aran Islands, Keating is quoted as saying that he did not care whether it was "Ireland, Greenland or Timbuctoo", only that Aran was interesting from a painter’s point of view due to the landscape, colour, costume and the monumentality of the Islanders themselves.2
An Aran Man and his Wife is dated 1921 on reverse and is worked in mixed media including chalk, pastel and watercolour. The format of the work is unusual and it may well be a cartoon for a larger oil painting.3 The figures appear to be placed onto a background that loosely depicts the Aran Islands and is also found in such images as The Kelp Burners (Limerick City Gallery of Art).4 However, the figures are not imbued with "the monumentality of the Islanders themselves", rather, they are very small in a huge, nearly pantheistic landscape. The unidentified male figure seems rather uncomfortable in his pose and is much less animated than his female companion.5 Keating uses a similar figure in the right front of foreground of his religious mural Saint Therese in the eponymous church in Mount Merrion in Dublin, completed in 1955.6 By comparison with her male companion, the female in the painting is far more animated and indeed, somewhat flirtatious. She ‘throws’ a look at her admirer that is full of gesture and suggestions, while holding her shawl as armour against his hopeful gaze. Keating often used people he knew as models, and if comparison is made between his Stations of the Cross at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare (1919-1921) or The Scapular Vision at Gort Muire Conference Centre in Ballinteer, Co. Dublin (1949), there can be little doubt that this colleen is a caricature of Keating’s wife, Mai.7
To specifically date Keating’s work can often be quite difficult, and in the case of this work it might be useful to consider that both he and many of his artist friends were involved in the design of sets and costumes for Dublin theatre productions during the 1920s.8 The theatricality of the image, particularly in the pose of the woman, suggests an acquaintance and familiarity with theatre. The figures appear to have been ‘dropped’ onto the Aran landscape, the male from a sketchbook and the woman from life. Therefore, while the painting is titled An Aran Man and his Wife, this may well be a later addition by either artist or gallery, as the work may have started out as something else entirely. However, there is a conflation of ideas in the title bearing in mind Keating’s work on Aran for Synge and the Irish theatre. Whether the date is entirely correct is difficult to ascertain, but there can be no doubt of the deliberate line and force of gesture of Keating. Certainly, a date range of 1919-1927 does not seem inappropriate.9
1 Keating continued to visit and work on the Aran Islands for over forty years. He often wore the crios or belt and báinín or cap, of the island people while in Dublin. He includes both in many of his self portraits over the course of his career.
2 Liam Martin, ‘A Fireside Chat with Mr John Keating RHA’, Social and Personal, December 1969, unpaginated.
3 It was Keating’s habit to make preliminary cartoons of many of his larger works. This involved making a drawing about two thirds of the envisaged finished painting and placing the most important figure and landscape elements. The cartoon would eventually be ‘worked up’ to full scale.
4 The Kelp Burners was donated to the gallery by Keating in 1948. It is undated but depicts a group of islanders burning seaweed on the shore.
5 The male figure could be a composite of Harry Clarke if comparison is made with Keating’s Thinking about Gobnait, 1917, a work that depicts Clarke contemplating his recently completed St Gobnait window in the St Honan chapel, Cork.
6 Keating made vast quantities of sketches throughout his career. He would often reuse them years later, hence, there can be some difficulty with dating.
7 Keating used his wife Mai as the model for the Virgin Mary in both Clongowes Wood College and Gort Muire.
8 Keating was involved in one of the productions of The Playboy of the Western World in the late 1920s. He illustrated a limited edition of Synge’s play in 1927.
9 This date range includes Keating’s Stations of the Cross at Clongowes Wood College, his design work for the Abbey Theatre and his illustration of Synge’s Playboy of the Western World in 1927. Keating rarely placed a date on a sketch or painting. It seems likely that the Dawson Gallery placed the date of 1921 on the label on reverse. It may also be that the gallery titled the painting, as Keating tended to use slightly more literary titles such as Simple Folk, which was donated to the Limerick City Gallery in 1948 and depicts both Keating and his wife in Aran costume.
Eimear O’Connor, August 2004
Postgraduate researcher currently engaged in writing a thesis titled Seán Keating: A New Perspective, University College Dublin
€15000-€20000 (£10100-£13400 sterling approx.)
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