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Seán Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977)

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:120,000.00 - 180,000.00 EUR
Seán Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977)
Seán Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977) MENDING A CURRACH ON A WEST OF IRELAND BEACH signed lower left oil on board 71 by 86cm., 28 by 34in. Provenance: Pyms Gallery, London; Whence purchased by the present owner in 1986 Exhibited: ’Irish Renascence: Irish Art in a Century of Change’, Pyms Gallery, London, 3-29 November 1986, catalogue no. 30 Emblematic of the Aran Island, the currach was yet a mainstay for the fishermen who fought hard against the elements, and indeed, encroaching modernity, in order to eat, keep warm and earn a living. In Mending a Currach on a West of Ireland Beach Seán Keating has left us an image of Aran life imbued with veracity and arguably, something more. Set on Inis Oírr, the beach is the same as the one pictured in Men of Aran – An Trá, Inis Oírr (James Adam Salerooms, 23 March 2005) and in the previous lot, Fishermen with Currachs, Inis Oírr. Keating has captured the spiritual, even pantheistic heroism of the fisherman who mends the fragile skin of the currach, implicitly torn by the greater elements on which he was so dependent. His concentration is manifest, as is his skill and the joy in his labour. Mending a Currach on a West of Ireland Beach seems to present an image of deeper significance in a conflation of perhaps coincidental motifs: three currachs, three cottages to the background and with the older man seated between the boats, and the younger children playing on the beach, the three ages of man. The painting is emblematic of everything that Keating found so beguiling about the Aran Islands; the inherent spirituality of the elements, and of the landscape and seascape, and in the people of Aran, all presented in a magnificently simple image. Éimear O’Connor The Humanities Institute of Ireland University College Dublin