Sean Keating PRHA HRA
Portrait and figure painter, Seán Keating was born John Keating in Limerick, 1889. His father, Joseph Keating, was a bookkeeper at a bakery company. Seán, who had three brothers and three sisters, was educated at St Munchin's College but was not a good attender, spending hours playing truant on the city's docks. "I was always drawing and scribbling. At the age of sixteen I had proved myself incapable of doing anything else. I was a dreamer and idler".
In 1911 he won a scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where he came under the influence of the life school of (Sir) William Orpen (q.v.) and became something of a protégé.
In 1914 he won the Taylor Scholarship with Appeal for Mercy. He had three works hung at the 1915 Royal Hibemian Academy, The Studio commenting that Annushlca, a seated portrait of a lady in a black dress, was "a vivid piece of painting", and in another large canvas, Pipes and Porter, he displayed "a clear vision and brilliant incisiveness of touch which promise well for his future work".
In 1914 he discovered the Aran Islands and this visit became a turning-point in his life.
He had been overworking at the School of Art and his friend Harry Clarke (q.v.) had suggested a visit to the Aran Islands. Keating demurred as he had only five pounds in his pocket, but Clarke assured him that so much money would go a long way in Inisheer.
Orpen asked Keating to assist him in his studio, and in 1915 he left for London. When he had to return to Ireland the following year; he tried to persuade Orpen to go back with him, saying that he was going to Aran, "there is endless painting to be done', but Orpen remained to become a War artist. Orpen occasionally used him as a model and his portrait may be seen in The Pattern; The Western Wedding; and the Holy Well.
A charcoal study of John Daly is at Áras an Uachtaráin. Keating resumed exhibiting at the RHA in 1917 and The Studio found his work "strong and decorative".
He has made a study of West of Ireland types, and his figures, painted in flat tones, have a vivid sense of personality. 'The Men of the West' appeared in that exhibition and the artist later presented it to the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art.
In 1919 Keating was appointed an assistant teacher at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and elected an associate of the RHA in the same year. In 1923 he became a full member. His first one-person exhibition took place at The Hall in 1921 and he was commissioned to paint Stations of the Cross for the chapel of Clongowes Wood College.
In that year too he painted An IRA Column, now at McKee Barracks in Dublin, and includes the leader of a North Cork Column, Sean Moylan; it is the earlier of a similar picture painted by the artist, Men of the South (RHA, 1922), now in the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork and regarded by the artist as one of his principal works. It was painted in the School of Art, where he had a studio which was also used for private commissions, mainly portraits.
Keating won the gold medal in the Exhibition of Irish Art in 1924 for his large oil painting, Homage to Hugh Lane, now in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art.
The persons arranged about the portrait of Lane comprise most of those who were prominently associated with him in his efforts to establish a gallery of modern art in Dublin: W.B. Yeats, Thomas Bodkin, Dermod O'Brien (q.v.), George W. Russell (q.v.), W. Hutcheson Poe, Thomas Kelly and R.C. Orpen (q.v.).
He also showed in 1924 at the New Salon, Paris, and in the exhibition organized by the French Committee of the Olympic Games. In her Modern Art in Ireland, 1997, Dorothy Walker wrote:
"Keating's paintings of guerrilla fighters in heroic attitudes look like posters for Wild West movies...."
Recalling some sixty years later the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in the 1920s, Hilda van Stockum wrote:
"I admired Seán Keating for looking just as I thought Michelangelo must have looked. He wore rough clothes, a sweeping brown beard and his short hair stood up.' As someone else said, his life-style had a vaguely frugal touch about it.
He was said to be the first man seen in Dublin wearing the crios and bainin. He mastered the Aran dialect of Irish and said the Islands were a revelation: "There was a wonderful background of barren landscape with very agile, handsome men."
In 1927 he provided ten illustrations in colour for a de luxe edition of The Playboy of the Western World.
An allegorical work, Night's Candles are Burnt Out, was exhibited at the Royal Academy. In England, the Empire Marketing Board issued in 1929 the poster, Irish Free State Pigs by Keating. Further afield, he was represented in the exhibition of Irish art at Brussels, 1930, the year he had a solo show at Hackett Galleries, New York.
In 1937 he was appointed Professor of Painting at the Metropolitan School of Art.
He was not selective about commissions and he carried out designs for Hospitals Trust Ltd for the settings of sweepstake draws. He also designed a recruiting poster for the formation of the Volunteer Force.
An exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries in 1937 attracted considerable attention. About half of the twenty-eight works were heads in crayon, and one commentator in Ireland To-Day considered the artist at the height of his powers.
"No artistic godfathers, if there are any, are in evidence. These paintings are almost aggressively independent...".
He was the designer of the stamp issued in 1938 commemorating the Centenary of Temperance Crusade which depicted Father Theobald Mathew after the bust by Hogan. He was also responsible for a mural at the Irish College, Rome: St Patrick lighting the Paschal Fire at Slane.
Keating's decorative capacity showed itself in a great mural of fifty-four panels for Ireland's Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939, a total area of 7.3 metres by 22 metres. At the same fair he won first prize for The Race of the Gael in an IBM competition from seventy-nine countries.
Keating was also involved with the theatre and designed set and costumes for The Playboy of the Western World.
In 1948 Keating was admitted an Honorary Freeman of the City of Limerick, an appointment that was in danger some years later when on an RTÉ programme he said that in his day his native city was "a medieval dung heap".
In 1949 he was elected president of the RHA, and in that year he executed a mural, The Scapular Vision for the Carmelite Fathers at Gort Muire, Dundrum, Co. Dublin.
He showed Ulysses in Connemara in the Royal Scottish Academy exhibition of 1952, and he was represented in the Contemporary Irish Art exhibition at Aberystwyth, 1953. He also showed at the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, but his work in Britain was mainly hung in London at Burlington House. He retired from teaching in 1954.
Still actively involved in church commissions, he executed a mural in 1955, St Therese of the Child Jesus, for the Church of St Therese, Mount Merrion, Dublin, and in 1956 in conjunction with the sculptor, Gabriel Hayes (q.v.), he contributed thirteen Stations of the Cross for St John's Church, Tralee.
An exhibition of pastels and drawings was held at the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, in 1956.
Another important mural was commissioned in 1959, on behalf of the Government, for the International Labour Office, Geneva. It was of irregular shape, and measured 3.7 metres by 7.3 metres and took two years to complete.
Keating exhibited nearly 300 works at the RHA - he resigned from the presidency in 1962 - and he also showed at the Oireachtas. In 1963 a retrospective exhibition was held at the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, opened by President de Valera.
Among the works exhibited were: An Aran Fisherman and his Wife, 1916 (HLMGMA), Night's Candles are Burnt Out (Oldham Art Gallery and Museum) and May Dawn (National Museum of Ireland).
In his introduction to the catalogue, James White wrote: "Again and again his pictures have made apparent his contempt for compromise and his conviction that principles can never be sacrificed.
An exhibition in Belfast at the Bell Gallery was held in 1965. In the Golden Jubilee of the Easter Rising Exhibition in 1966 at the National Gallery of Ireland, he was represented by no fewer than six portraits: John Devoy, Erskine Childers, Terence MacSwiney, Thomas MacCurtain, General Michael Brennan and Dr Ella Webb.
Portraits of Brennan and General Duffy are at McKee Barracks.
In his lifetime he painted about one hundred portraits. A self-portrait is at the NGI, Limerick City Gallery of Art and also at the University of Limerick.
Still remarkably active, he combined with the younger generation, Carolyn Mulholland, sculptor, in an exhibition at the Kenny Art Gallery, Galway, in 1968; three years later he returned there for a solo show. Commemorating the silver jubilee of the opening of the Municipal Art Gallery, Limerick, he joined with Fergus O'Ryan, RHA (q.v.), and Thomas Ryan, RHA, in a 1973 exhibition.
Throughout his life Keating took a firm stand on the side of traditional art. Disliking the modem movement, he feared it would bring back a decline in standards. Despite his outspoken views, his students regarded him as an honest and lovable man, perhaps admired more as an artist and as a personality than as a teacher.
He died at the Adelaide Hospital, on 21 December 1977, and he was buried at Cruagh Cemetery, Rockbrook, Rathfarnham. A small memorial exhibition was held at the 1978 RHA.
The Grafton Gallery, Dublin, arranged an exhibition of works on paper in 1986, and in 1987 there was an Irish tour of his works commissioned by the Electricity Supply Board for the Shannon scheme.
Justin Keating's documentary of his father, Seán Keating, was shown on RTÉ in 1996.
Works signed: Keating, Céitinn; Seán Céitinn, S. Céitinn or K., all three rare.
