Last Saturday a friend and I went to see the ‘Sean Keating in Focus’ exhibition in the Hunt Museum, Limerick. This is an exhibition of the work of Limerick born artist, Sean Keating.
The exhibition contained 33 paintings from a number of galleries and private collections, giving a good representation of his work. It is housed downstairs in one room in the Hunt. At the beginning, we had the place to ourselves. The man on duty offered to give us a quick tour. We took up his offer and he told us various interesting anecdotes.
Born in 1889, Keating attended school in Limerick, though it appears badly. As he later himself said ‘I was always drawing and scribbling.’ His mother seemed to understand him and sent him to the Technical School in Limerick for drawing. (This was later to become today’s Limerick School of Art and Design). At the age of 22 he won a scholarship to the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, (now the National College of Art and Design), where he came under the influence of William Orpen, the leading Irish painter.
Keating was a prolific painter. Over his long life he was awarded many commissions, exhibited widely and won prestigious competitions. His major bodies of work include paintings of early troubled Ireland, paintings from the Aran islands, portraits, murals and religious works. He also taught at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art.
At the age of 37, in 1926 he painted a series of pictures illustrating the development of the hydro-electric scheme on the river Shannon. This series of twenty-six drawings and paintings, showed the progress of the work until its completion in 1929. Four of these paintings were included in the exhibition. What I was interested in was the fact that Keating apparently lived with the workmen on the building site at Ardnacrusha. Our John had done his Leaving Cert history project on this very subject, so I had learned a little more from John on the building of this hydro-electric power station!
Interestingly Keating included various family members as subjects in paintings, without identifying them as family though.
Keating is reputed to have said ‘he could never shake the dust of Limerick from his shoes’. However at almost 60, he was awarded an Honorary Freeman of the City of Limerick. Photographs/memorabilia from this ceremony were included in the exhibition. Later he didn’t win many friends in Limerick when on national television, he described the Limerick of his youth as ‘a medieval dung heap’.
Close to how the late Frank McCourt described his Limerick!
Lest anyone gets very insulted with how he felt about Limerick, Keating apparently later grew to hate both Dublin, where he lived most of his adult life, and the Aran Islands, where he had spent much time painting.
The elderly Keating described Dublin as a ’sordid run down battered old hag, of a place …’ The elderly Keating refused to get off the boat, on a trip to the Aran Islands with his son, hating how commercialised the islands had become.
The elderly Keating sounds like he may have been a slightly difficult character!
The guide told us that Orpen had actually come as an inspector to the Limerick school where he spotted Keating’s work. My friend, an Art teacher, is a graduate of this same school, though many years later! Maybe she was unlucky that Orpen hadn’t come to the school when she was a student …
One thing he pointed out to us was to notice how well Keating painted hands. This was indeed true.
Particular paintings I really liked at the exhibition were:
The long voyage home
Night Candle’s are Burnt Out
The Reconciliation
Keating completed his training in Dublin by winning the RDS Taylor Award for this painting of his three siblings. He was awarded a £50 prize. When the exhibition was over, he gave the painting to his mother. (Three mice, please note!)
There was an amusing hand-written note from Orpen which said, ‘My dear Keating = good for you. I’ve just heard the Taylor news and am delighted = go on working like a black and keep the health good = I’ll be over next Wednesday and we’ll have a drink.’
I liked his good-humoured note!
The Artist’s Wife in an Interior
This is a painting of his wife May Walshe from Eadestown, Co. Kildare, (very near where I am from). They had two children Michael and Justin (later a Labour Minister and MEP). Towards the end of his life, Keating said, “I never loved any woman but one woman and I couldn’t live without her’.
Denis will be glad to know that in a recent report in the Irish Times, the only significant GAA-themed painting in State ownership, is actually The Tipperary Hurler, painted by Keating though this painting was not included in this exhibition.
Sean Keating, who died in 1977, was truly a gifted artist
All in all a very interesting exhibition and well worth a visit. It will close in early October. More information can be found here, here, and here.
