Seán Keating

Seán Keating is best known for his romantic-realistic paintings from the Anglo-Irish War and the beginning of industrialization in Ireland. He started his studies at the Limerick Technical School before he was allowed to join the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, where he was active teaching from 1918-54. Spending most of his life in Ireland, he was elected President of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1949 and held this position up to 1962. He was a very conservative painter and strictly against abstract Modern Art as he feared this kind of painting would bring about a decline in artistic standards. His early works were close to socialist realism and showed his sympathy for the militant Irish independence movement. Keating’s leftist positions and a sense of social justice were reflected in his paintings. Nevertheless, he also produced religious works for the Church.

The Tipperary Hurler (oil on canvas, 91 x 76 cm), painted in 1928, is Keating’s only painting of an athlete. Models were the players John-Joe Hayes from the then successful Tipperary team and Ben O’Hickey, one of his art students, who is said to have resembled Hayes. The first sketches were made in the early 1920s. O’Hickey then acted as his model for the completion. The sash identifies him as a player of the Commercials Hurling Club. The painting has been in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin since 1956. A 1924 painting titled The Hunter or The Fowler from 1924 is lost. It was probably the painting submitted in Paris.