Oil Paintings by Sean Keating
Seán Keating, born in Limerick, was an Irish romantic-realist painter who painted some iconic images of the Irish War of Independence and of the early industrialization of Ireland. He spent two weeks or so during the late summer on the Aran Islands and his many portraits of island people depicted them as rugged heroic figures.
Seán Keating studied drawing at the Limerick Technical School before a scholarship arranged by William Orpen allowed him to go at the age of twenty to study at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. Over the next few years he spent time on the Aran Islands. In 1914 Keating won the RDS Taylor award with a painting titled “The Reconciliation”. The prize included £50.00 which allowed him to go to London to work as Orpen’s studio assistant in 1915. In late 1915 or early 1916 he returned to Ireland where he documented the war of independence and the subsequent civil war. Examples include “Men of the South” (1921–22) which shows a group of IRA men ready to ambush a military vehicle and “An Allegory” (first exhibited in 1924), in which the two opposing sides in the Irish Civil War are seen to bury the tri-colour covered coffin amid the roots on an ancient tree.