Irish & International Art 28 September 2015

Seán Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977)

ILLUSTRATION FOR THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD - FRONTISPIECE, 1923

oil on canvas

signed in Irish lower right; signed again, dated Aibrean [April] 1922 and numbered [1] on reverse

30 x 25in. (76.20 x 63_cm)

Provenance: Acquired at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin, early 1950s; Thence by family descent to the first owner; Whyte’s,

30 April 2007, lot 90; Private collection;Whyte’s, 30 May 2011, lot 33;Whence purchased by the present owner

Exhibited: RHA, Dublin, 1923, catalogue no. 171, as illustration for The Playboy of The Western World” - Frontispiece”

This painting was featured on a commemorative stamp issued by An Post, The Post Office, for the Centenary of the

Death of John Millington Synge. The stamp, issued on 24 March 2009, was designed by Paul Raftery and printed by Irish

Security Stamp Printing.

Seán Keating has become synonymous with the west of Ireland in general, and with the Aran Islands in particular. His

association with the western seaboard began as early as 1913 and was further emphasised through a series of self-

portraits for which the artist dressed in Aran clothing. There is no evidence that Keating ever met John Millington Synge,

but in 1917 the artist exhibited a painting in the RHA titled The Outlandish Lovers, which was inspired by The Playboy of

the Western World. Synge’s nephew, known as ‘Hutchie’, approached Keating in 1922 with a commission to paint twelve

illustrations for a proposed deluxe volume of The Playboy of the Western World. In the event, ten of the twelve images

were published. Sir John Lavery was called upon to inspect the first four illustrations. Lavery was greatly impressed by

the realism, colour and artistic invention in the work, and he considered them of great importance to the craft of book

illustration in Ireland at that time. The full set of paintings was to have been ready in 1926, but a delay on Keating’s part

meant that the book was finally published as a numbered series of one thousand copies in 1927. The publication has

since become a collectors’ item. (An example is offered as lot 50 in this sale).

It was an important and prestigious commission, and Keating took his role as an illustrator of Synge’s work very seriously.

As if to expand on Synge’s story, Keating chose scenes from the play that, for the most part, are not seen on stage.

Perhaps most interesting of all is that Keating himself makes an appearance in the images as Christy Mahon’s father,

seen in the present lot holding the scythe. Proving his commitment to the commission, the artist even posed entirely

nude for the scene in which Christy’s father apparently awakes from the ‘dead.’ It is the only instance of a nude portrait of

the artist in his entire career. In order to plan the compositions in great detail Keating undertook a series of photographs

using models from the school of art.. He may also have taken sketches at the theatre because many of the actors of the

day appear in the illustrations.

Once the publishers had reproduced the images to the required scale, the original paintings were returned to the artist

who exhibited them in various venues in the late 1920s. They are an unusual, witty and yet contextually important series

of works that signal the nature and extent of the interconnection between the visual arts and literature in the early years

of the Irish Free State.

Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA

€35,000-€45,000 (£25730-£33080 approx. approx.)

IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART · 28 SEPTEMBER 2015