IMPORTANT IRISH ART Monday 4 December 2023 at 6pm, Lots 1-133

58 36 Seán Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977) THE GOOSE GIRL, 1917 oil on canvas signed lower right 42 by 36in. (106.7 by 91.4cm) Frame Size: 50 by 44in. (127 by 111.8cm) Provenance: RHA, Dublin, 1918: Private collection; With Daniel Egan Gallery, 1928; Private collection; Sotheby’s, 21 October 2015, lot 16; Private collection Exhibited: RHA, Dublin, 1918, catalogue no. 38; Solo exhibition, The Hall Gallery, Leinster Street, Dublin, 1923; ’Seán Keating Retrospective’, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, May 1963, catalogue no. 7 Painted for exhibition at the annual Royal Hibernian Academy show in 1918, The Goose Girl features Seán Keating’s sister, Veronica, known as Vera (1895-1953), posed to emulate William Orpen’s painting of a similar theme, The Dead Ptarmigan (1909) 1. By this stage Orpen, who visited the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) to teach four times a year, and who ‘brought new life and enthusiasm to the school,’ had removed himself from his role as a teacher with the DMSA and from his membership of the RHA. 2 His former student, Keating, hoped to be appointed to take his mentor’s place at the school. Significantly, and in spite of exhibiting major work such as Men of the West in the RHA in 1917, Keating had not yet been elected a member, a position that was considered essential to the development of an artist’s professional career at the time. So it was that in 1918 he showed eight paintings at the annual RHA exhibition, among which was The Goose Girl. Clothed in untypical attire for a supposed house maid or kitchen maid at the time, Keating’s rosy faced Goose Girl presents the angel-like wings of the martyred bird at the moment before plucking. From his artistic attention to the detailed lace in her Edwardian style cap to the extraordinary hues describing his sitter’s features, from the treatment of her gold necklace to the multiple shades of white in her blouse and cuffs echoed in the feathers of the goose, and from the texture of her cotton gingham apron to the balance of light, tone and colour throughout, the composition is a well- considered homage to Orpen, and a demonstration of the range of painterly capacity appropriate for an artist seeking recognition from his peers, which ultimately proved successful. Keating was elected an Associate or ARHA in 1918, and the following year, in late 1919, he was appointed to the role of part time teacher of anatomy at the DMSA. Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA, HRUA. Biographer, Seán Keating: Art, Politics, and Building the Irish Nation, (Irish Academic Press, Kildare) Footnotes: 1 Collection: National Gallery of Ireland, NGI 19184. 2 Seán Keating, ‘Report on the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art,’ reproduced in Éimear O’Connor, Seán Keating in Context: Responses to Culture and Politics in Post-Civil War Ireland (Carysfort Press, Dublin), pp. 77-79. €25,000-€35,000 (£21,740-£30,430 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot36