WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART MONDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2024 AT 6PM

36 20 Seán Keating PPRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977) ELIJAHWITH THE RAVENS (VERSION II), 1930 oil on canvas signed lower right; bearing Gormley’s label on reverse 28.50 by 36in. (72.4 by 91.4cm) Frame Size: 36 by 44in. (91.4 by 111.8cm) Provenance: Gormley’s, 11 September 2018, lot 11; Private collection Exhibited: Royal Glasgow Institute, Glasgow, 1930; Munster Arts Institute, 1932; Oireachtas Art Exhibition, Dublin, 1932; RHA, Dublin, 1932, catalogue no. 7; Aonach Tailteann, 1932; Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin, 1945 and 1947; RHA, Dublin, 1961, catalogue no. 15; McClelland Gallery, Belfast, 1972 Made for public exhibition rather than private commission, Seán Keating’s Elijah and the Ravens was inspired by the drama of the biblical story, in which the prophet Elijah is exhorted to go a special place where he would be protected and fed by ravens, as God was going to send a drought to those who worshipped false idols. Although he enjoyed the ritual of mass, Keating was not enamoured of the alliance between church and state in post-civil war Ireland. Nor was he impressed by eager commercialism and ever-increasing consumerism, or notably, by modern-day prophets. Indeed, while he was described by a contemporary interviewer as ‘kindly, sympathetic and human’, his attitude was ‘based on a tolerance which did not exclude a certain impatience with sham and shibboleth.’ As such, Keating’s message within the dramatic scene presented in Elijah and the Ravens, in which it is notable that the birds arrive empty-beaked to a rather surprised-looking prophet, could be read as an emblematic response to the artist’s social, religious, and economic context, rather than a statement of religious fervour. At the same time, Keating’s technique, that is his treatment of colour, composition, and drama, is noteworthy, as is the portrait of the unidentified model for the work, all of which rendered the painting immediately recognisable in any exhibition context in Ireland or further afield as a ‘Keating’ at a time when the artist was at the vanguard of the debate and development of a post- Treaty Irish School of Art. Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA, RRUA Author, ‘Seán Keating: Art, Politics and Building the Irish Nation (Irish Academic Press). €15,000-€20,000 (£12,610-£16,810 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot20