IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART 28 September 2026

32 20 Seán Keating PPRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977) PORTRAIT OF SYDNEY R. CARDEW, BRITISH ARMY DRIVER FOR THE FRENCH RED CROSS, C.1918 oil on canvas signed lower right 36 by 29.25in. (91.4 by 74.3cm) Frame Size: 41.5 by 34.5in. (105.4 by 87.6cm) Provenance: Family of the sitter; Thence by descent Exhibited: RHA, Dublin, 1918, catalogue no. 159 Purchased from the artist by the sitter’s cousins, the Jameson family of whiskey fame, and lent to the RHA exhibition in 1918, Portrait of Sydney R. Cardew has not been seen in public since. Seán Keating’s personal notes reveal that he undertook the portrait ‘out of friendship for the sitter.’While nothing is known of how Keating and Cardew met, the artist clearly knew the Jameson family as he showed a ‘portrait of Mrs Jameson’ in the RHA in 1915. It may be that Keating met the Jameson’s through Harry Clarke, who was commissioned by Andrew Jameson to illustrate two booklets on the foundation of the distillery a few years later. However they met, for Keating, elected an Associate for the RHA in 1918, Cardew’s features and fascinating uniform offered an opportunity to publicly display his skills as a painter of finely detailed portraits, a talent that would provide necessary income throughout his career. The painting was exhibited in the RHA in 1918 along with several other examples of Keating’s portraits, including Thinking Out Gobnait, a portrait of Harry Clarke. According to the British Red Cross records, Sydney Robert Cardew joined the organization as a motor ambulance driver in February 1917 at the age of thirty nine, and completed his tour of duty in October 1919 during which time he was attached to the Balkan Convoy. Keating was careful to portray his friend accurately, and in doing so, his attention to detail reveals something more of the sitter’s story to the contemporary viewer. Cardew wears a wool uniform, but with a blue collar and a blue stripe on the sleeve. The blue details reveal that Cardew was not in the infantry, rather he was a non-combatant driving a British humanitarian ambulance for the French Red Cross. The distinctive Red Cross insignia would have been pinned to both sides of Cardew’s blue collar, as well as on his cap. Notice, too, the golden crescent-shaped insignia on Cardew’s cap, which denotes that he was a convoy leader who would have supervised ambulance evacuations on the front lines of the First World War. Keating’s portrait of Cardew reveals a calm yet commanding character, whose worldly gaze seems to convey a hint of his turbulent life on the battlefields. It is the highlights around his face, across the tip of his nose, the curve of his jowl, and along the folds of his ear, offset by the blue sky and the light in the clouds, that bring Cardew to life on the canvas. Ultimately, as Keating was taught to do by his mentor, William Orpen, it is the light in the sitter’s eyes that offers the twenty-first century viewer a hint of Cardew’s temperament as he sat for his portrait, while quite likely chatting away to the artist, over one hundred years ago. Dr Éimear O’Connor HRHA, HRUA Author of Seán Keating’s biography, Seán Keating: Art, Politics, and Building the Irish Nation. €8,000-€12,000 (£6,840-£10,260 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot20