Lot number 2612 - Auction 155
'KELP II' 1956

SEAN KEATING PPRHA, PRUA 1889 Limerick - 1977 Dublin 'KELP II' 1956 Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 77 cm (R. 78.5 x 94.5 cm). Signed lower right. Verso: label with the name of the first owner. Framed. Born in Limerick in 1889, Seán Keating moved to Dublin to train at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1911 and went on to become one of Ireland's best-known artists of the twentieth-century. He first visited the Aran Islands, situated off the west coast of Ireland, in 1912 in the company of his fellow student and friend, Harry Clarke, who was to become renowned for his extraordinary stained glass. From that first visit in 1912 the hard life, traditions, costume, and language of the island people became a major source of inspiration for Keating that continued for his entire working life. One of the main activities on the Aran Islands was the gathering of a brown seaweed knowns as kelp which was used to give nourishment to the thin soil in which the people grew potatoes, and when burnt, for the manufacture of iodine. In this example of Keating's work, titled Kelp 2, three island people are shown in the foreground, two of whom are working hard gathering the seaweed, while the man on the left looks towards us, the viewer, as if to bring us into the scene. All three are dressed in typical Aran Island clothing, including the coloured woven belt known as a crios, (pronounced kris) seen on the man to the right. Notably, Keating was always interested in the weather conditions, and in Kelp 2 he depicts a calm, slightly overcast day, late afternoon, as the men on the harbour await those in the currach (traditional Irish fishing boat, pronounced kuh-ruhk) to come in to land after their day out fishing. An excellent example of Keating's mid-career work, Kelp 2 was commissioned from Keating in 1955 and completed in 1956. Held in that private collection for many years, it was lent to a major retrospective exhibition of the Keating's work, held in the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, in 1963, which was opened by the then President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera. As far as can be ascertained, the painting has remained in private ownership and has not been on public view since 1963. Dr Éimear O'Connor HRHA, HRUA (Dublin, Ireland, January 2026) Author, Seán Keating: Art, Politics, and Building the Irish Nation (biography of the artist's life and work) Irish Academic Press, Kildare, 2013. Expertise: We are grateful to Dr Eimear O'Connor for the identification and cataloguing of the work based on a photograph. Provenance: Private commission, 1956. Exhibitions: John Keating Retrospective, Hugh Lane Gallery, May - June 1963.