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Seán Keating PRHA (1889-1977)
‘Pipes and Porter’
Oil on canvas, 101.5 x 127cm (40 x 50”)
Signed
Exhibited : RHA, Annual Exhibition 1915 Cat. No. 78
€80,000 - 120,000
Having won the coveted RDS Taylor Award for painting in 1914, Seán Keating moved to London to work as a studio assistant to
William Orpen.The First World War had begun, and as conscription beckoned, Keating decided to return to Ireland in late 1915 or
early 1916. Orpen, already a well-renowned portrait painter, remained in London and accepted an appointment to the Army Service
Corps. He was sent to France under the war artists’ scheme in 1917, where, initially as a Second Lieutenant and later a Major, he pro-
duced some of the most extraordinary and thought provoking images of his entire career
1
. Meanwhile, Keating returned to Dublin,
joined the Gaelic League
(Conradh na Gaeilge)
, and began to make a series of paintings that placed the west of Ireland in general, and
the Aran Islands in particular, at the centre of his personal sense of national and political identity. He sought to make his nationalist
allegiance clear in his work, but arrest for sedition was commonplace, and as a result, his use of symbolism or allegory can be under-
stood in the context of the socio-political conditions at that time.The best known of those images is
Men of the West
, a painting that
Keating began in 1915, but completed and exhibited in 1917, the year after the Easter Rising had taken place
2
. An allegorical work,
it features a self-portrait of the artist holding the Irish tri-colour flag, and a double portrait of his brother, Joe Hannan Keating, who
was then a member of the IRB and the Irish Volunteers, and both are dressed in traditional Aran Island clothing. But there was an
image that prefigured
Men of the West
. It was shown in the RHA in 1915 and it was titled
Pipes and Porter
3
.
An extraordinary painting,
Pipes and Porter
features a self-portrait of the artist with his ubiquitous beard, together with a portrait of
his aforementioned brother, Joe, an unnamed young boy, and an unidentified piper
4
. A castle tower dominates the background, while
the lower landscape is dotted with several white-washed and thatched cottages, and the sun is setting in the western sky. Keating,
his brother, and the young boy regard their audience with confidence. But the piper’s gaze suggests that he is lost in concentration
of his tune. He is playing the bagpipes, also known as the ‘war pipes’ because they were ‘played in medieval Ireland to lead soldiers or
sporting groups’
5
. Importantly, in terms of Keating’s artistic objectives, ‘both the uilleann pipes and the war pipes had political links’
in the early years of the twentieth century. ‘Thomas Ashe was a well-known war piper’, while ‘Éamonn Ceannt played the uilleann
pipes and was leading member of the Dublin Pipers’ Club’
6
. The war pipes that feature in Pipes and Porter appear to be ‘an occasional
set’ that may have been made by ‘MacCullough’ of Belfast and seem to have ‘two drones, beaded and combed like Highland pipes’
with ‘plain projecting mounts on the drones, and metal ferrules’
7
. The colour combination illustrated on the piper’s conspicuous hat
may well refer to his place of birth, and/or his national sporting allegiance. Black and amber are the Gaelic Athletic Association
(GAA) colours for Kilkenny.While the GAA was not a political organization, several members fought in the Easter Rising in 1916
8
.
Although he remains anonymous at present, the man playing the ‘war pipes’ may have been a piper that Keating knew from among
those that played at nationalist gatherings and marches in Dublin, if not from his own branch of
Conradh na Gaeilge
, or who perhaps
played at GAA matches.Thus, far from being a simple scene of the west of Ireland, Pipes and Porter has symbolic meaning, which
is amplified by the presence of the artist, and his nationalist brother, Joe, both of whom are dressed in the traditional Aran Island
clothing that was to feature in Men of the West a little time later. At the same time, the realities of the socio-political conditions
are evident in the painting. Irish artists were physically and geographically restricted by the rules of the Defence of the Realm Act
(DORA), introduced to Ireland in 1914, as a result of which they were not allowed to paint the Irish coastline, or harbours, without
written permission from the authorities.Therefore, there is little by way of a detailed coastline in
Pipes and Porter
or in
Men of the West
.
Keating was a painter of honest, no nonsense portraits. It was a skill that provided him with a constant source of income throughout
his life. He did not believe in flattering his models, which meant that his insightful honesty got him into trouble at times. Trained
by Orpen in the necessary techniques, he never forgot to include a fleck of light in the eyes, a detail that gave life and personality
to his portraits and that is seen to excellent effect in
Pipes and Porter.
Furthermore, although it is an early work, the painting also
