Seán Keating biography casts new light on artist's work

DR Éimear O’Connor has made a remarkable contribution to Irish art history. She has curated two major exhibitions of the work of 20th century artist, Seán Keating, and has written several books on him, of which the most recent is Seán Keating: Art, Politics and Building the Irish Nation.

Sponsored by the ESB and published by the Irish Academic Press, it is an impressive volume that assesses the artist’s life and work in terms of his well-known paintings and hundreds of works of art, including drawings and sketches, that have remained in private collections for decades.

Keating has not lapsed into obscurity in the years since his death in 1977, but his artistic reputation rests mainly on paintings of War of Independence flying columns, traditional life on the Aran Islands, and the building of the Shannon hydroelectric scheme.