Beschreibung:

ILLUSTRATION FOR THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, ACT 1, 'RISING UP IN THE RED DAWN...' 1922 Seán Keating PRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977)
Signature: signed in Irish lower right; signed again and dated Aibrean [April] on reverse Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 30 x 25in. (76.20 x 63½cm) Provenance: Acquired at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin, early 1950s; Thence by family descent to the previous owner; Whyte's, 30 April 2007, lot 90; Private collection; Whyte's, 30 May 2011, lot 37; Private collection Exhibited: Literature: Synge, J.M., The Playboy of the Western World, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1927 In 1922 Keating was commissioned by Synge's nephew, Edward Hutchinson Synge, otherwise 'Hutchie', to undertake a series of colour illustrations for a forthcoming, large format publication of The Playb... boy of the Western World. He must have attended productions of the play in the early 1920s because several of the actors appear throughout the series of illustrations. So it is that Abbey Theatre actress, Eileen Crowe, makes an entrance as Pegeen in Helen and the Holy Prophets (lot 24). It is a moment in the play when the protagonist, Christy Mahon, who is practising his 'eloquence', compares Pegeen to the beautiful Helen of Troy 'pacing back and forward, with a nosegay on her shawl' while 'the holy prophets do be straining the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on her'. Crowe went on to play the role of Pegeen for about ten years between 1926 and 1936. While the troupe of 'mystics' 'straining through the bars of paradise' in Keating's Helen and the Holy Prophets includes a portrait of the artist on the left, he is also cast in a central role throughout the illustrations. Keating is Christy Mahon's unfortunate father, Old Mahon, seen for example, in Rising up in the Red Dawn (lot 23). The painting shows a moment during the first act of the play in which Christy suggests to Pegeen that his father was a violent man, who, full of rage after weeks of binge drinking, might strip off and fight anything, including the rising dawn. While the image shows Old Mahon naked and as much an animal as the huge pigs he is pictured with, in reality, nothing could have been further from the truth. The book for which these illustrations were made was published as a de lux collector's edition by George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, in 1927. Keating, well-known for his paintings of the Aran Islands, then became associated with Synge's work, so much so that in the early 1940s, and again in the 1950s, the artist was commissioned to design costumes and stage settings for productions of The Well of the Saints and The Playboy of the Western World for the Abbey Theatre, and after the fire that destroyed the original building in July 1951, at the Queen's Theatre, Pearse Street, Dublin, which was to be home to the troupe until the new Abbey Theatre opened in 1966. Dr Éimear O'Connor HRHA August 2017 Author of Seán Keating: Art, Politics and Building the Irish Nation (Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2013) more