ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE 'PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD', 1922-27 (SET OF FIVE)
Seán Keating PPRHA HRA HRSA (1889-1977)Seán Keating first visited the Aran Islands with his friend Harry Clarke as early as 1913 where he discovered the people and the landscape that John Millington Synge and Jack B. Yeats had investigated on behalf of the Congested Districts Board just a few years previously. By the 1920s Keating was well known for his ability to paint the West of Ireland, and particularly the Aran Islands in a manner that located and mediated his nationalist intent in a recognisably emblematic form. The Synge family must have been aware of Keating’s professional standing in terms of a national art, as he won many awards and showed work in every major exhibition in Ireland and abroad. It was Hutchie Synge, nephew of the author, who approached Keating in 1922 to commission the artist to undertake a series of initially twelve colour illustrations for a proposed special limited edition of The Playboy of the Western World. Keating agreed to paint twelve illustrations, but as the project advanced, the number was reduced to ten in order to keep costs within certain limitations.
The paintings were to have been ready for 1926, but Keating suffered a serious accident in 1925 which left him unable to work for a number of months and the project was not completed until 1927. In 1924 Sir John Lavery was called upon to inspect Keating’s first four illustrations for The Playboy of the Western World, three of which form part of this collection (i, ii and iii). Lavery was greatly impressed by the realism, colour, and artistic invention in the paintings and he considered them of enormous importance in terms of book illustration in Ireland. Keating eventually completed his commission and the book was published by George Allen and Unwin of London in 1927 as a numbered series of one thousand copies which have now become collectors’ items.
Evidently, Keating was left to his own devices to decide on the aspects that appealed to him and he chose ten lines from the text from which he created a series of theatrical and colourful images. Interestingly, Keating includes portraits of a number of well known Abbey Theatre actors who performed in the play during the early 1920s. But what is even more fascinating is Keating’s self location as Christy Mahon’s father, into the centre of the story of patricide that the 1907 audiences seemed to largely ignore. By the time that Keating had completed the illustrations, The Playboy of the Western World had become essential to the repertoire of the Abbey Theatre, and no longer the focus of negative discourse.
Keating adopted a scrupulously modern approach to his commission for The Playboy of the Western World in which he plays a pivotal role as the epitome of the man of the west who is variously killed, healed and killed again. Given the date of the commission, Keating’s acknowledgement of patricide is a challenging engagement with the narrative of the play, and also, of the ongoing Civil War in Ireland, the internecine violence of which he abhorred. Interestingly, Keating also chose to illustrate some scenes that occur off stage, thereby adding significantly to the imaginative sphere of the play. Notably too, Keating used a camera as a compositional tool in the development of the images. Although the illustrations are premised on a degree of theatrical caricature and wit, they still refute the stage Irish Paddy and the tragic Parnellite hero that had been so prevalent prior to Synge’s work for the Abbey Theatre. Through this series of important illustrations, Keating reinforced his artistic identity with the emblematic implications of the west of Ireland, and also with the realism of the work of John Millington Synge.
(i)
‘God have mercy on your soul,’ says he, lifting a scythe. ‘Or on your own,’ says I, raising the loy.’
signed in Irish lower right; signed again, dated Aibreán [April] 1922 and numbered 1 on reverse
oil on canvas
76 by 63.5cm., 30 by 25in.
Exhibited:
RHA, Dublin, 1923, as catalogue no. 117, Illustration for The Playboy of the Western World - Frontispiece
This illustration is used as the frontispiece in the 1927 publication. The title of the work is taken from the point in The Playboy of the Western World where Christy Mahon describes how he killed his father with an Irish spade, otherwise known as a loy. Keating has depicted a scene that is described well by Christy, but is not part of the staging of the play. In order to illustrate the action between father and son, Keating sourced a scythe and loy and had a series of photographs taken while standing on a table at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. It is notable that Keating is attired as though from the Aran Islands, even though the play is set in Mayo, thereby fusing his identity with that of Synge and the play in terms of artistic realism. The illustration was one of the four that Sir John Lavery commented so favourably upon in 1924.
(ii)
‘Going out into the yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visage of the stars.’
signed in Irish lower right; signed again and dated Aibreán [April] 1922 on the reverse
oil on canvas
76 by 63.5cm., 30 by 25in.
Exhibited:
RHA, Dublin, 1923, catalogue no. 169 as Illustration for the Playboy of the Western World, Act 1, Rising Up in the Red Dawn…’
This illustration is number two in the 1927 publication. Once again, Keating has expanded the story and depicted an imagined scene that evolves off stage and for which he posed at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1922. The illustration refers to the point in the play where Christy Mahon wittingly but wrongly describes his father as a raging, swearing drunkard, hence his excuse for killing him. Keating, as Christy’s father, is shown delirious from drink, with his left hand shielding his eyes from ‘the visage of the stars’ and hallucinating in a dirty farm yard replete with hoe, paint can and broken pieces of machinery, as three huge and wild looking pigs that look like fugitives from a horror film, race across the yard in a demonic attempt to escape. The illustration is the only full length nude self-study that Keating ever produced. This is an early illustration and one of the four that Sir John Lavery commented so positively on in 1924.
(iii)
‘That was a great blow! And who hit you? A robber, maybe?’
signed lower right; numbered 4 on reverse
oil on panel
91.5 by 77cm., 36 by 30.25in.
Exhibited:
Possibly exhibited at the RHA, Dublin, 1926, catalogue no. 42 as Illustration for the Playboy of the Western World
This illustration is number four in the series of ten in the publication. Keating’s model for the Widow Quin in this illustration was working at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in the early 1920s. The veracity of detail in the woodwork and the fireplace in this scene, which takes place in a country kitchen, bear a strong resemblance to Keating’s home at the time, which was in the Dublin Mountains. Moreover, the gun that leans on the shelf to the right of the fireplace is similar to that used by the artist in paintings such as Men of the West (1916) and may well be the gun that he used to hunt when food was scarce. Keating leaves a door open in tacit acknowledgement that Christy Mahon is standing behind it listening as his father reveals the truth of the tale to the Widow Quin, who bandages his wounds with a palpable air of scepticism. Sir John Lavery also commented favourably on this work in 1924.
(iv)
‘…Looking out on the schooners, hookers, trawlers is sailing the sea, and I thinking on the gallant hairy fellows are drifting beyond.’
signed lower left; numbered 8 on reverse
oil on panel
91.5 by 76cm., 36 by 30in.
Exhibited:
RHA, Dublin, 1928, catalogue no. 52 as Illustration to the Playboy of the Western World - Hairy Gallant Fellows;
Aonach Tailteann, Dublin, 1928, as Gallant Hairy Fellows
The illustration is number five in the series of ten in the publication. In this illustration, Keating utilised the features of actors from a production of The Playboy of the Western World, which helps to date the image. In 1924 the play was staged at the Abbey Theatre with Sara Allgood (sister to Synge’s former fiancée, Molly Allgood) as Pegeen Mike, Michael Dolan as Shawn Keogh and also starring Barry Fitzgerald and F. J. McCormack, who are both featured in this entertaining illustration. Keating has again expanded the story of the play by featuring a scene that does not happen on stage, but is narrated by the Widow Quin while waxing lyrical about the apparent attractions of male company. The Widow Quin is an interesting character in the tale, given that in earlier years she managed to accidentally kill her husband by prodding him with a hay fork, thereby inducing the onset of a severe and lethal dose of blood poisoning. The illustration is loosely painted on a piece of panel and the sketchy nature of Keating’s brushwork has allowed the grain of the wood to show through and feature as the sail in the Galway hooker, which passes in the background.
(v)
‘If the mitred bishops seen you… they’d be the like of the Holy Prophets do be straining the bars of paradise, to lay eyes on the lady Helen of Troy, and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl.’
signed lower right; numbered 5 on reverse
oil on panel
91.5 by 75cm., 36 by 29.5in.
Exhibited:
Aonach Tailteann, Dublin, 1928 as Helen and the Holy Prophets
The illustration is number eight in the series of ten for the publication. Once again, Keating expands the narrative of the play to picture a purely imaginative scene. The illustration can be dated by virtue of Keating’s visual reference to actors who took part in The Playboy of the Western World in the early 1920s. The image refers to a scene that Christy Mahon conjures for Pegeen Mike in which he likens her to Helen of Troy for her beauty. Keating places a group of Holy Prophets, or Abbey actors, behind ‘the bars of paradise’ in order to ‘lay eyes’ on her. The actress in question is Eileen Crowe, who starred as Pegeen Mike for a series of productions of The Playboy of the Western World between 1926 and 1936. Crowe, in the guise of Helen of Troy, carries a nosegay and turns as if to throw a look at the flower dropped on the ground by one of the Holy Prophets, one of whom appears to closely resemble Keating.
Eimear O’Connor
The Humanities Institute of Ireland
University College Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4
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