Seán Keating

Born in Limerick in 1889, Keating attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art from 1911. There, he numbered among the students who were taught by sir William Orpen, a leading Irish painter of the first decades of the 20th century, and in 1915 he worked as Orpen's assistant and model in London. On returning to Ireland Keating soon established himself and in 1919 he was elected RHA. He became one of the principal painters of the Irish Free State and his commissions included portraits of leading figures from Irish life and a large series of paintings depicting the construction of the country's first electricity generating stations. In 1950 he was elected President of the Royal Hibernian Academy, a post he held until 1962 when he resigned, believing that the Academy, that bastion of tradition in art, had become too open towards modernism.