Sean Keating, P.R.H.A.

Private collection since the 1980s

Original canvas. The work appears in good overall condition, ready to hang. Ultraviolet light reveals flecks of retouching across the background of the picture, including two more concentrated areas under her left arm which relate to two small repaired tears. Some further retouching to the wing of the goose, and the girl's face, neck, chest, arm and dress. Held in a dark veneer frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The Goose Girl looks directly out at the viewer proudly displaying the object of her livelihood; a dead goose, ready to be plucked and hung.  The linear and textural pattern of the goose's wing feathers lying side-by-side is cleverly juxtaposed with the uniformity of the girl's gingham checked skirt and the intricate lace details of her bonnet.

The use of the goose as an artistic device shows Keating's debt to his teacher Sir William Orpen who he studied under at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin from 1911 and then subsequently became Orpen's model and assistant in London in 1915. In much the same way as The Goose Girl, Orpen uses a dead bird in his self portrait The Dead Ptarmigan (1909) to balance and enhance the composition as well as to assert a specific role, in this self-portrait, as a member of an upper-middle class shooting party.

In prominently emphasizing a very rural mode of existence, The Goose Girl relates strongly to Keating's passion for the life he experienced in the West of Ireland. He first visited the Aran Islands in 1914 and was immediately captivated by the culture, costumes, characters and language he witnessed there and which he felt were the ultimate manifestation of Irish identity. In the present work, although the girl's costume is not specifically Irish and could indeed belong to any rural community in Western Europe, the focus on her manner of survival, geese farming, espouses Keating's belief that rural traditions were an essential entity of his country's cultural heritage.