Art mystery solved as Keating portrait goes on display at Hugh Lane Gallery

THE LINE-OUT for the Premier County's hurling team to face Kilkenny in next month's all-Ireland final is still a closely guarded secret but art historians have unlocked the mystery identity of The Tipperary Hurler.

The only significant GAA-themed painting in State ownership, which has puzzled the art establishment for decades, has just gone on display at the Hugh Lane Gallery on Dublin’s Parnell Square.

The artist was Seán Keating, a Limerick-born painter and former president of the Royal Hibernian Academy, who died in 1977. His son Justin Keating was a Labour Party minister in the 1970s.

Dr Brendan Rooney of the National Gallery described The Tipperary Hurleras a "terrifically well-painted, heroic and powerful" image.

He pointed out that “the hurler’s jersey bears the initials ‘CHC’ and for a long time it was thought they might refer to a Co Tipperary town such as Cashel, Cahir or Clonmel”. But research has revealed that the letters refer to the Commercials Hurling Club, which was founded in 1886 by “men from the midlands who had moved to work in bars and shops in Dublin” and was based in the Phoenix Park.

However, the identity of the “model” used by the artist was a mystery. The country’s leading expert on Keating’s work, Dr Eimear O’Connor, of Trinity College’s Irish Art Research Centre, has discovered that the portrait is actually a composite image of two men.

She explained that “Keating began the painting in 1925, based on a sketch he made at Croke Park of John-Joe Hayes”, a player on the Tipperary team which won that year’s All-Ireland final. But the artist was distracted by a commission and put the uncompleted canvas aside.

Three years later, “he completed the painting using as his model Ben O’Hickey, a founder member of the IRA from Bansha, Co Tipperary, who was a student at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and who looked extraordinarily like Hayes”.

The painting was first exhibited in Amsterdam during the Olympic Games in 1928 and was eventually donated to the Hugh Lane collection in 1956 by Patric Farrell, an American who ran an art gallery in New York.

Dr O'Connor described The Tipperary Hurleras a "virile, strong, independent sportsman who symbolised the new Irish male in the new Free State".

While she has established contact with the family of John-Joe Hayes, who was from the townland of Ballerk near Thurles, Dr O’Connor has been unable to shed further light on the subsequent life of Ben O’Hickey.

She is anxious to hear from members of the public who may have information about him.

Seán Keating (1889-1977) is renowned for his paintings of the War of Independence and the Civil War, such as Men of the South(1921) which hangs in Cork's Crawford Gallery and depicts a group of IRA men preparing to ambush a military vehicle.

His work is also found in the collection of the National Gallery while his mural on labour (1961) is in the Centre William Rappard in Geneva, the building designed to house the International Labour Organisation.

The Hugh Lane Gallery's head of permanent collections, Jessica O'Donnell, described The Tipperary Hurleras "a fabulous painting" which has been taken out of storage and hung amid anticipated strong public interest ahead of Tipperary's first appearance in an All-Ireland hurling final since 2001.

The Hugh Lane Gallery has other works by Keating, including a rare self-portrait – which will be exhibited next spring as part of the Collection Revealed programme. In the meantime, a major exhibition of other paintings by Keating, curated by Dr O’Connor, is currently on show at the Hunt Museum in Limerick.