Search Results for 'May Walsh'

How many famous people lifted that heavy brass knocker on the door of Lady Augusta Gregory’s home at Coole, Co Galway, and gave it a resounding rat- a -tat -tat? It resounded again last weekend with all the authority of a grumpy judge’s gavel. The writer and broadcaster John Quinn, chairman of the 19th Autumn Gathering, used it to great effect to keep speakers to their time, and to summon people to the next event.

In 1968 Des Kenny, a Galway bookseller, was preparing to open a commercial art gallery in Salthill, the first of its kind outside Dublin. He needed a star artist for its opening night. He made an unusual choice, and invited Seán Keating. Had he invited Keating 30 or 40 years previously he would have invited a giant of his trade. Then Keating was regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest painters who had, in large canvases, mythologised the fighting men of the War of Independence, and the builders and engineers of the great Ardnacrusha project; the harnessing of the Shannon’s energy to power the fledging Irish Free State. In 1968, however, he admitted to Kenny ‘ I am dead as far as the art world is concerned’.