The Model Arts and Niland Gallery is delighted to present this retrospective exhibition of one of this country’s best-loved landscape painters Seán McSweeney. This major retrospective, one of the largest exhibitions of Sean’s work to-date, draws together works from every decade of a career that spans over fifty years.  We are particularly pleased to be in a position to include some very early works that have not been seen in public previously. 

Sean is a painter for whom the landscape around him has an almost mystical hold.  In the early part of his career it was the landscape of his native Wicklow that so captivated him, but since the mid 1980s it has been the dramatic scenery of County Sligo that has informed his work.  Indeed he has acknowledged the “inexhaustible fund of inspiration” available to him in the boglands and shorelines of Sligo.  His work reveals a fascination with the changing nature of the light on the mountains, the sea and the boglands, though his tendency is to represent these in a lyrical expressionist style rather than realistically.  In many respects his work is in the Romantic Irish tradition, which goes back to Jack B. Yeats.  However he differs from this tradition in his reluctance to depict the human figure.  His real interest lies in capturing the vitality and diversity of the natural world, and he seems most at home in the miniature world of brackish pools, the shoreline, wild flowers and the reflection of the light upon the sea.

Rather than changing radically, McSweeney’s work has evolved slowly over the years.  His early palette, characterised by its sombre tone, has gradually given way to more colour. Indeed his subtle use of colour, which has become particularly apparent in recent years, has led McSweeney to be hailed as “one of the most original colourists since Yeats”. 

This show brings together, for the first time, early works painted in the mid-1950s before Sean had embarked on a fulltime career in art, along with more recent and better known pieces from his bogland and shoreline series.

McSweeney, who was born in Dublin and is self-taught as a painter, began to exhibit regularly in the 1960s.  He has held many solo exhibitions across Ireland and the UK and has taken part in group-shows in Europe and Australia.  His work can be found in many public collections such as the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Trinity College Dublin and the Ulster Museum.  He was elected to Aosdana 1981

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with texts by Brian Fallon and Declan Long.

This exhibition was sponsored by the Irish Times