Art has a significant role to play in pricking the conscience of society. In a recent visit to The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin we saw this provocative painting by Sean Keating. It is my painting of the month for July. An Allegory was painted in 1924 when Keating was at the height of his career painting themes on the Irish War of Independence and the civil war that followed. Many were patriotic but in The Allegory he replaces the idealism of nationalism with the indifference of personal interest.

The central group believed to be Keating and his family show the man asleep and beaten, slumped under the ancient oak. His wife is sitting up gazing mournfully at the child she hold to her breast. To their left in the shadow of the tree stand two gentlemen, maybe a cleric and a businessman. It is assumed they are discussing the future arrangements after the war. It seems not to matter that the rich and powerful will still rule after the war and are planning for it. On the right is the ironical scene of two opponents burying a dead comrade wrapped in the Irish tricolour. In the background is the war battered ruins of a stately home symbolising the destruction of the country’s heritage.

At a time when our world is strewn with the destructiveness of war I found this painting quite moving. The motifs show the symbolism of the personal pain and global waste that war is but Keating also suspects that behind the conflict lie those with interests of their own beyond the cause; the clerical, business and political elite. Paintings like these are important and while not of the same scale it reminded me of Guernica by Picasso, in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.