Eimear O’Connor selects Sean Keating’s Wagon Train at Ardnacrusha from the ESB Collection
Ireland had just emerged from the trauma of the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, and the Civil War when a joint initiative between the German engineering company Siemens Schuckert and the Irish government began at Ardnacrusha in County Clare. It was the largest-scale post-war engineering project in Europe: to build a hydroelectric dam to harness the power of the River Shannon. By the time that Sean Keating arrived on site at Ardnacrusha, in September 1926, the project was already a year in progress. He had not been commissioned; ESB did not exist until late l927. Looming out of the ground, and signalling the dawn of a new age for Ireland, it was the symbolism, and the modernity of the engineering, that attracted Keating to the site.
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