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Patrick Swift (1927-1983)
GIRL IN A GARDEN, c.1953
oil on canvas
signed lower right; with typed label detailing title on reverse
53 x 42in. (134.62 x 106.68cm)
Provenance:
Private Collector Gallery, Inishannon, Co. Cork; Where purchased by the present owner (2004)
Literature:
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) An Irish Painter in Portugal, Gandon Editions, Cork, 2001, catalogue no. 106, p.31 (full page
illustration)
Girl in a Garden dates to the early 1950s and forms part of an interesting body of early work created in his studio on
Hatch Street, Dublin which he shared with poet Anthony Cronin. The painting depicts the artist’s girlfriend American
poet Claire McAllister seated in the garden of the studio. Together they formed part of an influential Dublin cultural set
that included Patrick Kavanagh, Nano Reid and Brendan Behan among others.
In 1949 Swift met Lucian Freud and, as Cronin recalls, by 1950 the acquaintance was well-developed. “Lucian, who was
staying in Ireland, used to come around in the mornings to paint, so that sometimes when I surfaced around ten or
eleven I would find them both at work in the studio next door.”1
Girl in a Garden recalls Girl with Blue Thistles (fig 1.) which sold through Whyte’s on 29 September 2008 as lot 88
(€32,000) also painted during his early life in Dublin.
Freud’s early influence on Swift - his junior by five years - is evident in
both works which are dispassionate, stylised and severe. Swift however
was less preoccupied with texture and more concerned with tone; a
dominant feature in the present example. At first glance the subject
appears somewhat ordinary set against a frugal palette but closer
examination reveals an environment that is more surreal than natural and a subject that is imbued with tension and
ambiguity rather than indifference. Claire sits perched on the edge of the garden steps slightly below the artist’s line of
vision and somewhat dwarfed by an unearthly invasion of vegetation from a neighbouring garden. The rickety patio
door hangs open and there is a sense of detachment in spite of their obvious proximity.
In 1950 Swift showed his first works in public at the IELA; the following year at the same show his paintings were singled
out by Dublin Magazine for their exceptional technical ability and “uncompromising clarity of vision which eschews
the accidental or the obvious or the sentimental”. His first solo exhibition came in 1952 at the Waddington Galleries,
Dublin. Later in the 1950s Swift and Freud met again in London, where he co- edited a literary and arts journal, X, and
mingled with other leading artists of the period including Francis Bacon, John Minton and Leon Kossoff. In 1962 Swift
and his wife visited the Algarve where they eventually settled and established Porches Pottery. He continued to exhibit
on occasion in Dublin; his portrait of Patrick Kavanagh (CIÉ Collection) was shown at the RHA in 1968. A significant solo
show was held in Lisbon in 1974 but it was not until 1993 (the centenary of his death) that Irish audiences could enjoy
his work en masse at a major retrospective in IMMA.
We are grateful to Stephen O’Mara for his assistance in cataloguing this work.
€20,000-€30,000 (£14,390-£21,580 approx.)
Large Image & Place Bid Lot 63IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 25 MAY 2015 AT 6PM