WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART Monday 19 October 2020

98 64 Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929) THE KNOCKOUT, 1974 (DIPTYCH) oil on paper one section signed upper right; the other section signed lower left; inscribed to the artist on label on reverse 8.25 by 7.50in. (21 by 19.1cm) Frame size: 28 by 18in. (71 by 46cm.) Provenance: Dawson Galleries, Dublin; Private collection Exhibited: ’Camille Souter Retrospective Exhibition’, Model Arts Centre and Niland Gallery, Sligo, 24 April to 2 June 2001, and Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 12 July to 25 August 2001 Literature: Garrett Cormican, Camille Souter: The Mirror in the Sea, Whyte’s, Dublin 2006, catalogue no. 320, p.296, illustrated p.121 Second section measures 7.5 by 8.25 inches. While some commentators are better acquainted with Camille Souter’s paintings of landscapes and still-lives, she has made numerous paintings of the human form in every decade of her career. They are usually very intimate and rarely populated by more than two figures. In the mid 1950s, when she had barely enough money to survive, drawing conventional portraits of locals in a Melegnano trattoria even provided Souter’s ‘bread and butter’. From 1955 through to the late 1960s she produced numerous paintings of clowns and circus scenes. Under the influence of artists like Klee and Miró, these early depictions of the figure were almost like pared down signs or ‘match stick’men (or women). However, over the course of the 1960s her style gradually became less abstracted. In 1966 she attended a ground-breaking exhibition of Pierre Bonnard’s work at the Royal Academy in London which may also have pushed her further in the direction of a more soft-edged, impressionistic approach to form. The Knockout is one of a series of paintings to do with boxers that the artist produced during the 1970s. It may also be viewed in the broader context of her interest in sport. She also painted sports fields and depictions of footballers during the World Cup during the same decade. There may be another angle to it as well. Sport is intimately connected with violence and has been since people began to wrestle or watch gladiators in the Colosseum for entertainment. Modern sport is not expected to result in death but it continues to involve a physical contest between opposing individuals or nations. The Knockout presents the viewer with intimate close-ups of figures that have been beaten senseless. They lay awkwardly where they fell. The paint is quite thinly applied in places and the slightly blurred treatment of the forms gives each panel a dazed or dream-like quality. The figures could almost be the casualties of a war, a subject the artist would directly address a decade later. In some respects, they are also reminiscent of her fish series (c.1975-76), in which the immobile, sometimes bloody, creatures are laid out against a spare almost monochromatic background. One empathises with the vanquished, as though one were partly responsible for their fate and, as a spectator, perhaps one is. With rare exceptions, Camille Souter’s paintings are inspired by something directly experienced. She would never, for example, work from a photograph as many young painters do today. She has, on occasion, used memories of fleeting images viewed through the medium of television and stories heard over the radio to inform her imagination however. This is the case with The Knockout. In a letter to the author, the artist once wrote ‘Some time I must go to a boxing match – glimpses on TV so rapid – stupid, they would be the same in reality, but more atmosphere, etc. Though I think the most exciting on radio 1930/40s times, my father loved listening to them. As has often been said, the pictures are better on the radio.’ Garrett Cormican €10,000-€15,000 (£8,890-£13,330 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot64