WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART MONDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2024 AT 6PM

78 51 Camille Souter HRHA (1929-2023) WINTER EVENING, CALARY, 1964 oil on paper laid on board signed and dated lower right; inscribed on Dawson Gallery label on reverse 12 by 19in. (30.5 by 48.3cm) Frame Size: 18 by 25in. (45.7 by 63.5cm) Provenance: Mr. Timothy Goulding; with Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Private collection; de Veres, 27 September 2005, lot 76; Private collection Exhibited: Irish Exhibition of Living Art, 1965, catalogue no. 76 A couple of months after the birth of her daughter Emma in 1962, Camille Souter and her family moved out of a Gatelodge in Enniskerry, to settle into a small cottage on nearby Calary Bog, Co. Wicklow. Commentators have generally assumed that with her move to Calary she drifted away from“abstraction” towards a more “realist” style concerned primarily with the landscape. This is, however, something of an over-simplification. So too the notion that her interest in light is comparable to that of other Irish painters of her generation. Certainly, her subject matter became more readily identifiable but this was due to a greater emphasis on drawing. In the late 1950’s, the strong lines of her earliest work gave way to a more fluid, and random application of paint. In Calary they began to reassert themselves, literally drawing one’s attention to particular aspects of the land. Here spatial tension is created between the strong horizontal lines in the distance and the painterly, vertical brushstrokes, suggestive of cultivation, in the immediate foreground. Perspective has not been applied academically, bringing the land closer to the viewer than one might normally expect, or presenting it as though seen from above. This compositional approach became characteristic of many of her landscapes well into the 1970’s. In an interview, Souter suggested that one of the greatest things about the Irish countryside was its “classic lines”. These seem to have struck her more forcibly in Calary than anywhere else. The title of the work “Calary Bog” reminds us that the artist was not interested in painting some generalised, romantic, mythical, archetype of the Irish landscape but specific places as she saw them at different times of the day and year and under varying conditions of light and weather. In this regard, she stands out from the painters with whom she is usually compared. Patrick Collins, for example, would frequently shroud his paintings in semi- mythical or imagined mist. He would often paint late into the night under artificial light, “I don’t think it matters a damn...Plein air, al fresco, it doesn’t matter at all. All art is artificial...do it in the dark, do it in the basement”. Souter for her part only ever painted in daylight (though usually indoors) in a serious attempt to recreate what her eyes perceived. The natural order with its cycles of growth and decay, always counter- acted the pretensions of the Self. Garrett Cormican €10,000-€15,000 (£8,400-£12,610 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot51