Patrick Swift (1927-1983) THROUGH THE TREES IN LONDON oil on board h:39 w:49 in. Provenance: de Veres, 21 November 2000, lot 386; Private collection; de Veres, 22 November 2016, lot 12; Private collection
Patrick Swift (Irish, 1927 - 1983) Nude, 1977 Ink and wash on paper Signed and dated in pencil lower right Inscribed verso, 'Nude / Patrick Swift / Donated by Princess Elizabeth Galitzine' Dimensions: (Paper) 15.25 in. (H) x 23 in. (W) (Frame) 20.5 in. (H) x 28 in. (W)
Patrick Swift (1927 - 1983) Pegasus (circa 1980) Watercolour and ink on paper, 21 x 29.5cm (8.3 x 11.6) Patrick Kavanagh poem verso Provenance: The artist's family Exhibited: Patrick Swift Retrospective, IMMA, Dec 1993-Feb 1994, catalogue no. 81
Patrick Swift 1927 - 1983 Verdant Ash Trees oil on canvas unframed: 56 by 81cm.; 22 by 32in framed: 66 by 91cm.; 26 by 36in. Executed circa 1958. Bid on Sotheby's
§ PATRICK SWIFT (IRISH 1927-1983) PATRICK SWIFT (IRISH 1927-1983) Untitled, abract composition signed Swift (lower right) watercolour, pen and black ink 53.5 x 36.5 cm
***PLEASE NOTE MEASUREMENT IN PRINTED CATALOGUE SHOULD READ 70 x 110cm*** Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Monte Gordo Oil on canvas, 70 x 110cm. Exhibited: Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1993, cat. no. 52. In 1962, following a visit to Portugal, Swift and his wife Oonagh decided to move to the Algarve, where, with Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas, they set up Porches Pottery, a workshop dedicated to the production of hand-painted clay pottery, and to the revival of a local craft tradition that was, by the 1960s, in decline. Swift rarely exhibited thereafter, but continued to practice as a painter, and Monte Gordo is a good demonstration of the increasing lightness and fluidity of his later work. There is a brightness and warmth to this large-scale Algarve landscape that is unlike anything in his earlier, far more constricted and muted approaches to the natural world. A profuse wooded area, seen from above, occupies the lower half of the canvas; this playful foreground of swirling globe-like forms gives way to a more manicured garden in the upper part of the composition, surrounding a low-lying villa on top of the hill. There is a rhythmic, intuitive, sensuous quality to the brushwork in Swifts later work which might have something to do with his newly-acquired knowledge and skill in relation to hand-painted ceramics. At the same time, there is a simple monumentality to Monte Gordo that perhaps echoes Cézannes treatment of Mont Sainte-Victoire and the landscape of Aix-en-Provence; certainly Swift felt a similarly intense and resonant connection to the landscapes of the Algarve, a connection that invigorated and transformed his late work. Monte Gordo was included in the major retrospective of Swifts work at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1993, ten years after his death, which prompted a revival of interest in Swift and a new assessment of his practice, and legacy, beyond the better-known early work of the 1950s. Nathan ODonnell. February 2022
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Green Wood, c.1958 Oil on canvas, 56 x 70cm (22 x 27½'') Exhibited: IMMA & Ulster Museum No. 31 as 'Trees' Patrick Swift trained as an artist at the National College of Art in the late 1940s, while working for the Dublin Gas Company. His work was included in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) in 1950 and periodically thereafter through the 1950s; he had his first solo exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin, in 1952. In these early years of his career, he was interested in portraiture; the influence of Lucian Freud - who shared Swift's studio when he visited Dublin during these years - was noted by early viewers. Like Freud, Swift was also interested in plant forms and foliage. Increasingly, in fact, as the decade went by, they came to interest him more than the human figure. Yet he continued to observe these natural subjects with the same forensically psychological gaze he had applied to his portraits. At the IELA in 1956 he exhibited two such studies of foliage; the Irish Times reviewer Tony Gray commended them for what he described as 'the intensity of their scrutiny.' Green Wood (c.1958) is an interesting example of Swift's treatment of foliage from this time. The forest scene is dominated by two trees whose angular, clearly-delineated trunks give way to what seems to be an impossible profusion of interlocking branches, creating a delicate canopy of tendrils and leaves, a pattern of bright whimsical elements set against the darker muted green of the surrounding woods in the background. The forest floor is a carpet of carefully detailed wild grasses, illuminated in the centre of the canvas but giving way to a darker green at the extremities of the composition. The effect is of a controlled, stylised, expressionistic, maybe even slightly surreal scene, retaining some of the same muted, tenebrous qualities as Swift's other work of the period. Nathan O'Donnell, February 2022
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) FRENCH LANDSCAPE watercolour with pen and ink signed lower right h:18 w:25.50 in. Provenance: Collection of Lady Crofton; de Veres, 3 October 2006, lot 60; Private collection; Whyte's, 2 March 2009, lot 41; Private collection Exhibited: 'Patrick Swift Retrospective', Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, December 1993 to February 1994, catalogue no. 67
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Portrait of Lucian Freud in Patrick Swift's Hatch Street Studio Oil on canvas, 69 x 94cm (27¼ x 37'') Signed Provenance: The Artist's Family Between 1948 and 1956, when he was a frequent visitor to Ireland, Lucian Freud developed a friendship with Patrick Swift, whose studio on Hatch Street he regularly shared during his visits. During this time, the two artists observed one another’s work closely; both were interested, at this time, in portraiture and, to a lesser extent, still lifes. Swift was still in the early stages of his career at this point, while Freud had been critically lauded and celebrated in London, with a string of acclaimed solo exhibitions and the support of numerous influential patrons; his work was already being added to public collections in England and the US before he was selected to represent Britain (with Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson) in 1954. Swift had trained as an artist at the National College of Art in the late 1940s, while working for the Dublin Gas Company, and his work was included in the Exhibition of Living Art in 1950 and periodically thereafter through the 1950s. Up until 1952, he was both living and working in the house on Hatch Street, where he shared a large flat with American poet and Trinity student Claire McAllister. That year, their relationship came to an end, Swift having met Oonagh Ryan, who he would go on to marry. Also in 1952, he had his first solo exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries in Dublin, which was met with critical acclaim. Swift was, by now, part of a more-or-less bohemian set of artists and writers that included Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh, Nano Reid, and John Ryan; he was also connected to the art dealer Deirdre McDonagh. Freud was introduced to this cultural network through the artist Anne Dunn on his first visit to the city in the late 1940s. On his regular visits to Dublin thereafter, Freud participated in this artistic milieu. Swift’s previously unexhibited portrait of Freud was painted at the Hatch Street studio in the early 1950s, when the two artists were in closest dialogue. It is part of a body of Swift’s work deriving from this period, when he painted a number of significant portraits, including portraits of many of the aforementioned friends and cultural figures (Cronin, Behan, McAllister). The influence of Freud on these early works was noted from the outset. At a technical level, both artists were at this point painting with a precise, severe linearity, working with a restrained, quite cold palette. Swift also approached his work with the same sense of analytical objectivity as Freud, seeking to reveal something of his sitter’s interior life Maybe most notably, both artists’ work from this period sought to capture and convey some of the tensions – psychological and otherwise – that animated their subjects. Tony Gray, reviewing Swift’s 1952 solo exhibition, noted the parallels with Freud’s work, noting how ‘a brooding oppressive atmosphere’ pervaded Swift’s work, with ‘[d]etails … picked out in sharp relief, as they might be under the relentless floodlight of a prison interrogation’; according to Gray, Swift’s ‘merciless scrutiny … unearths from [his subjects] not a story, nor a decorative pattern, nor even a mood, but some sort of tension which is a property of their existence.’ (1) Yet there are also clear differences between the two painters. For instance, Swift was uninterested in the kind of meticulous draughtsmanship that characterised Freud’s work at this time, his obsessive attention to detail, the texture of fabric and hair in particular. On the contrary, Swift’s portraits from this period often include elements and flourishes that suggest more abstract interests. In the portrait of Freud, the background – a grid of windowpanes and hard and soft window blinds – becomes an arrangement of repeated rectilinear forms. This treatment of the background is reminiscent of his portrait of Anthony Cronin, except here the sitter is off-centre, allowing for a more extensive and striking formal arrangement. The right-hand panel of the canvas in particular is clearly demarcated from the representational frame of the portrait, with a number of apparently abstract forms intersecting, at various angles, giving the effect of a contained exercise in Cubism – a mode Swift occasionally employed as a sort of foil within his predominantly realist compositions. That said, great care has been taken to realistically render the filtering of light through the blinds behind the sitter, and the two tumblers on the table before him. The distinctive wrought-iron railings of the Hatch Street studio window also feature, as does a tall house-plant – a botanical motif that recurs across both Freud’s and Swift’s work. Swift’s interest in foliage would eventually lead him away from the dark psychological atmosphere that suffuses his early work (and arguably away from Freud’s strong initial influence) toward a looser, more profuse, even expressionistic style, painting landscapes and outdoor subjects as well as the portraits and still lifes that predominated in the early 1950s. Swift’s portrait of Freud thus represents a singular record of the encounter between these two artists. They did maintain contact beyond their initial Hatch Street exchange, and Swift would include reproductions of some of Freud’s work in the final issue of X, A Quarterly Review, the periodical he founded and ran (with David Wright) from 1959–62. Swift was an artist who also wrote, and he published several important pieces of his own commentary on painting and literature in the magazine, as well as work by a range of Irish, British, and European writers – including Samuel Beckett, John McGahern, and Malcolm Lowry – alongside reproductions of mostly figurative painters, including Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and David Bomberg. In 1962, following a visit, Swift and his wife decided to move to the Algarve, where they set up Porches Pottery. He rarely exhibited his work thereafter. It was not until 1993, ten years after his death, that a major retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art revived critical and popular interest in his work. In his contribution to the catalogue for that exhibition, Anthony Cronin attested that Swift ‘was never in any doubt that painting was a re-creation of what the painter saw … what he was actually looking at during the act of painting. A faithfulness of this sort was part of the bargain, part of his contract with his art. In conversation he – we – associated this faithfulness, this “truth” which might be possible in painting with an equivalent truth or honesty to experience which might be possible in literature.’ This conviction perhaps goes some way to explaining the editorial logic of X, with its curious configuration of artists and writers, practitioners of an art that was, in Cronin’s words, ‘frugal, ascetic, puritanical’. (2) Nathan O’Donnell, October 2021 (1) G.H.G. [Tony Gray], ‘Young Artist of Promise’, Irish Times, 3 October 1952, 5. (2) Anthony Cronin, ‘Patrick Swift in His Time’, Patrick Swift, exh. cat., Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1993.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983)Hatch Street GardenOil on canvas, 63 x 76cm (24.8 x 30)Signed and dated 1951Provenance: The artist's family, by descent.Hatch Street garden dates to 1951 and forms part of an interesting body of early work created in Swift's studio on Hatch Street, Dublin. Swift was part of an influential Dublin cultural set that included Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh, Nano Reid and Brendan Behan among others. About this time Swift met Claire McAllister, a student in trinity College and they moved into a large flat in a Georgian house on Hatch Street with Swift subletting the front half to the painter Patrick Pye as a studio. Their relationship came to an end after swift was introduced to the beautiful Oonagh Ryan in May 1952 and later that year Swift left Claire and followed Oonagh to London.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Dead Plover (c.1950) oil on canvas signed lower right h:20.50 w:41 cm. Provenance: Private Collection Exhibited: Patrick Swift Exhibition: The Victor Waddington Galleries, 1952: Cat. No. 26 This work was included in Patrick Swift's first solo exhibition at The Victor Waddington Galleries in 1952 and shows the influence of the artist Lucian Freud on his work at this time. Swift had met Lucian Freud in 1949 and by 1950 Lucian was coming regularly to Ireland due to his courtship with his future wife Lady Caroline Blackwood of Clandeboye Estate in Northern Ireland. When in Dublin Freud used to come around in the mornings to Swift's Hatch Street Studio to paint. Freud's early influence on Swift - his junior by five years - is very evident in this work which is dispassionate, stylised and severe. Swift however was less preoccupied with texture and more concerned with tone; a dominant feature in the present work. Freud is known to have painted similar works like this alongside Swift such as 'Woodcock on a Chair' which was included in the same 1952 Waddington exhibition. 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'. The reviewer for the 'Dublin Magazine' especially singled out the small still lives for comment while reviewing the 1952 Waddington exhibition and said that they 'show his power to convey the full impact of the object, as though the spectator were experiencing it for the first time. This curious clarity is a function of a restrained, I might even say, puritanical palette and of a cold light, uniformly diffused.' 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 as well as continuing with his painting. He continued to exhibit on occasion in Dublin and in 1993 a major retrospective took place in IMMA.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983)Girl in a Garden (c.1951/2)Oil on canvas, 134.5 x 106.5cm (53 X 42)Signed; title inscribed on label versoExhibited: Patrick Swift: An Irish Painter in Portugal exhibition, Palácio Foz, Lisbon, Oct/Nov 2001; The Crawford Gallery, Cork, Dec 2001/February 2002 .Literature: Patrick Swift (1927-1983) An Irish Painter in Portugal, Crawford Gallery, Cork, 2001, 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 Swift's studio on Hatch Street, Dublin . 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 Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh, Nano Reid and Brendan Behan among others. Claire McAllister was then a student at Trinity College and she lived in the same house as Deirdre McDonagh whose flat with its grand piano became a favourite post-pub haunt. They met and soon moved to a large flat in a Georgian House on Hatch Street with Swift subletting the front half to the painter Patrick Pye as a studio. Their relationship came to an end several years later after Swift was introduced to the beautiful Oonagh Ryan byher brother John Ryan (Envoy Magazine, The Bailey Pub etc) in May 1952 and later that year Swift left Claire and followed Oonagh to London. Swift had met Lucian Freud in 1949 and by 1950 Lucian was coming regularly to Ireland due to his courtship with his future wife Lady Caroline Blackwood of Clandeboye Estate in Northern Ireland and he used to come around in the mornings to the Hatch Street Studio to paint. Freud's early influence on Swift - his junior by five years - is very evident in this work which is 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 elephantine 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. Tony Gray,the Irish Times art critic was quoted in Time Magazine (October 20, 1952) Swift unearths [from his subjects] not a story nor a decorative pattern, nor even a mood, but some sort of tension which is a property of their existence. Later in the 1950s Swift and Freud met again in London, where he coedited a literary and arts journal, X, and mingled with other leading artists of the period including Francis Bacon, John Minton, Frank Auerbach, David Andrews, 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. Further exhibitions have since taken place including a show in Lisbon and Cork in 2001 which included this work. We are grateful to Stephen and Veronica Jane O'Mara whose writings on the artist formed the basis of this catalogue note.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983)View of a Girl Through a CurtainPottery charger, 40cm (15¾)Signed and dated (19)'80 versoPatrick Swift had been living with his wife Oonagh and three daughters, Katherine, Estella and Juliette in London for a number of years before emigrating to Portugal in 1962. Originally intended as an extended visit, they remained living in the Algarve and in 1968, with the help of Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas, established Porches Pottery in the town of Porches near Lagoa. From the beginning, the emphasis in their designs was to be on free painting within the established style, merging an original unaffected form of design with traditional patterns and techniques. Portuguese azulejos (typical local tin-glazed ceramic tile-work crafted in the traditional manner known as majolica) were revived. Using this method, Swift created exquisite tile murals, notably that in the Café Bar Bacchus adjoining the pottery. He also fashioned earthenware chargers, such as those included in this sale, which he then hand-painted and glazed, again in the majolica style. The girl depicted is thought to be his daughter Juliette, who, like her sisters, worked in the pottery as a teenager and studied under her fathers guidance. Today the pottery is run by the two surviving members of the Swift family, Estella and Juliette, who continue to manage the pottery and design new patterns for both the shop and commissioned works.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983)Olive PickersPen, Ink and watercolourm 42 x 59.5 cm (16½ x 23½)SignedExhibited: 'Patrick Swift Retrospective', Irish Museum of Modern Art,1993 Cat. no. 74
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) GIRL IN A GARDEN, c.1953 oil on canvas signed lower right; with typed label detailing title on reverse h:53 w:42 in. 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 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 coedited 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.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) The Olive Pickers oil on canvas h:200 w:150 cm. Provenance: Purchased from The Private Collector Gallery, Frederick Street, Dublin in 2003 which was offering for sale a small number of works directly from Patrick Swifts family. Private Collection, Cork Literature: illustrated on P.204 of PS of course, Edited by Veronica Jane O'Mara and Published by Gandon Books
PATRICK SWIFT 1927 - 1983 APPLE TREE signed l.r: SWIFT ; also signed PATRICK SWIFT and indistinctly inscribed on the stretcher bar oil on canvas 50.5 by 61cm.; 20 by 24in. Executed in the late 1950s.
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) Emerging Figure Oil on canvas, 198 x 150cm (78 x 59) signed and dated 1973 Provenance: Private Collection, Portugal Literature: Veronica Jane O'Mara (Ed.), P.S. of course: Patrick Swift, 1927-1983, Gandon Books, Co. Cork, 1993, p.197 (illustrated)
Patrick Swift (1927-1983) "Yucca" (c.1975)" details "Watercolour & ink on paper, 26" x 17" (66 x 43cm)." "Provenance: Gift from the artist, by descent; Private collection, Dublin." "Exhibited: 'Patrick Swift 1927-1983', IMMA, Dublin, 2nd December 1993 -13th February 1994, No.69."
Patrick Swift 1927-1983) Algarve Harvester - Luis Cego in Undergrowth Oil on canvas, 100 x 75cm (39.5 x 29.5") Provenance: The artist's studio Literature: "P.S.....of Course" (1993) edited by Veronica Jane O'Mara - illustrated p.241
