Patrick Swift

The Artist's Estate

Possibly Dublin, Victor Waddington Galleries, 1952, as Interior No.3

Veronica Jane O'Mara (ed.), PS...of course, Patrick Swift 1927-1983, 1993, illus. p. 22.

STRUCTURE Original canvas. There is a small undulation in the upper left corner otherwise the work appears in very good overall condition. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV light reveals an area of retouching between the man's legs which relates to a patch on the reverse. Two further small signs of retouching at top of his right trouser leg and just left of his right leg. A few further small retouchings in the lower right corner and two spots right of the tree trunk through the window near right edge. FRAME Held in a simple wood frame.
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‘The use of muted colours – so quiet at times that the paintings could almost be called monochromes; the elimination of any attempt to reproduce effects of light and shade, beyond the minimum of shading necessary to clarify the shapes; and the smooth, flat paint all contribute towards the atmosphere of heightened realism which, though reminiscent at times of Lucian Freud, is intensely personal and strangely disturbing.’ (Tony Gray, The Irish Times, review of ‘Patrick Swift’ exhibition, Waddington Galleries, 3 October 1952)

Interior with Gary Swift is a seminal early work, most probably shown at Patrick Swift’s first exhibition at Victor Waddington Galleries in 1952, which established him as a mature and individual painter while he was in his mid-twenties. Well-received, the show announced to critics the emergence of a genuine talent, as one commentated: ‘The appearance of Swift on the Irish scene is refreshing and should stimulate his contemporaries and those of us who were beginning to despair of anything new happening in his particular field’ (John Ryan, Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art, July 1951, vol. 5/20).

At this time Swift had a studio in Hatch Street, which he shared with Lucian Freud who was then a frequent visitor to Dublin, coinciding with his courtship of Lady Caroline Blackwood. Their approach to painting was close during this period, perhaps seen strongest in Swift’s Woodcock on a Chair, 1951, and Freud’s Dead Cock’s Head, 1951 (The Arts Council collection, London), which both feature the red velvet chair that belonged to Swift’s mother (which also appears in the present work). John Gray acutely observed the techniques employed by both artists in his review in The Irish Times quoted above. Both artists had the ability to give ordinary objects an aura of tension and strangeness, so prominently felt in Interior with Gary Swift through the arrangement of the rug, chair and flower pots and in the purposeful representation of the figures, which have the tendency to unsettle.  As Swift quoted, ‘I believe when you bring, say, a plant into a room, everything in that room changes in relation to it. This tension – tension is the only word for it – can be painted’ (quoted in Time Magazine, 1952).

Swift moved to London in 1953, where he placed himself in the centre of its art and literary life. He co-edited the short-lived but influential X magazine, a dynamic commentary on art practice and theory, and in which he championed the likes of David Bomberg and Frank Auerbach. While he continued to paint with a commitment to figuration against the growing tide of abstraction, his style changed gradually but thoroughly. With Expressionist notations his brushwork became heavy and thick, worked vigorously across the canvas. He was not to return to the sharp, angular outlines and thin paint surface evident in the present work – a formative example of his early period which exemplifies both his originality and the intensity of his vision.