Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978) Pont Du Gard Oil on canvas, 53...

Estimate

€25,000 - €35,000

Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978) Pont Du Gard Oil on canvas, 53.3cms x 45.7cms (21 x 18) Signed lower left, and verso Provenance: With Pyms Gallery, London, label verso Mary Swanzy was a keen traveller for much of her life, so perhaps it is not surprising that she found the inspiration for most of her best work during time spent abroad. That includes a visit to Eastern Europe and, most famously, the South Seas, but also Paris and the South of France (the latter, notably, in 1918). A notably strait-laced individual, her temperament seems at odds with the bohemian circles in which she worked in Paris: she seemed to relax considerably in warmer, more laid-back environments. On her way back from her South Sea trip, stopping off with a friend in Santa Barbara in 1924 to paint for a time, she wrote to Sarah Purser, responding to the idea of visiting Spain: “…for painting, I still long for the tropics.” Perhaps, she suggested, Purser could explore Ceylon with her. “However,” she continues “if one could recapture the rapture of those…days in Provence, one would be tempted.” Van Gogh and, perhaps more than any artist, Cezanne, had established Provence as essential painterly terrain, and Swanzy was recurrently drawn to the South of France, spending time in St Tropez, Grasse and Nimes - the location for this fine painting - and more. Highly regarded in France, she exhibited regularly in avant garden circles. Location and style are often the best way to date her work, and the exceptional freedom and direct observation evident in this work with its atmospheric celebration of warmth and light, seeming to evoke the “rapture” she mentions to Purser, place it apart from her sustained exploration of a form of Orphic Cubism, close to the work of Ukrainian-born Sonia Delaney, (nee Stern) and her husband Robert. It’s reasonable to infer the influence of Cezanne in the colour palette, broad brushstrokes and volumetric organisation of the elements of landscape, with the celebrated Roman aqueduct on the Gardon River mentioned in the title (though the actual structure is simplified in the painting). Born in Dublin (her father was instrumental in establishing the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital), she attended Alexandra College with spells in France, Germany and Switzerland, going on to the Metropolitan School of Art and studies in Paris. Her family envisaged her becoming a portrait painter but she was reluctant if more than capable (society would not take a woman seriously as a portrait painter, she felt). She exhibited widely and consistently even as she travelled. From around 1926 she lived in London while continuing to exhibit in Ireland. Her later work took a dark, allegorical turn, with Surrealist elements and a tendency towards obscure, fantastical symbolism. Aidan Dunne, February 2025