Patrick Swift (1927–1983) was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland.

Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure^[1] in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches. He used the pseudonym James Mahon for some of his writing.

Overview

In Dublin he was part of the Envoy arts review / McDaid's pub circle of artistic and literary figures that included Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin and Brendan Behan. In London he was an integral member of the Soho set that included George Barker, Elizabeth Smart, et al., and founded and co-edited, with the poet David Wright, the legendary^[2] ‘X’ magazine which Swift used to champion figurative painters such as Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and David Bomberg (whose posthumous papers he unearthed & edited). In Portugal he continued painting while also writing and illustrating books on Portugal and founding Porches Pottery, which revived a dying industry.

During his lifetime Swift only held two solo exhibitions: Dublin in 1952 and Lisbon in 1974. His first exhibition at the Waddington Gallery in 1952 was highly acclaimed. For Swift, however, his art seems to have been a very personal and private matter. For most of his career he showed little interest in exhibiting^[3] and his work was rarely seen.^[4] By the time of his death in 1983 many assumed that he had long since stopped painting.^[5] In 1993 the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) held a retrospective of Swift's work. The exhibition received critical acclaim, with fellow artists such as Derek Hill declaring him to be “probably the most formidable Irish artist of this century.”^[6]

Work

He was a figurative painter. Though his style changed considerably over the years, his essential personality as an artist never did. He was plainly not interested in the formalist aspects of Modernism. He wanted art to have an expressive, emotive, even psychological content, though not in any literary sense. Anthony Cronin, who was close to Swift for many years, says that for Swift, “painting was a re-creation of what the painter saw: in his own case at least not what the painter had seen or could imagine, but what he was actually looking at during the act of painting. A faithfulness of the sort was part of the bargain, part of his contract with his art… [which] had nothing to do with description…What was at stake was a faithful recreation of the truth to the artist of the experience, in the painter’s case the visual experience, the artist being admittedly only one witness, one accomplice during and after the fact. Of course this faithfulness did not rule out expressionist overtones. The truth was doubtless subjective as well as objective. Swift's blues and greys were usually properties of what he was painting. They were also part of his vision of things, properties of his mind. We felt then that time could only find its full expression through an art that was frugal, ascetic, puritanical even...In faraway Paris, Samuel Beckett felt the same thing, writing the trilogy that was to give asceticism, frugality, puritanisim and the bitter humour that lies at the heart of the joke that is life, their full expression. Swift's avoidance of warm colours... was born in that time and afterwards harked back to it.“^[7]

Although he commented on art and was intimate with many leading artists of his day, Swift never affiliated with any official or quasi-official art group or "style". John Ryan (founder of the arts magazine Envoy) in his introduction to Swift for the Rosc catalogue, 1971, which included Swift's portrait of Kavanagh: "'He painted the trees and gardens he cherished and the people he loved; because he was, happily, not unduly concerned, a style that came naturally to him shortly became his own distinctive 'style' - his signature - as uniquely his own as the subject content. Swift's peculiar style reminds us of nobody but the artist - a telling point with a painter who has set no store on this aspect of the job. In Swift we have, then, a man with an observation that is both curious and affectionate - for his attention to details in his subject is paternal and not academic"^[8]; and in Envoy: "He paints what he sees."^[9]

He had three distinct "periods": Dublin, London, and Algarve. His early work in Dublin, where he used a thin paint surface, has a tense, spare, more-real-than-real quality. In London he became more expressive in his use of paint, applying thick layers of paint, using the brush more and "modelling" the paint surface. In the Algarve he continues this trend into a heavy, broken impasto and some of his later work verges on becoming abstract.

His work comprises portraits, "tree portraits", rural landscapes and urban landscapes. He worked in a variety of media including oils, watercolour, ink, charcoal, lithography and ceramics. It is one of the peculiarities of his methods of working that he seems to have done few, if any, preliminary drawings or studies - works that could be classified as "studies" are generally complete in themselves and need no reworking into another medium.^[10] John Ryan: "I remember him setting up an enormous canvas in the garden of Hatch Street...and, without any further ado, painting a portrait of a girl without any preliminary sketches or without squaring off the canvas, without any preliminary work whatever. Yet the finished product looked well thought out, as if it were the result of mature judgement."^[11] Cronin noted, with regard to Swift painting a tree in Camden: “It takes him, as everything did, a long time to paint”^[12]; and Swift’s daughter: “He liked to block in a painting quickly - often in a morning - and then proceed at his leisure… It was years before some of his paintings were finished, although he painted others in a matter of weeks.” ^[13]

Trees held a special fascination for Swift, particularly the patterns created by their branches, with Swift treating these shapes and patterns in an almost abstract manner. John McGahern (Swift drew his portrait in London, 1960) noted that he was fond of the line "those particular trees/ that caught you in their mysteries".^[14] His later work is almost entirely composed of "tree portraits" and rural landscapes. It is for his "intensity of observation" (Theo Snoddy, Dictionary of Irish Artists^[15]) that Patrick Swift is perhaps best known. He created compositions of incredible intricacy. Like the neo-romantics before him, nature itself inspired Swift, who effortlessly, it seems, translates into paint the organic and seemingly random twisting vegetative forms.

Swift regarded painting as “a deeply personal and private activity".^[16] As The Irish Times noted in 1952, his work is “intensely personal and strangely disturbing.” ^[17] When writing about art or painting he would frequently refer to what he termed "its mysteries": "...the most important factor, the element of mystery..."^[18]. This element of "mystery" is evident in his own work; "Its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown".^[19] Swift called his painting "making marks", "a way of passing the time",^[20] and, with regard to the nature of his work, wrote: "My paintings are merely signs that the activity was engaged in."^[21]

Dublin

He was educated at Synge Street CBS, a Christian Brothers School in Dublin. Although a self-taught artist he did attend night classes at the National College of Art in 1946 & 48(under Sean Keating), freelanced in London in the late 1940s and attended the Grande Chaumière in Paris (where he met Giacometti) in the summer of 1950. In the late 1940s he had a studio on Baggot Street and from 1950-52 Swift set up his studio on Hatch Street. During this period he shared his board with his then girlfiend, the American poet Claire McAllister, Anthony Cronin, John S. Beckett(cousin to Samuel), and briefly with Patrick Pye(Swift painted his portrait in 1952). Lucian Freud (possibly one portrait^[22]) was a frequent visitor to Dublin^[23] -his visits coinciding with the courtship of Lady Caroline Blackwood- and would share Swift’s studio. He first exhibited in group shows at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1950 & 51 where his work was singled out by critics.^[24] The Dublin Magazine commented on Swift’s "uncompromising clarity of vision which eschews the accidental or the obvious or the sentimental...[and] shows his power to convey the full impact of the object, as though the spectator were experiencing it for the first time." In 1952 he held his first solo exhibition at the Waddington Galleries. Time magazine in an article on the exhibition:^[25]

"Irish critics got a look at the work of a touseled young (25) man named Paddy Swift and tossed their caps in the air. Paddy's 30 canvases are as grey and gloomy as Dublin itself—harshly realistic paintings of dead birds and rabbits, frightened-looking girls and twisted potted plants. Their fascination is in the merciless, sharply etched details, as oppressive and inquiring as a back-room third degree. Dublin Understands. Wrote Critic Tony Gray in the Irish Times: 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.' Said the Irish Press: 'An almost embarrassing candor... Here is a painter who seems to have gone back to the older tradition and to have given the most searching consideration to the composition of his painting.' Dublin, which likes authors who write with a shillelagh, understood an artist who painted with one. The Word Is Tension. By 1950, Paddy was in Paris... Nights, he went to the galleries, and there he found what he wanted to do. He liked such old French masters as the 17th century's Nicolas Poussin, the 19th century's Eugène Delacroix, such moderns as Switzerland's Alberto Giacometti and Britain's Francis Bacon. The much-admired decorative style of the Matisses is not for Paddy Swift. 'Art,' he thinks, 'is obviously capable of expressing something more closely related to life than these elegant designs.' His main idea is to suggest the tensions he finds in life. '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.'" This may have been Swift's only ever interview. A motif of his work at this time was his bird imagery, which appear to have symbolic overtones, and may have even been a subtle form of self-portraiture.^[27] From early on he was involved with literary magazines,^[28] such as The Bell and Envoy, and contributed the occasional critical piece on art and artists he admired (e.g.Nano Reid,^[29] who painted Swift's portrait in 1950). He formed part of the group of artists and writers who were involved with Envoy(the Envoy offices were located at 39 Grafton Street and most of the journal’s business was conducted in the nearby pub, McDaid’s) that included Kavanagh (at least three portraits), Cronin (at least two portraits), Behan (Swift & Cronin later stopped speaking to Behan due, in their view, to Behan’s ill treatment of Kavanagh^[30]), Brian O'Nolan(Swift illustrated Heinrich Böll's German translation of The Hard Life), Pearse Hutchinson(Synge Street CBS) and John Jordan (Synge Street CBS; two portraits). During these years he also got to know Samuel Beckett (Beckett had an extract from Watt appear in Envoy; following his mother's funeral Beckett spent the afternoon with Swift in McDaid's, later to be joined by the rowdy Kavanagh & O'Nolan^[31]; possibly one portrait^[32]; Beckett was later to contribute to Swift's X Magazine with the first appearance of his "L'Image"), Edward McGuire (Swift encouraged McGuire to paint^[33]), and Daniel Farson (photos by Farson from this period include Freud, Swift and Behan on Leeson St.^[34]). Following the Waddington exhibition Swift moved to London in November 1952, using it as his base, with occasional trips to Dublin and stays in France, Italy, Oakridge and the Digswell Arts Trust.

Italy, Oakridge & Digswell Arts Trust

In 1954 he was awarded a grant by the Irish Cultural Relations Committee to study in Italy. He was accompanied by his future wife, Oonagh Ryan (Image sister of the artist John Ryan and the Irish actress Kathleen Ryan; formerly married to Alexis Guedroitz with whom she had a daughter, Ania Guédroïtz). Here he painted and wrote essays on art. Following his year in Italy Swift returned to Dublin (via Paris and London), for Christmas 1955, where Oonagh wanted to be for the birth of their fist child, Katherine Swift. He then returned to London in 1956 and accepted Elizabeth Smart's offer to share Winstone Cottage (then owned by John Rothenstein), which contained a studio, in Oakridge, Gloucestershire. Peggy Guggenheim, whom he had befriended in Venice, visited the Swifts in Oakridge. From October 1958 to 1959 he spent time at Digswell Arts Trust, then located at Digswell House, a decayed Regency mansion with cottages and outbuildings on the edge of Welwyn Garden City. Swift came to Digswell through the visionary educator Henry Morris. The first artists arrived in 1957, and Swift took up residency a year later, sharing a studio with Michael Andrews. During his residency at Digswell he painted many views of Ashwell and its Springs, one of which was presented by Henry Morris to Melbourn Village College at its opening in 1959, but Swift had already left, leaving Lady Moutbatten, who was the chief guest at the opening, to remarked as she received the painting that its creator was at that moment in a taxi heading for London.

London

Swift was familiar with London and its literary and artistic circles by the early 1950s: he had freelanced in London in the late 1940s^[35]; in the early fifties he would occasionally stay with Freud in London; in 1953 he shared a flat with Anthony Cronin in Camden but actually used it as his studio, staying instead with Oonagh Ryan in Hampstead - it was at this point that Swift and Wright first discussed the idea of creating a new literary magazine, a quarterly which would publish writing on artistic issues they felt to be of importance; 1957-58 he had a flat and studio at 39 Eccleston Square; From 1959-62 he lived at 9 Westbourne Terrace where he stayed with his young family, and it was during this period that he founded X magazine.

In London his work grew more expressive. Brian Fallon (chief arts critic to The Irish Times for 35 years) in his essay "Patrick Swift And Irish Art": "In London his style changed, not immediately, but gradually and very thoroughly. In fact, it was less a stylistic change than a transformation. From being a painter with sharp, angular lines and a thin paint surface, he became one who ‘drew with the brush’. Modelled in heavy, laden strokes, and in general, daubed and dragged the paint around until it did his bidding. Stylistically, his ‘first period’ and ‘second period’ could hardly be more different from one another, though the underlying sensibility somehow remains.":^[36]

During this period Swift painted portraits of the poets George Barker, Patrick Kavanagh, David Wright (two portraits), Brian Higgins, John Heath-Stubbs, Paul Potts, C. H. Sisson and David Gascoyne (there may be others, e.g. Dom Moraes). At the time Swift was sometimes referred to as the "poets' painter" - many of his close friends were poets and they seem to have regarded him as "their" painter. Wanda Ryan Smolin (art historian and writer) writing in the Irish Arts Review, 1994, says one thing that distinguishes Swift is, "his ability to communicate certain truths on what one senses to be a deeply spiritual level. It is perhaps this quality in his work which links Swift with the world of poetry and poets. Apart from close family members, poets were almost exclusively subjects of his portraits; the series of poet portraits shown at IMMA [1993 Retrospective] are quite exceptional by any standards and must place him among the very best Irish painters of the twentieth century."^[37] Fallon says, "once again, his approach was basically humanist, not formalist", and that these London portraits, "are among the finest portraits painted in Britain at this period...Yet they were seen by only a handful of people, and in some cases were even lucky to have survived." ^[38] Fallon also notes that the Kavanagh and Wright portraits are close to Expressionism. On Swift's London tree paintings, Aidan Dunne says, "many paintings zoom in on their motif itself delighting in the hectic rhythms established by the orderly but profuse curvilinear sweep of the branches. Even earlier studies of back gardens reveal him to be drawn to the abstract qualities of the tangled stems and foliage."^[7] While in London he associated with many leading artists, writers and poets of the day with the flat at 9 Westbourne Terrace becoming a "mini-soho".^[39] Christopher Barker (son of George Barker and Elizabeth Smart, who lived upstairs from the Swifts and wrote French cookbooks with Swifts' wife) writing about this period (The Observer, 2006): "On many occasions through the early Sixties, writers and painters such as David Gascoyne, Paddy Kavanagh, Roberts MacBryde and Colquhoun and Paddy Swift would gather at Westbourne Terrace in Paddington, our family home at that time. They came for editorial discussions about their poetry magazine, X."^[40] In 1962, before the final number of X was published, Swift left London for an extended trip to southern Europe.

Algarve

Swift’s travels led him to the small fishing village, as it was then, of Carvoeiro in the Algarve. He was so enchanted with the place that he remained. Here he painted, wrote and illustrated books (A Portrait And A Guide to: Algarve; Minho; Lisbon; Birds of Southern Portugal) and founded Porches Pottery (Olaria Algarve). He designed the building that houses Porches Pottey (which the Portuguese government once listed) to resemble a 17C farmhouse, and several other buildings: he restored and designed a 17C building that today is the O Leao de Porches restaurant, building the famous chimney himself; the Rouxinol restaurant in Monchique; the original building and entrance to the International School of the Algarve, which Swift was instrumental in founding; his house on the cliffs outside Carvoeiro; numerous buildings in Algarve display hand-crafted ornamental plasterwork by Swift, akin to pargeting or relief in cement, generally depicting birds, animals and foliage. Though Swift had voluntarily removed himself from the art world (he had effectively done so, at least as an exhibiting painter involved with the art establishment, following his 1952 solo exhibition) he did make new artistic friendships in the Algarve, such as Norah McGuinness, Jacques d'Arribehaude and Lima de Freitas; and he exhibited: drawings for Algarve: a portrait and a guide at the Diário de Notícias Gallery (Portuguese national newspaper), Lisbon, 1965; an exhibition of his pottery at the Galeria Diário de Notícias Gallery, Lisbon, 1970; an exhibition of his paintings at Galeria S Mamede, Lisbon, 1974. He designed the sets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Portuguese National Theatre Company, Lisbon, 1977. Swift lived and worked in the Algarve from 1962 until his premature death, from an inoperable brain tumour, in 1983. His work from this period includes portraits of his friend, the Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro, who commissioned Swift to paint his portrait when he was elected in 1980, and his partner, Snu Abecassis (Danish-born journalist and editor who founded the Portuguese publishing house, Publicações Dom Quixote), both of whom died in a plane crash in 1980. Swift is buried in the Igreja Matriz church in Porches, for which he designed the stations of the cross.

On Swift’s later work

Richard Morphet, Keeper, Tate Britain from 1986 until 1998 (in his introduction to the Swift exhibition at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork): "Although highly acclaimed in critical and artistic circles, the work of the Irish painter Patrick Swift has rarely been publicly exhibited...The vogue at the end of the 50s for abstract painting was not to his taste, nor could he work with academic realism. He sought an expression of life and human creativity which was meaningful and accessible, yet intensely personal, and inspired by emotion, by landscape. It seemed Ireland and England restricted him. Swift emigrated to Portugal in 1962...These are some of his most resonant works, where he has found his voice, and in the invigorating new climate the change in his painting was towards an enhanced sensuous warmth, a sense of the integrity of light and a feeling of the integration with nature, of painter and viewer."^[41] Brian Fallon: “In a way he almost anticipated the rawness of 1980s New Expressionism."^[42] There is a remarkable series of late watercolours (until very recently, unknown to all except a few people) which Brian Fallon says are a high point in watercolour painting: "Almost all are of landscape subjects, or at least outdoor ones. Trees shimmer in the fierce white light, houses or cottages huddle into their fields or gardens, there is an abundant feeling of fertility and also of serenity. Figures are rare, though the human presence is implicit throughout. They have a faint flavour of Cézanne’s late watercolours, but they are bigger and also less formalised, looser and more lyrical. Taken as a sequence they represent one of the peaks of watercolour painting over the last forty years; certainly no Irish painter has done better."^[43] Fernando De Azvedo (painter and President of Sociedade Nacional de Belas Artes, Lisbon): "From his early days in Dublin to the end of his life in the Algarve, we can see the very particular and unrivalled persistence of the authentic and inimitable painter in his vision and creative decisions, one which must be seen in its true dimensions - in the unusual path that swift trod - and be clarified by history."^[44]

Swift the Critic and ‘X’ Magazine

In Dublin and London he partook of artistic and, always, literary life^[45], and from early on was involved with literary magazines, contributing the occasional critical piece. In London he founded and edited, with the poet David Wright, X magazine for which he contributed articles under the pseudonym "James Mahon" (Swift's mother was a Mahon from Co. Wicklow). David Wright (in his introduction to An Anthology from X): "The true begetter and leading light of X was Patrick Swift... Swift was, of course, responsible for the art side of the magazine. These were the boom years of abstract art. Swift, twenty years ahead of his time... promoting the work of then unknown or unfashionable figurative painters, among them the young Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, and Craigie Aitchison, and such as-yet uncannonized painters as Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, and the forgotten David Bomberg. Examples of their work were reproduced; more importantly, it was Swift's idea that the artist should speak for themselves, which was achieved either by transcribing their tape-recorded conversation... or by publishing their notes. Swifts’s unearthing and editing of David Bomberg’s outspoken and apocalyptic pensées, scattered about his miscellaneous papers, was an outstanding contribution."^[46] "To say nothing of the continentals like Kokoschka, Giacometti, André Masson... Nor was he any less active on the literary side of the magazine. Here Swift and I worked in perfect harmony".^[47] Wright regarding Swift promoting his own work: "Swift and Cronin... brought me to the attention of the publisher Derek Verschoyle - and this was typical of Swift, who would take immense pains to push the product of anybody whose work he believed in, yet never bothered to promote his own."^[47]

Martin Green: "It was he, together with Tony Cronin, who initially put up the idea of bringing together Kavanagh's poems for the Collected Poems… Paddy Swift had a catalytic enthusiasm that ignited a response elsewhere. I remember being introduced by him to John McGahern… which I recommended for publication but was overruled... It was he who brought to my attention the Charles Sisson version of Catullus, which I subsequently published… It was he who helped to find a publisher for Brian Higgins..."^[47] John McGahern (who was first published in X magazine) noted that Swift admired LS Lowry: "Sometimes we would wander through the commercial galleries around Bond Street. He was particularly excited by a small show of Giacometti's sculptures, and he admired LS Lowry. He said then that anybody with enough money to buy a Lowry would make a fortune."^[48]

Patrick Kavanagh: Swift believed in Kavanagh's genius and promoted him. John Ryan: "Swift, in fact, made a decided impact on Kavanagh. It is hard to believe now that it was mainly a cultural impact and that he actually changed the older man`s entire approach to poetry."^[49] Swift was responsible for Kavanagh appearing in Nimbus in 1956, as David Wright who was then editor says: "These poems [19 of Kavanagh's poems were published] had been posted to me by Swift, whose brother James had invaded the poet's flat in Dublin, gathered up the trampled manuscripts scattered about the floor, and had them sorted, typed, and bound. One of the carbon copies was sent to me."^[46] Antoinette Quinn, however, in her biography of Patrick Kavanagh, says that the idea of Jimmy Swift invading the poet's flat is a myth. Quinn states that Kavanagh had a typescript rejected by Macmillan's and that subsequently Swift, on one of his trips to Dublin, "was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published. He had to returned to London… but persuaded Kavanagh to entrust the precious typescript to his brother, Jimmy, to have three copies professionally typed up...[Jimmy,] acting under his brothers instructions... sent one copy each to David Wright and Martin Green in London."^[50] Wright's version of events is, no doubt, the story put out by Swift himself, and one which would not have displeased Kavanagh. Antoinette Quinn goes on to say that, "publication there [In Nimbus] was to prove a turning point… The publication of his next volume of verse, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, was to be directly linked to the mini-collection in Nimbus, and his Collected Poems (1964)..."^[51] And Martin Green, who put together the first collection of Kavanagh's poems for MacGibbon and Kee, acknowledges: "it was following the suggestion of the painter Patrick Swift and the poet Anthony Cronin that the publication came about."^[52] Regarding their friendship, Antoinette Quinn says, "Swift believed in his genius and indulged him and... the older man... came to lean on Swift as a beloved nephew."^[53] Kavanagh would often stay with Swift and his family at 9 Westbourne Terrace.^[54]

Brian Fallon: "X, a remarkable publication which, in some respects, was light years ahead of its time... Swift's criticism is that of the practicing artist not that of a practicing critic, and when speaking of his criticism I do not merely mean only his occasional critical essays, but his activity as co-editor of a magazine and as champion of Bacon, Freud, Auerbach, Craigie Aitchison, Nano Reid, Giacometti and David Bomberg (whose posthumous papers he edited). This is criticism in the valid, active , propagandistic sense, not merely the daily or weekly grind of reviewing all sorts and conditions of artists, good and bad, but mostly mediocre. Once again much of Swift's activity in this field was semi-underground, almost subversive, often done in the teeth of the modernist establishment of his day. His record in this field speaks for itself... I cannot think of any other Irish painter who achieved anything like what he did as a critic and editor and discoverer of talent, and very few painters in any other country either. Wyndham Lewis, it is true, was a verbose propagandist, but on the whole he was a bad critic, and somehow his propaganda almost always turns out to be some form of self-aggrandisement, whereas Swift almost always pushed the fortunes and reputations of his friends and almost never his own. Yet, you do not get, from his general stance, that his motives were simply friendship and good intentions. There is a tone of dedication throughout, as though he was serving art, and not merely artists... It is a peculiarity of his very individual psyche and personality that Swift cannot be ‘placed’ purely as a painter. He was an artist in the broad sense before he was specifically a painter, and his context embraces literature and other disciplines besides painting or drawing (It is noticeable that he had more friends who were literary men than friends who were painters). Swift is not a painter’s painter, he is an artist’s artist, a man whose mentality overlapped into other fields besides his own chosen one."^[55]

A reluctance to exhibit

"The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity… a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting... is something which happens in life not in art." — Swift^[56]

David Wright has suggested that perhaps some trauma was suffered at his first solo exhibition,^[47] and it has been noted that much of his early work has an underlying tone of "disquiet".^[57] We know he distrusted publicity, regarding painting as "a deeply personal and private activity", and the success of his first exhibition would probably have attracted unwanted attention. These were common enough characteristics among his Dublin coterie.^[58] The Canadian critic CJ Fox called Swift a "rebel all-rounder",^[47] and he seems to have been naturally anti-establishment, a high-minded idealist, and something of a romantic at heart.^[59] Whatever the reasons, Swift’s art seems to have been a very personal and private matter carried out behind closed doors- very few were allowed into his studio in the Algarve. Most of Swift’s output during his life was seen by a small number of people that he was intimate with. Brian Fallon says, "this is the typical Irish artist-intellectual of the post-war years, reared on Joyce and Baudelaire, introspective, cerebral, at once cynical and idealistic, at odds with much or most of what the society around him believed in or affected to believe in. It was a type common enough in the Dublin bohemia of which Swift, for some years, was an essential figure."^[60]; while Aidan Dunne describes him as an "outsider" "who seems always to have wanted nothing more than to be allowed to be himself."^[7]

If Swift was a private man he was certainly not a reclusive type. His hospitality and generosity were legendary. The house he built in the Algarve, where he would entertain most nights, was covered in his paintings. It is tempting to say Swift had some sort of an attachment to his work, yet he did, on occasion, sell, and give his work away, to people he knew; and he often simply left work behind: Hardy Bronstein, a friend, for years faithfully minded much of his London work; following his break-up with Claire McAllister, he offered her a choice of the remaining pictures; he left work with a friend and with his mother in Dublin. As his temperamental tendency was also only to paint those whom he knew well,^[61] perhaps it is simply as John Ryan says, "he painted the trees and gardens he cherished and the people he loved". Swift took his responsibility to his family seriously^[62] and was not totally averse to engaging in other activities if necessary. As Cronin notes, "he was a painter... Anything else was a temporary necessity or inconvenience, boring perhaps, or, in some lights, amusing"^[63]; and as Swift wrote in his notebook: "(I) do not accept that the artist should not engage in other activities though when he does he must accept a different responsibility." Apart from his Pottery, X magazine, books and building design in the Algarve, he taught ceramics in London and briefly worked as a lettings agent in the Algarve. Anthony Cronin believes that in painting the Algarve trees, “in the contemplation and re-creation of these woody, self-supporting stems and trunks with their abundant leafage he found a happiness which was not dependent on human response or the satisfactions of ambition.”^[47] Swift, according to those closest to him, was happy just to be painting. Cronin has also noted that he was enamoured with a certain idea of success: "Paddy‘s attitude to success, so pure and ascetic from one aspect, but also so in love with a certain idea of it. In a way he does not need to be a success, he has always been one."^[64]And it must be remembered that Swift's life was unexpectedly cut short, when he was at the peak of his powers. It may be that he had internally decided on a return to the marketplace^[65] and to exhibiting- it has been said that he had expressed a desire for setting up a studio in Wicklow, Ireland, and showing his work there. His last -unfinished- painting is a portrait set in the Wicklow mountains of his maternal grandparents holding a baby.

Posthumous

In 1984 his widow, Oonagh, organized a gathering of his friends in the Algarve where it was decided that John Ryan would put together a book to commemorate Swift's life. Ryan started gathering information and contributions for the book, but, suffering from ill health for many years, passed away in 1992 before completing his commemorative book. Veronica Jane O’Mara completed the book and the Gandon Editions biography of Swift, with contributions by his friends, was published in 1993 to coincide with the IMMA Retrospective, when his work was brought back to Dublin. The 1993 IMMA Retrospective was acclaimed by critics and artists alike.

No painter here since the Literary Revival has had a more central role in cultural life in the broader sense. And not only in Ireland either; Swift was a seminal figure in London too, even if the general public knew very little of him... There can be few Irishmen of his epoch, whether poets or painters or novelists, who are of such biographical interest and who touched their age at so many key points. - Brian Fallon, The Irish Times, Dec 2, 1993.

A man who made his paintings talk...He may well be one of the greatest of Irish painters. When the dust has settled and the critics have had their say, the paintings will speak for themselves ... His paintings hold you and address you in a language so intimate and disturbingly personal that even if you don't know much about art you are aware you have been moved at a visceral level. - The Sunday Business Post, Feb 20, 1994.

His exhibition at the Royal Hospital quite simply bowled me over, and I realised at once that I was looking at pictures by probably the most formidable Irish artist of this century - perhaps including Jack Yeats...Some of the strongest contemporary portraits I have ever seen. - Derek Hill in a letter to The Irish Times, Jan 24, 1994.

The lost hope of Irish art ... belated recognition for Patrick Swift, a painter born out of his time. - Aidan Dunne, Sunday Tribune, Nov 28, 1993.

Brian Fallon in The Irish Times: "Certainly, from now onwards, no one can write Patrick Swift out of Irish art history."^[66] In 2002 the Department of Foreign Affairs (who also awarded Swift the grant to study in Italy) sponsored the "Patrick Swift: An Irish Artist In Portugal" exhibitions that were held at the Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, and Palacio Foz in Lisbon. In 2004 Swift's work appeared on the BBC Antiques Roadshow^[67] where the BBC art critic, Stephen Somerville, was highly praising of his work, saying simply of a London tree painting, "I love it". The work shown on the ARS (a painting of Eccleston Square as seen from his studio and botanical studies of fungi painted in Ashwell) was unknown and illustrates how uncharted much of Swift’s career still is. The father of the lady who brought Swift's work to the ARS seems to have been a sort of patron of Swift’s. In 2005 the Office of Public Works, Dublin, held an exhibition of paintings, drawings and watercolours by Swift. His portrait of Patrick Kavanagh (a portrait that should be on public display) forms part of the CIÉ (Irish state transport authority) collection and recently toured as part of the "CIE: Art On The Move" exhibitions to much acclaim. Two pictures by Swift, from IMMA's permanent collection, Forget-me-[K]nots on a Cane Table & London Self-Portrait, were exhibited in "The Moderns" exhibition, IMMA, October 2010- Feb 2011. Swift's work is still rarely to be seen. It would be hoped that one day there will be an exhibition of his work in England.

Swift quotes

The following are a selection of quotations by Swift taken from his Portuguese Notes (Gandon Editions Biography):^[68]

• Not to paint is the highest ambition of the painter but God who gives the gift requires that it be honoured. It is in the gesture that it lives. There is no escape. Picture-making is ludicrous in the light of the awful times we must endure. It is sufficient to contemplate the nature of composition to see that the picture itself is impossible. Each square inch of Titian contains the whole pointless- between the cradle and the grave. My paintings are merely signs that the activity was engaged in.

• To paint even a bottle is dramatic. A leaf will do.

• To know what it is to look at things, life as a prayer, a mass, a celebration.

• One who opens his eyes and sees. To be good at seeing. How difficult not to see anything but the visible. And nothing will be left but dust and manure. Attempting the impossible. Approach the mystery.

• Metaphysics- what metaphysics do those trees have?

• What trace of the creature subsists in the work. It is a way of staying alone, passing the time subjected to the object - silent, still. Walk with humility in the landscape. To be some natural thing - an ancient tree - no thinking - not to think is central to the activity.

• Life is more important than art- quantity is only important in that the amount of activity is greater not the number of works.

• Obey God by living spontaneously.

Bibliography

• PS...of course- Patrick Swift 1927-83 (ISBN 0-946641-37-4), with contributions by George Barker, Anthony Cronin, Lima de Freitas, Patrick Kavanagh, John McGahern, John Ryan, Brian Higgins, C. H. Sisson, Katherine Swift, David Wright, Martin Green (author) and Jacques d'Arribehaude (see French Wikipedia) (Gandon Editions, Kinsale, 1993)
• An Anthology from X, selected by David Wright (Oxford University Press 1988; ISBN 0-19-212266-5)
• Patrick Swift 1927-83, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 1993 Retrospective Catalogue (ISBN 1-873654-12-X ); essays on Swift by Anthony Cronin (poet) and Aidan Dunne (art critic).
• An Irish Painter in Portugal, Gandon Editions, 2001 (ISBN 0-946846-75-8); includes essays by Fernando de Azvedo (painter and President of Sociadede de Bellas Artes, Lisbon), Peter Murray (Director Crawford Gallery, Cork) and Brian Fallon's Patrick Swift and Irish art(written in 1993).
• Dictionary of Irish Artists, Theo Snoddy, p. 640, Merlin Publishing, Dublin, 2002.
• X, Volume 1, Numbers 1-4, November 1959-October 1960, Barrie & Rockliff, 1961, limited to 800 copies, hardcover; contributions by Samuel Beckett, George Barker, David Gascoyne, Robert Graves, Patrick Kavanagh, Hugh Macdiarmid, Ezra Pound & others, with reproductions of paintings by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Alberto Giacometti & others.
• The Moderns, IMMA, Irish artists and writers- the development of modern Ireland through its arts in the period from the 1900s to 1970s, 2011, ISBN 978-1-907020-49-0.
• Paintings by Patrick Swift at the Victor Waddington Galleries, 8 South Anne Street, Dublin, Catalogue, 1952 (copy held at the National Library of Ireland).
• Patrick Swift and David Wright produced three books on Portugal, all illustrated by Swift: Algarve: a portrait and a guide (Barrie & Rockliff, London 1965); Minho: a portrait and a guide (Barrie & Rockliff, London 1968); Lisbon: a portrait and a guide (Barrie & Rockliff, London 1971).
• (A Guide to) Birds of Southern Portugal, Randolph Cary (Barrie & Rockliff, London, 1973); illustrated by Swift; Randolph Cary had previously contributed a chapter on birds for Swift's Algarve: a portrait and a guide, 1965.
• Patrick Kavanagh: A Biography, Antoinette Quinn (Author), Gill & Macmillan Ltd; 2nd Revised edition (Sep 2003), ISBN 0-7171-3643-4, ISBN 978-0-7171-3643-8.
• Das harte Leben, Heinrich Böll's German translation of Flann O’Brien's The Hard Life, German edition, 1966; illustrated by Swift.
• Love Of The World, John McGahern, Essays, Edited by Stanley van der Ziel, 2009; "The Bird Swift".
• My Love to the Beaks and Tails, Annie Sise, Readers Union, 1976 (ISBN 0-575-01955-7); illustrations by Swift.
• Remembering How We Stood, John Ryan (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1975).
• "Patrick Swift", John Ryan, Envoy, vol 5/20, July 1951.
• Dead as Doornails, Anthony Cronin (Dolmen Press, Dublin, 1976)
• On the Look-out, CH Sission (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 1989).
• Collected Poems, C.H. Sission, Carcanet Press Ltd; 2nd Revised edition edition (27 Aug 1998); includes a poem about Swift.
• Selected Poems, David Wright, Carcanet Press Ltd (1 July 1988), ISBN 0-85635-753-7, ISBN 978-0-85635-753-4; includes the poem “Images for a Painter”.
• The Collected Poems of Elizabeth Smart, David Gascoyne (ed.), Paladin, London, 1992.
• By Heart -The Life of Elizabeth Smart, Rosemary Sullivan (Flamingo, London, 1992).
• A Patrick Kavanagh Anthology, Platt, Eugene Robert, Ed., Commedia Publishing Co., Dublin, 1973; includes illustration of Kavanagh by Swift.
• Young John McGahern: Becoming a Novelist, Denis Sampson, Oxford University Press, Feb 2012,ISBN 9780199641772.
• Martello Spring 1984, Maureen Charlton & John Stafford, Blackrock: Ardmore Records, 1984; illustrated with 6 coloured plates by Irish artists Walter Osborne, Patrick Swift & R.B. Beechey.
• Selected Poems, John Jordan (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 208); includes "Second Letter: To Patrick Swift"
• The Canterbury tales, translated into modern English prose by David Wright (London, Harris,1964); endpapers by Patrick Swift.
• Selected Poems, Homage to George Barker (On his Sixtieth Birthday), John Heath-Stubbs & Martin Green, -eds, Martin Brian & O'Keefe Ltd, 1973; includes Swift's portrait of Barker and Swift's essay on Barker, Prolegomenon to George Barker(ISBN 0856161299; ISBN 0-85616-200-0).
• PN Review: Patrick Swift Obituary, PN Review 34, Volume 10 Number 2, November - December 1983 [5]; Fourteen Letters (to David Wright), C.H. Sisson, PN Review 39, Volume 11 Number 1, July - August 1984.[6]
• "The lost hope of Irish art", Aidan Dunne, , The Sunday Tribune, Nov 28, 1993.
• "The legacy of Patrick Swift", Brian Fallon, The Irish Times, Dec 2, 1993.
• "Young artist of promise", G.H.G, The Irish Times, Oct 3, 1952.
• "Lucian Freud: Prophet of Discomfort", Mic Moroney © 2007 Irish Arts Review [7]
• "The Fall and Rise of Patrick Swift", Brian Fallon, The Irish Times, 11 June 1992.

Solo exhibitions

• 2005 Paintings, drawings and watercolours by Patrick Swift, Office of Public Works Atrium, Dublin.
• 2002 An Irish Painter in Portugal Retrospective, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork.
• 1994 Patrick Swift 1927-83, Ulster Museum.
• 1993 Patrick Swift 1927-83, Retrospective, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.
• 1974 Pinturas de Patrick Swift, Galeria S Mamede, Lisbon; apparently the catalogue is still available to buy at the Galeria's shop (key in Swift)[8]
• 1965 Desenhos do Algarve, Diário de Notícias Gallery, Lisbon; an exhibition of Swift's drawings for his book Algarve: a portrait and a guide.
• 1952 Paintings by Patrick Swift, Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin.

Group exhibitions

• The Moderns, IMMA, Oct 2010- Feb 2011; Swift's Forget-me-[K]nots on a Cane Table & London Self-Portrait from IMMA's permanent collection.
• Lunds Konsthall, Sweden, 1972; Swift's Study (with Holly), a painting from his first group exhibition, Irish Exhibition of Living Art, 1950; Study (with Holly) was also exhibited at the Cork Rosc, Irish Art 1943-73, 1980.
• Portrait of Patrick Kavanagh (CIÉ collection): RHA, 1968; 1971 ROSC exhibition, The Irish Imagination; in 2005 it toured as part of the "CIE: Art On The Move" exhibitions.
• Contemporary Arts Society Exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1961; the Contemporary Arts Society bought Patrick Swift's The Garden, oil, 40 x 29.5 inches, 1959, and presented it to the Warrington Museum & Art Gallery.
• "Drawings, watercolours, gouache, ceramics", Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin, 1954; five watercolours.
• Contemporary Irish Art, National Library of Wales, Aberystwth, 1953.
• Leicester Galleries, Jan 1952; Swift's Plants in a Potting Shed.
• Irish Exhibition of Living Art (1950, 51, 52, 54, 56)

Collections

• National Gallery of Ireland, Portrait of the Poet, Anthony Cronin, 1950; purchased 2010. (not on display)
• IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Permanent collection: Self-Portrait in the Studio & Forget-me-[K]nots on a cane table. (not on display)
• National Portrait Gallery (London): Patrick Joseph Kavanagh, lithograph, 1956, NPG D9523. (not on display)
• National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, Limerick University: Self-Portrait, c.1950, ink on paper.[9]
• Warrington Museum & Art Gallery, The Garden, Oil (Reference WAGMG:1962.9); as the museum rotates work it is only occasionally on display.
• Glebe Gallery, Trees at St. Columb's.
• Dublin Writers Museum, Portrait of Patrick Kavanagh, Black crayon; on display; a gift from Swift to the doctor, Michael Solomons, who delivered his first baby, Katherine, and he in turn bequeathed the portrait to the museum.
• CIE Collection, Art on the move, Portrait of Patrick Kavanagh, Oil. (not on display)
• The Kelly Collection (Kelly’s Resort Hotel Rosslare), Trees in London, Oil on board, Purchased 2001, published in For the Love of Art, The Kelly Collection ISBN 978-0-9565569-0-5 [10]

Essays by Swift

• "David Wright", PN Review 14, Volume 6 Number 6, July - August 1980.
• "Prolegomenon to George Barker", X, 1960; later appeared in John Heath-Stubbs and Martin Green (eds) Homage to George Barker on his 60th Birthday (Martin Brian & O’Keefe, London, 1973).
• "The Bomberg Papers", edited by Swift, X, vol.1, no.3, June 1960; An Anthology from X, Oxford University Press, 1988.
• "The Painter in the Press" (under the pseudonym James Mahon ), X A Quarterly Review, vol. I, no.4, October 1960; An Anthology from X, Oxford University Press, 1988. read here
• "Official Art & The Modern Painter" (under the pseudonym James Mahon), X A Quarterly Review, vol. I, no., November, 1959
• "Mob Morals and the Art of loving Art" (under the pseudonym James Mahon), X A Quarterly Review, vol. I, no.3, June 1960; An Anthology from X, Oxford University Press, 1988.
• "Some notes on Caravaggio", Nimbus, 1956.
• "By Way of Preface" (taken from "A Report to the Committee of Cultural Relations, Dept of External Affairs, on a Year spent in Italy in the study of Art & Painting, December 1955"), Gandon Editions Biography, 1993. read here
• "Painting – The RHA Exhibition", The Bell, vol. 17, no. 13, June 1951.
• "The Artist Speaks", Envoy - A Review of Literature and Art, Vol. 4, no. 15, Feb 1951.
• "Nano Reid", Envoy – A Review of Literature and Art, March 1950. read here

References

Further reading

• BBC Your Paintings
• David Wright Obituary, The Independent.
• 20th Century British and Irish Art, Writings by Art Commentator and Historian Adrian Clark, March 2011 [11]
• Shifting Ground, The Moderns, Irish Art 1950s, 08/10/2010 [12]
• David Wright portrait; mentions they first met in London in 1953; also mentions that at that period Swift had a studio in Camden.
• Irish Independent, a note on Swift’s Kavanagh portrait [13]
• Brian O'Doherty, a.k.a. Patrick Ireland (artist and critic), "Irish Painting, 1953: Some Thoughts", The Irish Monthly; on Swif's painting of a cabbage: "Patrick Swift's adventurous, deeply interesting and brilliant painting of? A cabbage!"[14] View said cabage:[15]
• AskArt [16]
• Whytes (Irish Auctioneers) www.whytes.i.e. (key in 'Swift' only) [17]
• Adams (Irish Auctioneers) www.adams.i.e. (key in 'Swift' only) [18]
• Maurice Fitzpatrick, interview with Anthony Cronin
• A poem by Basil Payne on Swift's Kavanagh portrait [19]
• Patrick Kavanagh life: “drank in celebration of the accidental destruction of the Abbey Theatre by fire with Anthony Cronin, John Ryan, and Paddy Swift (‘It gave great pleasure to all the right people’).” [20]
• Link to where James Liddy, an Irish poet, mentions Swift and Kavanagh in McDaids after Kavanagh's UCD lecture in 1956: "The painter Paddy Swift is there, a dark Prince Hallish to Kavanagh's Falstaff." [21]
• Catalogue for Swift's Victor Waddington Galleries exhibition, 1952, held at the National Library of Ireland [22]
• Lilly Library, Indian University, has many of the X magazine files. [23]
• The Irish Times, a note on the unveiling of a plaque commemorating Swift at his Hatch Street Studio [24]
• Irish Independent, article on the artist Michael Farrell (Says he knew Swift in Soho) [25]
• The Irish Times, interview with Irish art collector Lambert where "asked who he would consider to be most seriously under-celebrated of modern Irish artists, Lambert replies with a hint of regret: 'Patrick Swift, a fine artist.'"[26]
• Irish Independent, article on John Jordan: “Lady Longford, who lived near the young Jordan, lent him Ulysses at the beginning of his last year in school; he read it in the 'quite preposterously romantic setting' of Woodenbridge, Co Wicklow, that September with the painter Patrick Swift” [27]
• Irish Independent, "Freud: A magical recluse" [28]
• Swift Images [29]
• Irish artist Reginald Gray: "Back in 1951 when I started painting I rented a studio in Leeson Street. It was a wonderful atmosphere. The painter Neville Johnson had his studio a few doors away and facing me was the studio of the German artist Helmut Mueller. Round the corner in Hatch Street, Patrick Swift was installed and used to let Lucian Freud share his place each time that Freud visited Dublin."[30]
• Lucian Freud Obituary, Financial Times: "Freud had become part of the bohemian Soho-based milieu of artists and intellectuals who included Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Ron Kitaj and the Irish painter and writer Patrick Swift, who published some of Freud’s early works in his cultural review X Magazine"

External links

• Porches Pottery website

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