Patrick Swift
Born in Dublin and educated at the Christian Brothers School on Synge Street, Swift studied at the National College of Art, 1946-8, before moving to London, then Paris, to further his studies. By 1950 he had returned to Dublin and befriended Nano Reid, on whose work he wrote for Envoy; Reid returned the compliment by painting Swift’s portrait, which she showed at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1950. In that same exhibition Swift showed his first works in public. The following year, also at the IELA, his work was singled out for comment by a reviewer for the Dublin Magazine, who commented on Swift’s exceptional technical ability and “uncompromising clarity of vision which eschews the accidental or the obvious or the sentimental”.
In 1952 he held his first solo exhibition at the Waddington Galleries. Again, the critic for the Dublin Magazine reviewed the exhibition and wrote that it “shows his power to convey the full impact of the object, as though the spectator were experiencing it for the first time”.
In Swift’s works from the early fifties, the influence of Lucian Freud is clear, particularly in a dispassionate, scientific scrutinity of the human form. The pair met circa 1949-50 when, as Anthony Cronin recalls, they shared a flat in Hatch Street, Dublin. Freud was then courting his future wife, Caroline Blackwood (see lot 6), and was sharing Swift’s studio. Freud was five years older than Swift, and was inevitably influential on the younger artist, but the influence may have been at least partially two-way. Swift and Freud met again later in the fifities in London, where Swift co-edited a literary and arts journal, X, and associated with many other leading artists of the period, including Francis Bacon, John Minton and Leon Kossof. Throughout the fifties Swift moved back and forth between London and Dublin, providing a link between those of the Dublin literati and artists who socialised in McDaid’s – such as Patrick Kavanagh, John Ryan and Edward Maguire – and the Soho intelligentsia.
In 1962 Swift and his wife first visited the Algarve in Portugal, where they eventually settled. Along with Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas, they established the Porches Pottery, producing hand-painted tiles and table-ware. With his co-editor from X, David Wright, Swift also wrote illustrated guidebooks to the Algarve. Swift continued to exhibit paintings in Dublin on occasion; his celebrated portrait of Patrick Kavanagh (CIÉ collection) was shown at the RHA in 1968 and he was included in the 1971 ROSC exhibition, ‘The Irish Imagination’. In 1974 he had a significant one-man exhibition in Lisbon, but Irish audiences were deprived of seeing his work en masse until a decade after his death, when IMMA mounted a major retrospective. The exhibition received great critical acclaim, with fellow artists such as Derek Hill declaring Swift to be “probably the most formidable Irish artist of this century” (Irish Times, 24 January 1994).
In 1952 he held his first solo exhibition at the Waddington Galleries. Again, the critic for the Dublin Magazine reviewed the exhibition and wrote that it “shows his power to convey the full impact of the object, as though the spectator were experiencing it for the first time”.
In Swift’s works from the early fifties, the influence of Lucian Freud is clear, particularly in a dispassionate, scientific scrutinity of the human form. The pair met circa 1949-50 when, as Anthony Cronin recalls, they shared a flat in Hatch Street, Dublin. Freud was then courting his future wife, Caroline Blackwood (see lot 6), and was sharing Swift’s studio. Freud was five years older than Swift, and was inevitably influential on the younger artist, but the influence may have been at least partially two-way. Swift and Freud met again later in the fifities in London, where Swift co-edited a literary and arts journal, X, and associated with many other leading artists of the period, including Francis Bacon, John Minton and Leon Kossof. Throughout the fifties Swift moved back and forth between London and Dublin, providing a link between those of the Dublin literati and artists who socialised in McDaid’s – such as Patrick Kavanagh, John Ryan and Edward Maguire – and the Soho intelligentsia.
In 1962 Swift and his wife first visited the Algarve in Portugal, where they eventually settled. Along with Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas, they established the Porches Pottery, producing hand-painted tiles and table-ware. With his co-editor from X, David Wright, Swift also wrote illustrated guidebooks to the Algarve. Swift continued to exhibit paintings in Dublin on occasion; his celebrated portrait of Patrick Kavanagh (CIÉ collection) was shown at the RHA in 1968 and he was included in the 1971 ROSC exhibition, ‘The Irish Imagination’. In 1974 he had a significant one-man exhibition in Lisbon, but Irish audiences were deprived of seeing his work en masse until a decade after his death, when IMMA mounted a major retrospective. The exhibition received great critical acclaim, with fellow artists such as Derek Hill declaring Swift to be “probably the most formidable Irish artist of this century” (Irish Times, 24 January 1994).
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'GIRL WITH BLUE THISTLES'
- Price Realised: €32,000
- Sale: 29 September 2008
- oil on canvas
- 76 by 61cm., 30 by 24in.
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'GIRL IN A GARDEN, c.1953'
- Price Realised: €20,000
- Sale: 25 May 2015
- oil on canvas
- 53 x 42in. (134.62 x 106.68cm)
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'THROUGH THE TREES IN LONDON'
- Price Realised: €11,500
- Sale: 30 September 2024
- oil on board
- 39 x 49in. (99.06 x 124.46cm)
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'STILL LIFE, c.1960-1961'
- Price Realised: €6,800
- Sale: 28 November 2016
- oil on board
- 48 x 30in. (121.92 x 76.20cm)
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'STILL LIFE WITH CABBAGE'
- Price Realised: €6,500
- Sale: 08 May 2002
- oil on canvas
- 81 by 58cm., 32 by 23in.
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'STILL LIFE WITH STUFFED WOODCOCK AND VASE OF FLOWERS'
- Price Realised: €6,000
- Sale: 08 May 2002
- oil on canvas
- 58 by 74cm., 23 by 29in.
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'FRENCH LANDSCAPE'
- Price Realised: €3,000
- Sale: 02 March 2009
- watercolour with pen and ink
- 46 by 65cm., 18 by 25.5in.
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'GIRL, circa 1950s'
- Price Realised: €2,600
- Sale: 25 February 2008
- pen and ink with wash
- 25 by 36cm., 10 by 14in.
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'LONDON PLANE TREE WITH BUILDINGS BEYOND'
- Price Realised: €2,200
- Sale: 17 February 2004
- oil on canvas
- 33 by 24cm., 13 by 9.5in.
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'FRENCH LANDSCAPE'
- Price Realised: €2,100
- Sale: 07 March 2022
- watercolour with pen and ink
- 18 x 25½in. (45.72 x 64.77cm)
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'CHURCH STREET, DUBLIN, OCTOBER 1948'
- Price Realised: €1,700
- Sale: 27 November 2017
- watercolour with annotations in pencil
- 13½ x 9½in. (34.29 x 24.13cm)
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'TREE'
- Price Realised: €1,500
- Sale: 25 May 2020
- watercolour
- 17 x 24in. (43.18 x 60.96cm)
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'SELF PORTRAIT'
- Price Realised: €1,400
- Sale: 26 February 2018
- charcoal
- 16 x 23in. (40.64 x 58.42cm)
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'COTTON BOG'
- Price Realised: €750
- Sale: 13 December 2023
- watercolour on paper
- 10 x 12½in. (25.40 x 31¾cm)
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'BIRD'
- Price Realised: €750
- Sale: 12 June 2005
- pen and ink on paper
- 18 by 25cm., 7.25 by 10in.