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Patrick Swift (1927-83) Artist. Born in Dublin. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in both Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal where he is buried in the town of Porches. In Dublin he was part of the now infamous McDaid’s (a Dublin pub where many of the leading artists of that time congregated) group of artists that included Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, Brendan Behan et al. He later moved to London where he became an integral member of the Soho set that included Francis Bacon, George Barker, Elizabeth Smart et al. There he founded and co-edited - with the poet David Wright – the magazine ‘X’ which Swift used to promote many of the greatest living artists of that period including Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Frank Auerbach, Craigie Atchison and David Bomberg. In Portugal he carried on painting while also writing books on Portugal and starting - with the Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas - Porches Pottery which revived what was a dying industry. During his career Swift only had two exhibitions- Dublin in 1952 and Lisbon in 1974. His work has never been exhibited in Britain. His first exhibition at the Waddington Gallery in 1952 was well acclaimed. However, he appears to have has little interest in showing his work. Swift distrusted publicity and celebrity- which he disliked and considered a distraction– and avoided further exhibitions. His friend, David Wright, has recalled finding Swift actively hiding his work because he was expecting a millionaire art collector to visit. It makes finding information on Swift very difficult. Although he was at the heart of artistic activity in London and Dublin there is very little information on Swift. He was pretty much forgotten by the art world by his death in 1983. Even today his work features in very few public collections (Dublin Writers Museum being the only public gallery where his work can be seen). Swift was an individualist and -though he commented on art and was intimate with many of the leading artists of his day- never formed part of a group or ‘style’. John Ryan (artists, founder of the art magazine Envoy & owner of the then literary pub ‘Bailey’ in Dublin): “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.” It can be broadly said that he was a figurative painter. He can also be said to have had three distinct ‘periods’: Dublin, London and Algarve. His early work in Dublin has a tense, spare, more-real-than-real quality and he used thin paint with predominantly pale colours. In London he became more expressive in his use of paint, using the brush more and applying think layers of paint. In the Algarve he continues this trend and some of his late work becomes almost abstract. It is for his 'intensity of observation' (Theo Snoddy, Dictionary of Irish Artists, Dublin, 2002,) 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. It is not just his technical ability as an artist, but also his talent in creating intricate and complicated compositions that sets Swift firmly in a league of his own.” His work comprises of portraits, ‘tree portraits’, rural landscapes and urban landscapes. He worked in a variety of media including oils, watercolours, ink drawings, etchings and ceramics. He had a fascination with trees and was fascinated by the patterns created by their branches- almost treating these shapes in an abstract manner. John McGahern (Irish writer) has noted that he was fond of the quote ‘bring on those trees/ that held you in their mysteries’. His later work is little else other than these ‘tree portraits’. Dublin. He was educated at the Christian Brothers School on Synge Street. A largely self-taught artist he did attend night classes at the National College of Art in 1946 (under Sean Keating) and later set up his studio on Hatch Street (Lucien Freud would share Swift’s studio on his frequent visits to Dublin). He first exhibited in group shows at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1950 & 51 where his work was singled out by critics. The Dublin Magazine commented on Swift’s exceptional technical ability and “uncompromising clarity of vision which eschews the accidental or the obvious or the sentimental”… it “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 to great acclaim. Time magazine carried an article on the exhibition: “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. ‘ “By 1950, Paddy was in Paris, living in a cheap Left Bank hotel and growing an existentialist beard. He had tackled Paris with £25 in his pockets, but that was soon gone, and he scrabbled a living doing commission portraits of American G.I.s and tourists. "No picture survived this period," he says. "I sold them all to buy food and drink." 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 Eugene Delacroix, such moderns as Switzerland's Alberto Giacometti (TIME, July 2, 1951) and Britain's Francis Bacon[Swift must have first gotten to know Bacon at this period in Paris. Their friendship continued in London }. 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." He contributed essays on art and artists he admired (eg: Nano Reid) to Irish art magazines such as Envoy, Bell and Nimbus. Swift formed part of the now infamous group artists that congregated at the Dublin pub, McDaid’s, which included Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, Brendan Behan, Myles Na gCopaleen [Flann O’Brien], John Ryan et al. During these years he also became acquainted with Samuel Beckett, Edward McGuire, Patrick Pye, Reginald Gray, John Jordan and Pearse Hutchinson among others. Reginald Gray (Irish artist) writing about this period: “Back in 1951 when I started painting I rented a studio in Leeson Street. It was a wonderful atmosphere. The painter Nevill 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 Lucien Freud share his place each time that Freud visited Dublin .” In Dublin he dated the poet Claire McAllister. The next few years Swift spent between London (before a more permanent move there in 1959) and Dublin with stays in Italy and the Digswell Art Trust in Ashwell Springs. Italy In 1954 Swift was awarded a grant by the Irish Cultural Relations Committee to study in Italy. He was accompanied by his future wife, Oonagh Ryan (sister of the artist John Ryan and the Irish actress Kathleen Ryan -who starred in the film Odd Man Out). Here he painted and wrote essays on art. His essay ‘Some notes on Caravaggio’ appeared in Nimbus in 1956.

Ashwell Springs (Digswell Arts Trust) In 1958 Swift spent time at the Digswell Artists Colony in Ashwell Springs. Ashwell Springs are found in the village of Ashwell in North Hertfordshire, and they are one of the sources of the river Cam. Swift came to Ashwell through the visionary educator Henry Morris (1889-1961). Morris had set up the Digswell Arts Trust in 1957, having persuaded the government and Welwyn Garden City development to restore a run down Regency mansion along with its cottages and outbuildings and convert them into accommodation for artists and their families. The first artists arrived in 1957, and Swift took up residency a year later. Among other artists to have been included in the programme at Digswell were Michael Andrews, Hans Coper and Ralph Brown. During his residency at Digswell, Swift painted many views of Ashwell and its Spring, one of which was presented by Henry Morris to Melbourn Village College at its opening in 1959. After Digswell, Swift moved to London in 1959 where he met and became friends with leading lights in the art world such as Francis Bacon(whom he knew from Paris), Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud (Freud shared Swift’s studio in Dublin) and John Minton. London Patrick Swift moved more permanently to London in 1959 and had a flat in Westbourne Terrace where he stayed with his young family. In 1959 he founded and co-edited with the poet David Wright the art quaterly ‘X’ Magazine.’ X’ was set up to promote the arts and in particular unknown or unfashionable artists of the time. It had seven issues and ran from 1959-1962. In London his work grew more expressive. Brian Fallon (Irish Times Art Critic): “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 not hardly be more different fro one another, though the underlying sensibility somehow remains.” During this period Swift painted portraits of, amongst others, George Barker, Patrick Kavanagh, David Wright and David Gascoyne. Brian Fallon states that these portraits: "are among the finest portraits painted in Britain at this period.” In London he associated with many of the leading artists of that period including Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Auerbach, John Minton, Leon Kossof, Bomberg et al. Christopher Barker (son of George Baker and Elizabeth Smart) writing in The Observer, Sunday 20 August 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. “ In 1962 Swift left London for an extended trip to southern Europe. Algarve  Swift’s travelles led him to the small fishing village –as it was then- of Carvoeiro in the Algarve. Swift was so enchanted with the place that he remained. Here he painted, wrote and illustrated books and started Porches Pottery. Swift lived and worked in the Algarve from 1962 until his death in 1983. Among his work at from this period are some fascinating portraits of Sa Carneiro- at the time acting Portuguese Prime Minister. Richard Morphet, Keeper, Tate Britain from 1986 until 1998 (in his introduction to the Swift exhibition at the Crawford Gallery in Cork) : “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. He later set up a pottery in the Algarve, whose part in the revival of the regional craft has been recognised. Here Swift made a huge contribution to the popularisation of the Algarve, and to the recognition of the beauty of Portugal 's landscape, history and culture…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” Reginald Gray on Swift’s later work: “Swift’s work exploded later from the tight coloured drawing technique to a heavy broken impasto, that was not far removed from Van Gogh or Oskar Kokoschka. If Swift’s life had not been cut short I believe he would have surpassed the fame of Lucien Freud. However, in Swift’s own lifetime he never courted fame but I think he deserves it now.” Brian Falon: “In a way he almost anticipates the rawness of 1980’s New Expressionism”. Fernando De Azvedo (painter and President of Sociadede de Bellas 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 it it’s true dimensions- in the unusual path that swift trod- and be clarified by history.” Swift the Critic and X Magazine In Dublin Swift wrote many articles on art for art magazines like Envoy and Bell. These articles expounded his views on not only art but also promoted artists he admired such as Nano Reid. In London Patrick Swift founded and edited - with the poet David Wright - a short-lived publication called X Magazine. X set about promoting and getting contributions from some of the best living artists of the time, including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Alberto Giacometti, Lucien Freud, Malcolm Lowry, Samuel Beckett, Robert Pinget, Patrick Kavanagh, Martin Gerard, Stevie Smith, W.H. Auden ,Ghika, René Daumal, David Gascoyne, George Barker, Anthony Cronin, John Heath-Stubbs, Hugh MacDiarmid, John Jordan, Brian Higgins, Ted Hughes, Philip Martin, Noel Stock, Timothy Beherens, J. C. Ashby, James Lovell, C.H. Sisson… Swift wrote many articles on art for X under the pseudonym James Mahon. Martin Green (writer, editor and publisher) writing in The Independent. “It ran for seven issues from 1959 to 1962 and promoted the work of then unfashionable writers and poets, including Stevie Smith, Hugh MacDiarmid, Patrick Kavanagh and Malcolm Lowry, and discussed the work of similarly unfashionable artists - Alberto Giacometti, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and David Bomberg.” Michael Schmidt (founder and editorial director of Carcanet Press, he has also been editor of Poetry Nation Review for thirty years. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow ) writing in The Guardian in July 2006: “David Wright's and Patrick Swift's legendary X set the common agenda for a generation of European painters, writers and dramatists.” Brian Fallon writing in the Swift catalogue for the Crawford Gallery Exhibition: “ Swifts criticism is that of the practising artist not that of a practising 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, Auberach, Craige Atchison, 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.” Porches Pottery When Swift first visited the Algarve in 1962 he discovered a way of life that had changed little since the Middle Ages, a system of commerce and production based around craft activities. However, ‘modernisation’ was fast encroaching and the centuries old craft tradition was dying out. With the Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas, Swift set about reviving the local pottery industry. He decided that the best way of saving the industry was by decorating the pots and other earthenware the local potters produced- thus making them more marketable. Having contacted local potters, the artists were delighted to discover that the craftsmen could still produce a great variety of forms that had been passed down to them by their ancestors. Incredibly, these pieces conformed exactly to those they had previously only seen in museums, possessing the simple strength of ancient pots relating to the oldest Iberian civilizations. The two artists began to research the designs and motifs of ancient pottery, visiting museums throughout Europe, until finally some basic patterns began to emerge as being typical of the influences imposed by past civilisations that had once dominated the Algarve. These designs include the various animals, flowers and foliage that have become associated with Porches Pottery. Swift, having compiled a series of patterns the decorators at the pottery would work from, forbade slavish copying, instead, insisting upon free flowing painting within the established style, which is a fundamental characteristic of Porches Pottery decoration. At Porches Pottery Swift produced many tile panels and portraits on plates. He also developed a technique of carving wet cement to produce intricate patters, shapes and figures. The café at Porches, Bar Bacchus, is decorated with magnificent tile panels painted by Patrick Swift. There is also an outside eating area decorated with tiles designed by Swift’s late daughter, Katherine Swift. Books 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). Randolph Carry, Birds of Southern Portugal, illustrated by Swift (Barrie & Rockliff, London, 1973). Flann O’Brien [Brian O'Nolan ] The Hard Life; German edition, Das harte Leben, illustrated by Patrick Swift ( Nannen-Verlag, Hamburg ) Veronica Jane O’Mara (ed.), PS...of course- Patrick Swift 1927-83, with contributions on Swift by George Barker, Anthony Cronin, Lime de Freitas, Patrick Kavanagh, John McGahern, John Ryan, CH Sission, Katherine Swift, David Wright (Gandon Editions, Kinsale, 1993) An Anthology from X, selected by David Wright (Oxford University Press 1988) Solo Exhibitions: 2005    Office of Public Works Atrium, Dublin. Paintings, drawings and watercolours by Patrick Swift. 2002    An Irish painter in Portugal retrospective, Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork. 1993    Patrick Swift 1927-83, Retrospective,   Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. 1974    Pinturas de Patrick Swift, Galeria S Mamede, Lisbon 1965    Desenhos do Algarve, Diario de Noticias Gallery, Lisbon. 1952    Paintings by Patrick Swift, Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin Group Exhibitions Irish Exhibition of Living Art ( 1954, 52, 51) Comtemporary Irish Art National Library of Wales, Aberystwth, 1953 Contemporary Arts Society, Whitechapel Gallery, London 1961 Essays by Swift ‘Mob Morals and the Art of loving Art’, Anthology of X (1988) & X A Quaterly Review, vol.I, no.3, June 1960 ‘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 Painter in the Press’ (under the pseudonym James Mahon ), X- X A Quaterly Review, vol.I, no.4, October 1960. ‘Official Art & The Modern Painter’ (under the pseudonym James Mahon), X A Quaterly Review, vol.I, no., November, 1959 ‘Some notes on Caravaggio’ Nimbus 1956 ‘By Way of Preface’, from Report to the Committee of Cultural Relations, Dept of External; Affairs, on a Year spent in Italy in the study of Art & Painting, 1954 ‘The Artist Speaks’, Envoy- A Review of Literature and art, Vol. 4, no. 15, Feb 1951 ‘Painting – The RHA Exhibition’, The Bell , Vol. 17, no. 13, June. 1951 ‘Nano Reid’, Envoy – A Review of Literature and Art, March 1950.