Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978) A Hilltop Town in the South of France Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76cm (25 x 30'') Signed Provenance: From the collection of the late Mr. Nesbit Waddington of Beaulieu...

Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978) A Hilltop Town in the South of France Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76cm (25 x 30'') Signed Provenance: From the collection of the late Mr. Nesbit Waddington of Beaulieu House, Drogheda and by descent to his daughter the current owner. It is thought to have been bought in the late 1960's through the Dawson Gallery and was one of a collection of works by Swanzy purchased by Mr & Mrs Nesbit Waddington. These works joined other important works by Irish artists that adorned the private rooms of the historic Beaulieu House. Exhibited: This is thought to be one of two works catalogued as Southern Landscape at Mary Swanzy's Retrospective exhibition, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin, June 1968 In 1906, Swanzy arrived in Paris when the cubist style of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Laurencin, C?zanne, and Gauguin surrounded her at Gertrude Stein's salon, where she attended several of the famous soir?es. After her studies under De la Grandara and Colarrossi's, she travelled to Czechoslovakia, Hawaii, Samoa, and California producing a large body of work in each location before finally settling in Blackheath, south London. Swanzy's work is highly eclectic ranging from early portraits influenced by John Butler Yeats to Impressionist and 'fauve' landscapes, Cubic studies of nature, figurative, allegorical War paintings, and finally poetic subjects with a hint of Chagall and Picasso. This work dates from Swanzy's cubist period, when she had shed the ideas of her academic training to develop an interest in the structure of objects and geometric forms. An admiration for C?zanne drew her attention to a mastery of design, colour, tone and composition and draughtmanship. Swanzy explored simple geometric forms, and the underlying structure beneath the surface of nature. This work would appear to be from her early cubist style possibly in the late 20's or early 1930's, when she travelled for two or three months near Grasse in the late twenties or in the South of France in the thirties producing a large body of 'Provencal' type landscapes of hilltop villages with red-roofed houses, olive trees and fields, terraced hillsides and walls reduced to simple forms. The pictures are full of vigour and movements, characterized by cheerful pastel colours, reds and pinks, blue-greens, and mauves, by diagonal lines and arcs. Pink globe-like shapes are dotted around the landscape indicating trees in blossom. A large retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art in 1968.

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