Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978)
The Lute Player
Oil on canvas, 45 x 36cm (17¾ x 14¼'')

 

Mary Swanzy began her career as a portrait artist, before adopting an increasingly abstract approach to...

Mary Swanzy HRHA (1882-1978)
The Lute Player
Oil on canvas, 45 x 36cm (17¾ x 14¼'')

 

Mary Swanzy began her career as a portrait artist, before adopting an increasingly abstract approach to her subject matter. In this present example, her handling of the paint reflects her later interest in cubist techniques, particularly evident in the figures dress, where she has broken up the contours of the surface, using colour instead line to suggest the folds of the drapery. However, at the same time she is following more traditional lines of composition and figural representation. The Lute Player incorporates many elements of style and pictorial arrangements similar to old master paintings. The female figure, is placed in the centre of the composition, as the focal point around which the scenes rotates. She is given a sense of importance, raised up on a rock, out of proportion to the landscape surrounding her. This amplification of her features, particularly her head and hands, and deliberate eschewing of perspective by Swanzy reflects the work of Renaissance painters.

 

Women playing lutes reoccur time and again in these old master paintings, with the instrument serving as a symbol of harmony and grace, appropriate qualities for a woman in the 16th century. In Swanzys work, she is presented to us as a Venus figure, with a dress draped loosely over her body, slipping off her shoulders to expose the pearly white flesh of her skin underneath. She is a sensual figure, a symbol of beauty, the epitome of femininity, sitting in this arcadian landscape. Yet, Swanzy held strong views about the role of women in art and she rejected the notion that only certain types of subject matter were appropriate to her because of her gender, remarking Ladies have to paint pussy-wussies and doggy-woggies...If I had been born a Henry instead of Mary, my life would have been very different. (Brown, Karen. E, The Yeats Circle, Verbal and Visual Relations in Ireland, 1880- 1939, Routledge 2011). While she could never escape this prejudice in her own lifetime, by taking on the role traditionally adopted by male painters of representing a female subject for purely visual pleasure, she is manages to subvert this stereotype.

 

Niamh Corcoran, August 2018

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