Patrick Swift (1927-1983)
Green Wood, c.1958
Oil on canvas, 56 x 70cm (22 x 27½'')
Exhibited: IMMA & Ulster Museum No. 31 as 'Trees'

Patrick Swift trained as an artist at the National College of Art...

Patrick Swift (1927-1983)
Green Wood, c.1958
Oil on canvas, 56 x 70cm (22 x 27½'')
Exhibited: IMMA & Ulster Museum No. 31 as 'Trees'

Patrick Swift trained as an artist at the National College of Art in the late 1940s, while working for the Dublin Gas Company. His work was included in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) in 1950 and periodically thereafter through the 1950s; he had his first solo exhibition at the Victor Waddington Galleries, Dublin, in 1952. In these early years of his career, he was interested in portraiture; the influence of Lucian Freud - who shared Swift's studio when he visited Dublin during these years - was noted by early viewers. Like Freud, Swift was also interested in plant forms and foliage. Increasingly, in fact, as the decade went by, they came to interest him more than the human figure. Yet he continued to observe these natural subjects with the same forensically psychological gaze he had applied to his portraits. At the IELA in 1956 he exhibited two such studies of foliage; the Irish Times reviewer Tony Gray commended them for what he described as 'the intensity of their scrutiny.'

Green Wood (c.1958) is an interesting example of Swift's treatment of foliage from this time. The forest scene is dominated by two trees whose angular, clearly-delineated trunks give way to what seems to be an impossible profusion of interlocking branches, creating a delicate canopy of tendrils and leaves, a pattern of bright whimsical elements set against the darker muted green of the surrounding woods in the background. The forest floor is a carpet of carefully detailed wild grasses, illuminated in the centre of the canvas but giving way to a darker green at the extremities of the composition. The effect is of a controlled, stylised, expressionistic, maybe even slightly surreal scene, retaining some of the same muted, tenebrous qualities as Swift's other work of the period.

Nathan O'Donnell, February 2022

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