MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978) Samoa Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5cms (30 x 25'') Signed Provenance: Original artist's label numbered 8 Exhibited: -Also thought to be the work entitled Samoan Scene III...

MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978) Samoa Oil on canvas, 76 x 63.5cms (30 x 25'') Signed Provenance: Original artist's label numbered 8 Exhibited: -Also thought to be the work entitled Samoan Scene III which was included in Invitation Exhibition Honolulu 1924 Santa Barbara Art Club Gallery, California 1924; Mary Swanzy Exhibition, Galerie Bernheim Jeune, Paris 1925 Mary Swanzy-Paintings of Samoa 1919-1925, The Dawson Gallery Dublin, April-May 1976, cat. no. 1, where purchased by Mr & Mrs Nesbit Waddington Exhibited at The Dawson Gallery in 1976, Samoa was painted during Mary Swanzy's 1919-1925 residence in Samoa. Ninety-two years later, to quote Terence de Vere White at the time of this exhibition, its 'impact is as fresh as if it were executed yesterday'. Her lush, light-filled Gauguinesque Samoan paintings were first exhibited at the Santa Barbara Art Club Gallery in November 1924 and in 1925 at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris, where her solo exhibition was warmly received by the likes of Gertrude Stein and The New York Herald's art critic Georges Bal who wrote: 'Few painters have ventured thus far, and Mme. Swanzy has shown what excellent material for the artist's brush is to be found in the tropical vegetation of the distant archipelago.' As a young woman she had been an habitu?e of Stein's salon where she was exposed to the work of Braque, C?zanne, Derain, Gauguin, Laurencin, Matisse and Picasso. An educated and well-read woman, Swanzy was in a position to travel widely and experience sights and cultures which coloured her work. She was never afraid to own up to her debt to artists who had gone before her. In an interview with Terence de Vere White in October 1973 she said : 'I hate to see bad art. When I go into an exhibition that is not good, I come out wanting not to paint any more: but when I see great painting I am uplifted, longing to get back to my easel. At one time I was dotty about Vel?squez. After that I found Manet, Monet and others. We need these great spirits. My ambition was to pitch a little tent in the outermost court of the temple where the great ones dwell.' Swanzy received the baton from these artists but she did her own running. S?le Connaughton-Deeny, 2011

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