MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978) Mending a Sheet Oil on canvas, 61 x 51cms (24 x 20'') Signed. Artist label verso no. 8 (1963) Exhibited: Mary Swanzy Exhibition, The Dawson Gallery, March 1974, cat....

MARY SWANZY HRHA (1882-1978) Mending a Sheet Oil on canvas, 61 x 51cms (24 x 20'') Signed. Artist label verso no. 8 (1963) Exhibited: Mary Swanzy Exhibition, The Dawson Gallery, March 1974, cat. no. 7 where purchased by Mr. & Mrs Nesbit Waddington Mary Swanzy is reported to have said to a major collector of her work, Mrs. Sydney Waddington of Beaulieu House in Drogheda, that she considered Mending the Sheet her finest work. An unusually domestic scene, I wonder does this comment on the painting belie her statement that : 'If you give yourself entirely to other people's happiness by bringing them up and being dedicated to them, what have you left then for the art ? Nothing,nothing,nothing.' Methinks she doth protest too much. Evocative of the intimiste manner of Bonnard and especially Vuillard, there is also a Berthe Morisot softness to this scene. There is more than a hint of Fragonard in the treatment of the fabrics. The woman is totally absorbed in her sewing as she considers the day's doings. She is happy with her own company, bien dans sa peau. Mary Swanzy was, of course, a very confident woman but from childhood a little frail. Her paintings, it seems, were her children. 'Selling a painting', she said 'is a bit like marrying off a daughter: you hope she'll get a good home and her husband won't beat her, that he'll treat her with a certain mild respect. I'd like very much to be able to see what people have done with my paintings. I give my paintings names, because I'm told I have to, for the catalogues. But I'd very much like to know how the people who have them have christened them, what they meant to them. It's very interesting, to see how people react to certain pictures'. Speaking at the age of ninety-two she went on, 'I have had an absorbing passion-painting. I'm glad it wasn't a young man. The young ladies I have observed whose absorbing passion was a young man, rarely seem happy. I had control over my absorbing passion. They had none over theirs.' There is poignancy here. S?le Connaughton-Deeny, 2011

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