Brendan Behan
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Now I am bound to admit that though not devoid of ambition in the graining, lettering and marbling line, my real talents lay not in painting. My father and grandfather were painters, and at an exhibition of Patrick Swift's, Victor Waddington remarked that of all present my father was the only painter with a Union Card. My granny was forewoman gilder at Brindley's of Eustace Street and on my mother's side the Kearneys were and are similarly engaged. For all that, maybe because of that, I am allergic to painting. Not to paint mark you. But to putting the stuff on.
— Brendan Behan, Confessions of an Irish Rebel, 1965, p.155


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Dear Hemingway Ryan,

A strange thing – I was thinking of Swift and Cronin and all when I saw this — I shed a tear of tequila into my vaso.

F Scott Behan

I’d better say ‘Kavanagh would loved the place’ — I’m quite sure he wouldn’t — I hope he’s well.

— The Letters of Brendan Behan, E.H. Mikhail, November 27, 1991; a postcard from Tijuana, Mexico, to John Ryan, dated 12 July 1961; the Murals of Diego Rivera printed on the postcard. Note: By the mid 1950s Patrick Swift and Anthony Cronin refused to speak to Behan due, in their view, to Behan's ill treatment of Kavanagh.


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Images
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Note: many of the reproductions displayed here are of poor quality
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By Swift
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Nano Reid - Some notes on Caravaggio - Italian Report - The Artist Speaks - X magazine - RHA Exhibition 1951 - Eça de Queiroz & Fernando Pessoa - The Portuguese Enigma - Notebooks - All
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About Swift
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Main
Patrick Swift: An Irish Painter in Portugal - IMMA 1993 Retrospective Catalogue - Dublin 1950-2 - By His Friends - X magazine - Poems - Further Quotes About - All

By His Friends
Anthony Cronin - John Ryan - John Jordan - C.H.Sisson - Martin Green - John McGahern - David Wright - Lima de Freitas - Katherine Swift - Tim Motion - Lionel Miskin - Jacques D'Arribehaude - Brian Higgins - George Barker - Patrick Kavanagh

Further Quotes
Brian Fallon - Aidan Dunne - Derek Hill - Brendan Behan - Lucian Freud - Patrick Kavanagh - Elizabeth Smart - Further Quotes About
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