Woodcock on a chair, Patrick Swift (1927-83), Oil (Dublin), 1951 (poor quality reproduction); Lucian Freud painted Dead Cock’s Head (1951) on the same red velvet chair


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Freud had already shown in London and Paris when he came to Dublin in 1948 [most likely when Swift and Freud first met], partly on a pilgrimage to Jack B Yeats, who had just enjoyed a retrospective at the Tate; and whom Freud declared the greatest living painter… Freud seemed closest to artist Paddy Swift… In September 1951 Kitty Garman wrote to her mother… She mentions Freud working on a painting in Paddy Swift’s Hatch Street studio, Dead Cock’s Head 1951, painted on the same red velvet chair as Swift’s Woodcock 1951. Anthony Cronin recalls the two men painting side-by-side when he stayed in Hatch Street c.1950, Freud more obsesses by surface and detail than Swift.
- Mic Moroney, 'Lucian Freud: Prophet of Discomfort', Irish Arts Review, 2007 link


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