Derek Hill
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The Irish Times
Sir, — Encouraged by the fact that Patrick Swift wrote an admiring article on Nano Reid, one artist in praise of another, which is published in the excellent book PS of course - Patrick Swift (Gandon Books), I dare to make a reciprocal gesture on Swift himself.
His exhibition at the Royal Hospital quite simply bowled me over, and I realised at once that I was looking at pictures by probably the most formidable Irish artist of this century — perhaps including Jack Yeats and his father. The early pictures, when Swift was close to Lucian Freud, show an influence from Freud, or possibly on Freud, and are, in his portraits, just as compelling as those of Freud.
At least one of the tree pictures shown in the exhibition reminds me of the early Miró farm pictures in their very precise and representational handling. Later, when Swift and his wife Oonagh went with their children to live in Portugal, he still painted trees, palms, and scrub with a broader brush technique of tremendous strength and with immediacy of invention. His drawings, too, are those of a master.
The dozen or so late portraits shown at Kilmainham or in the Gandon book have even more impact than the later Freud portraits have. The one of his mother and father, a huge picture showing them in a Connemara landscape, is a masterpiece; so are those of his mother alone and of Patrick Kavanagh. Some of the strongest contemporary portraits I have ever seen.
P.S.'s death from a brain tumour in Portugal, at the age of only 56, was a major tragedy. This is an exhibition not to be missed... Declan McGonagle, the director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is indeed to be congratulated on giving us all a chance to see such work. — Yours etc.
— Derek Hill in a letter to the The Irish Times, 24 January 1994
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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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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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