Reginald Gray Portraits: Portrait of Patrick Swift

Hommage to Patrick Swift

The Irish artist Patrick Swift was born in Dublin in 1927, three years before myself. He died of a brain tumor at the age of 56 in Portugal where he had founded Porches Pottery in the small village of that name. I was quite surprised when I first heard that he had moved into ceramics. However he also continued painting until his life ended. The first drawing I made of Patrick was when he came to my Dublin studio one morning in 1951. Later I used this drawing as a base for my bigger hommage. We never became friends, indeed if I am honest I could say that there was no love lost between us. I will say that he was a better artist than I was, or am. In the 1950`s Freud, Swift and myself were painting in somewhat the same style. (I will try later to upload works from each of us from that period to show what I mean) Swift`s work exploded later from the tight coloured drawing technique to a heavy broken impasto, that was not far removed from Van Gogh or Oskar Kokoschka. If Swift`s life had not been cut short I believe he would have surpassed the fame of Lucien Freud. However, in Swift,s own lifetime he never courted fame but I think he deserves it now.

search for early works.

I am hoping that someone concerned with the artworld in Dublin may click on this blog. This little story may explain. Back in 1951 when I started painting I rented a studio in Leeson Street. It was a wonderful atmosphere. The painter Nevill Johnson had his studio a few doors away and facing me was the studio of the German artist Helmut Mueller. Round the corner in Hatch Street, Patrick Swift was installed and used to let Lucien Freud share his place each time that Freud visited Dublin. I was contracted to a weekly rent but after some time got well behind with my payments. I arrived one day and found that the doorlock had been changed. The landlady stood on the stairs and informed me that she would give me a new key when I paid up. Alas I never did as in those days we were all quite poor and the little cash we had went in the pubs. There were about twenty paintings in that studio which I have never seen since, including a large portrait of Thomaseen James who was an oddjob man for the writer Maurice Walsh (The Quiet Man etc.) and Thomaseen lived in the big manorhouse in Blackrock with Walsh. One of Walsh`s books was indeed titled ``Thomaseen James Man of No Work`` Also there was a large portrait of the young Celia Salkeld and a studio interior of Nano Reid`s Fitzwilliam Square address where she used to let Tommy Owens and myself work whenever she was back in Drogheda. I have no idea where all these works got to (maybe destroyed) but if anyone should come across one or more I would very much like to have photos just for catalogue purposes. I realize I have no claim on them.

Reginald Gray Portraits

Sunday, 15 July 2007

Portrait of Patrick Swift

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Hommage to Patrick Swift

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search for early works.

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