Waiting to go on the Canal

Artist Camille Souter (1929 - 2023)

Date1968

MediumOil on board

Dimensions56 x 76.2 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by the Contemporary Irish Art Society, 1969. © The Estate of Camille Souter.

Object number1294

DescriptionCamille Souter was born in Northampton but moved to Ireland in 1932. A self-taught painter, she originally trained as a nurse and worked in London but then turned to painting in the 1950s while recuperating from an illness. She was especially inspired by paintings by Pierre Bonnard, which she had seen in London in 1947. Souter's chief subject matter is landscape and still life. She takes the most banal, ordinary or unusual subjects, such as the circus or slaughterhouse, and makes something lyrical from them. Painting only in natural light, she requests that her paintings only be viewed in that light.

One of three works by Souter in the Gallery's collection, Waiting to go on the Canal belongs to a series of Canal paintings from the 1960s and 1970s. It is almost abstract in style with the canvas divided into rich bands of colour and texture. At the centre of the composition is a farmhouse set against the backdrop of a hilly strip of land. In the foreground, agitated swirls of paint build up into a foaming mass providing the painting with a strong tactile quality.

Camille Souter has lived and worked in Dublin, Wicklow and Italy and currently lives on Achill Island. She is a member of Aosdána.

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