Landscape with Red Gable

Artist Mary Swanzy (1882 - 1978)

Datec. 1920s

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions45.7 x 53.4 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. © The Estate of Mary Swanzy. Donated by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1982. © The Estate of Mary Swanzy.

Object number1480

DescriptionMary Swanzy's time of study in France in the first decade of the last century allowed her to become familiar with the most avant-garde artistic developments such as Cubism. Such elements were not absorbed into her own work until some years later, probably not until the First World War or into the 1920's.

Marry Swanzy did not date her work so it can be difficult to accurately place a painting such as this. Villages, houses in the landscape, especially rooftop scenes, were particularly popular with Swanzy. A series of such subjects was painted in Czechoslovakia in 1919-20, also in the South of France in the late 1920's.

The image is highly animated, the red gabled house at the centre of the composition surrounded by the softer green, grey and blue tones of the landscape. This particular colour contrast occurs regularly in the artist's work. The rooftops in the foreground curve upwards and lead the viewer into the composition. Swanzy was influenced to a great extent by the curves of the Orphists such as Delaunay, rather than by the more angular forms of the Cubists, while the paint application is reminiscent of that of Cézanne.

(Catalogue Entry [39]: A Century of Irish Painting - Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, 1997, p. 154)

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