Camille Souter

Camille Souter, considered by some the outstanding woman painter of her generation, was born in England and brought to Ireland by her parents when still an infant. In 1948 she went to London to train as a nurse. During a period of convalescence from tuberculosis, contracted during one of her many trips to Italy, she took up painting. In the early 1950s she abandoned her nursing and turned to painting as a career. Souter returned to Ireland in the mid-1950s and in 1956 she held her first exhibition in a Dublin restaurant. Her early works were abstract, revealing an influence of the calligraphic element in abstract expressionism. In the mid-1960s she turned to objects and landscapes which she treats on a small scale with intimacy and sensitivity. A 1980 retrospective in the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin was a rare solo exhibition.