Analysing Cubism: Mary Swanzy (1882-1978) - Crawford Art Gallery

Analysing Cubism: Mary Swanzy (1882-1978)
Mary Swanzy was born in Dublin to a very affluent family.
Her father, Sir Henry Rosborough Swanzy, was an
ophthalmic surgeon and vice president of the College of
Surgeons. His successful career allowed Swanzy access
to training and education that would have been far
beyond the means of most Irish artists at the time.
Mary Swanzy, Propellers, 1942
National Gallery Ireland
She began her arts training at a young age, and in 1905
moved to Paris where she was soon exhibiting alongside
Picasso, Braque, and other significant Modern painters.
She then returned to Ireland, and trained at the
Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin (now the National
College of Art and Design) with the famous Irish painter
John Butler Yeats.
Swanzy is celebrated as one of the first Irish Cubist painters, but she spent most of
her time away from Ireland. Her desire to stay away from Ireland was likely quite
personal. Her cousin, District Inspector Oswald Swanzy, was implicated in the 1920
murder of the Lord Mayor of Cork, and was shot by the IRA that same year.
Immediately after, Swanzy’s sister emigrated to the Fiji Islands, and Swanzy herself
avoided national politics for the rest of her life.
Swanzy did not share Jellett and Hone’s devotion to a national Irish art, and used her
skills and training to develop her own, distinctive and independent style. It was not
until 1932, nearly ten years after Jellett exhibited Decoration in Dublin, that Swanzy
first displayed her Cubist works in Ireland.
Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism
Unlike Jellett and Hone, Swanzy did not specifically focus on Cubist techniques. If
you compare Propellers (above) to Jellett’s The Virgin of Eire, you can see a very
different sense of swirling, circular movement in Swanzy’s work.
While travelling in Britain, Swanzy encountered the styles of Vorticism and Futurism,
and the effects of these influences are clear in her paintings. Both styles developed
from Cubism, but are more direct responses to modern technology, which allowed
people to move, travel, and communicate faster than ever.
Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910
MOMA Museum of Modern Art New York
David Bloomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914
Tate Gallery London
Futurism developed in Italy around 1909, and was a
prominent style until the 1930s. It emphasized speed,
technology, and modern industry. Futurists worked with all
mediums, and often painted urban scenes, using energetic
brush strokes to show the fast pace of modern life.
Vorticism was a short-lived movement that appeared in 1914,
but was unable to survive the chaos of World War I. It aimed to
capture rapid, modern movement within an image. Vortist artists
used bold lines and dramatic colours to catch the viewer’s eye.
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Personal Style
Mary Swanzy’s parents passed away just before World War I, and left her with an
inheritance that would sustain her for the rest of her life. She was able to finance her
art without sponsorship or the sale of her works. This granted her significant artistic
freedom, and not only could she train and travel extensively, but she did not have to
adjust her style to suit patrons or commissioned work.
It is nearly impossible to determine exactly
how Swanzy developed her style, because
she rarely dated her paintings. However, her
use of repeating, swirling patterns and rich
colours was a common theme in her Cubist
paintings from at least the 1920s onward.
She was a dedicated Modernist, and used
all of the tools at her disposal to create new,
abstract works. She incorporated elements
Mary Swanzy, Canal Embankment, 1920s from Gleizes’ early Cubist abstraction
Private Collection
techniques with implied Futurist movement
to create increasingly fantastic paintings.
She often painted landscapes, but not of the traditionally
Irish sort. Her landscapes were inspired by her travels
through the Pacific, and are full of lush vegetation, warm
colours, and bright flowers. This combination of manmade
structures and nature allowed her to explore the
rigid buildings compared to more circular and fluid
natural elements. A perfect example of this is Oil
painting à la mode d’André Lhote (left), where a square,
urban background is overlapped by the heavy green
plants in the foreground.
Swanzy’s works do not rely purely on Albert Gleizes’
theory on Cubism, but her combination of Cubist
abstraction, Futurist forms, and romantic landscapes
created a Modern style of painting that became
dynamic in its own right.
Mary Swanzy, Oil painting à la
mode d’André Lhote, undated
Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda
Mary Swanzy, The Mêlée, c. 1945
Private Collection
Mary Swanzy had an exceptionally long artistic
career. All of her works show a clear connection
with the developments of the various Modern Art
movements. She pursued Modern Art beyond
Cubism, and between the 1930s-40s she became
increasingly influenced by Surrealism. With this
new influence, a new chapter in her work was
born, and her swirling, Cubist landscapes were
replaced by contorted human figures and bizarre
rural and urban scenes.
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