CAG.3239 Mary Swanzy, Flower Market, undated, oil on canvas, 45.7 x 35.7 cm. Purchased, 2023. © the artist’s estate. 

WORK OF THE WEEK! 

‘Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.’  

We might consider Flower Market, an undated painting by Mary Swanzy, as an echo of the immortal opening line of Virginia Woolf’s modernist novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925). 

White blossoms at the centre of Swanzy’s composition act as a point of illumination which, in turn, reflects upon the faces of the three figures gathered round. One leans over the blooms to inhale their scent, while the others register states of intoxication or instruction, even caution.   

Previously exhibited in Irish Women Artists 1870-1970 in 2014, Flower Market joined the Collection last year and is exemplary of Swanzy’s deeply personal and complex subject matter that emerged from the 1930s onwards.  

Mary Swanzy (1882-1978) is now acknowledged as a pioneer of Irish modern art. She charted her own course across a varied, ever-curious, and decades-long career that spanned a remarkable range of styles. Perhaps best known for her Samoan and Cubist paintings, she nonetheless resists categorisation. She was celebrated in the exhibition Mary Swanzy: Voyages (2018-19), a major reappraisal curated by Seán Kissane at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Crawford Art Gallery, and Limerick City Gallery of Art. 

‘To be an artist,’ she once remarked, ‘you have to be very severe with your amount of energy… To have an overriding hobby, that’s the secret. Mine was an overriding hobby, I couldn’t get rid of it.’ 

Flower Market by Mary Swanzy is displayed on our main landing (Floor 1). 

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