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Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929) HANGING MEAT WITH COW’S HEART signed and dated [1972] lower ri...

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:8,000.00 - 10,000.00 EUR
Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929) HANGING MEAT WITH COW’S HEART signed and dated [1972] lower ri...
Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929)
HANGING MEAT WITH COW’S HEART
signed and dated [1972] lower right; inscribed gallery label on reverse
oil on paper
51 by 38cm., 20 by 15in.
Provenance:
The late Sir Basil Goulding, Bt;
Private collection, Dublin
Exhibition:
’One Man’s Meat’, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, 1961, catalogue no.
58;
’Two Painters’, (Joint exhibition with Barrie Cooke), Ulster Museum, Belfast,
1965, catalogue no. 29;
’2 Deeply’, (Joint retrospective exhibition with Barrie Cooke), Dublin, 1971,
catalogue no. 22;
Solo Exhibition, Y.M.C.A. Hall, Wexford, 1972, catalogue no. 20;
’Camille Souter - Solo Retrospective Exhibition’, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity
College Dublin, 1980, catalogue no. 13;
’From the Collection of Sir Basil Goulding Bart’, joint exhibition organised by
the David Hendriks Gallery and the Taylor Galleries, Dublin, 2 – 18 December,
1982, catalogue no. 73.
Literature:
Camille Souter - Solo Retrospective Exhibition, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin,
1980, black & white plate, p.20
Camille Souter has been fascinated by anatomy, physiology and biology of every
kind since her childhood. "When I was at school I used to cycle with lungs and
heart [taken from the butcher's for biology classes] around the bike…wrapped
around the handlebars" she once recalled. With insatiable curiosity, on one
occasion she even "tried to get a lung working with a bicycle pump". It was this
interest that led her to pursue her first career in nursing in Guy's Hospital,
London from 1948 to 1952. Walking around the wards, gave her an acute awareness
of fragile human flesh. No matter how severe the injury, it seemed to retain a
mysterious beauty.
`Hanging Meat with Cows Heart’ is one of the earliest works from Souter's "Meat
Series", one of the most important and distinguished series of paintings by any
Irish artist of the twentieth century. Commentators have noted that when her
husband the sculptor Frank Morris died in 1970, "she began to paint
slaughterhouses and meat". There was however, absolutely no connection between
the two events. Nor was it connected with the death of her father Warren Holmes
in 1973 from bowel cancer. She had been working outside Calary bog (that is to
say she had been painting other subjects besides the bog) for a few years before
Frank died. Precursors may be found in the Dead Sheep and sharks that appeared
in her paintings from as early as 1960. The meat series was actually inspired by
a visit to a slaughterhouse in Les Halles, Paris, in the early 1970s. Her friend
Phillip Cuthbert had come along but as he was not a painter, he was obliged to
remain outside. Souter found the colours of hanging meat, "absolutely,
gorgeously…beautiful". The butchers in the slaughterhouse were "as skilled as
surgeons… you could immediately tell who was doing a good dissection".
Upon returning to Dublin she attempted to gain access to a slaughterhouse in
Bray. The owners, unlike their French counterparts, were quite suspicious and it
was a year before they would allow her to enter. Meanwhile, she spent a lot of
time looking through butcher shop windows. This work is almost certainly based
on such an experience. Those describing the interior of the abattoir itself tend
to use warmer shades of cadmium red and alizarin crimson. The colouring here is
generally more muted and the mood more distant. One feels somewhat removed (as
though on the other side of a window) but at the same time the quiescent,
sketch-like execution gives the meat an unmistakable, haunting quality. Indeed
the longer one looks, the more compelling it seems to become.
Quote from a conversation with the artist 5 November 2001
2 See biographical section of Camille Souter catalogue ( Douglas Hyde Gallery,
1980) by Cyril Barrett.
3 In another catalogue, I gave the date of the visit as late 1969. On
reflection, however, the artist suggests it was some time in the early
seventies, in 1971 or 1972.
4 Quotes from the first interview I conducted with Souter in February 1998.
Garrett Cormican, January 2003
Garrett Cormican was exhibition advisor and artist’s biographer for the recent
retrospective exhibition of Camille Souter held in the RHA. He is currently
working closely with the artist on a new publication concerned with her work.
€8,000-€10,000 (£5,200-£6,500 sterling approx.)
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