‘The wandering artist’: Peripatetic modernisms in the career of Mary Swanzy, c. 1900-1947

Lyons, Cai B. (2023). ‘The wandering artist’: Peripatetic modernisms in the career of Mary Swanzy, c. 1900-1947. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is the first to advance a sustained and critical study of Mary Swanzy’s career and the artwork she produced between 1900 and 1947. An artist difficult to place geographically, stylistically, and nationally, her artworks engaged in modernist aesthetic idioms from the turn of the twentieth century until her death in 1978. She journeyed between Dublin, London, and Paris, all centres of international, cosmopolitan artistic exchange, but remains relatively unknown outside of Ireland. The two questions at the heart of this thesis are, firstly, how did a woman artist, with complicated and shifting identities, position herself as a professional artist? In answering this first question, my aim is not to simply rehabilitate Swanzy’s individual reputation, but rather illuminate her professional career and critical agency. Secondly, I ask how do Swanzy’s artworks manifest, communicate, or demonstrate engage with European modernisms? In response, this thesis explores the potential of Swanzy’s professional cosmopolitan exhibiting practice and peripatetic art-making in closing the distance between different modernist aesthetic idioms and geographical locations. The where of her artworks, their production and display, collapse the perception of spatial distance between Ireland, Britain, France, central-eastern Europe, America, and the Pacific. Associations that once seemed distant and remote are imbued with meaning and connection as points of contact through the artist’s exhibiting practice and artworks. I argue Swanzy carved out a contingent position as a transitional figure, where her paintings can be viewed concurrently as Irish, British, European, cosmopolitan, colonial, modernist, and avant-garde, as she established a career mobilised between urban centres and was thus required to occupy multiple contexts simultaneously.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):