Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929) Cycling to Chioggia Oil , plaka and printer's ink on paper, 68.5 x 48.1cm (27 x 19'') Signed and dated April (19)'61 Provenance: With Taylor Galleries, label verso; ex Basil Goulding Collection; Literature: 'The Mirror in the Sea: Camille Souter' by Garrett Cormican, catalogue no.130. Camille Souter, who first went to Italy in her mid-twenties, said that 'the first time I went to Italy I felt I was going home.' It was, also, where she began to sell her paintings: 'it was in Trieste, Melegnano and Milan that I really started to sell'. A second trip to Italy in 1958 came about when she was awarded an Italian Government Scholarship and she, then twenty-nine, headed off with three very small children, Natasha, Shelley, Gino, aged three, two and one. And 'contrary to several reports, I did not cycle across Europe on a bicycle!' But this work Cycling to Chioggia would suggest that in Italy she did cycle to Chioggia, a little fishing town fifteen miles south of Venice. Painted in April 1961, it's a memory painting. As is Il Papa E' Morto, also dated 'April 61', a work that remembers the newspaper headlines announcing the death of Pius XII that Souter saw when she was there in October 1958. A third work, Buon Divertimento [meaning Good Time], a work dated 1958, is similar in terms of palette and technique. Of these three Italian-themed works Cycling to Chioggia is the one that sings with life and movement. Bold strokes, marvellously brushworked in plum and blue verticals and that zinging light- orange against a very light puce, create a work that is filled with energy and a delightful sense of humour. A vertical stroke at the base grounds the work and as the eye moves upwards it meets nine wheels outlined with childlike delight to achieve a lovely airiness. Pollock and Klein could certainly be seen as influences and asked if her work, in the 1950s, had been influenced by Jackson Pollock, Souter replied: 'all painting is action painting' and 'I thought of all that Jackson Pollock period as a good, exciting way to use paint. It gave me the feeling that you can do anything with paint' adding that 'seeing the Pollocks and Kleins in Paris I knew I could use anything - aluminium paint, black enamel bicycle paint, a wonderful salmon pink, and a few precious tubes of cadmiums. It opened the door, so when I had no money I realised I can use anything, any kind of paint.' Souter's use of oil, plaka paint and printer's ink for Cycling to Chioggia proves that. Born Northampton 1929 and originally called Betty Pamela Holmes, she moved to Ireland 'when I was about three-and-a-half'. After school, Souter, who 'wanted to be a nurse from the age of seven or eight', went to London at nineteen to train at Guy's. Having had TB when she was twenty-one, and being 'wan and thin' was named Camille after the tubercular heroine in the Alexandre Dumas novel La Dame aux Camélias. Her husband Gordon Souter meant the new surname. Elusive, private, and no self-promoter of her own work, Camille Souter believes that 'as a painter you spend your time looking out on the world. You almost feel as if you're invisible because your job is looking.' Her output, though small, is highly-prized. Souter has had a studio home in Achill since 1956 and her Achill studio is 'a black metal shed. Two skylights. Very private. Concrete floor. Six girders had to be sunk deep into cement because of the weather.' Souter only paints in natural light and prefers that her works be viewed in daylight. Robert O'Byrne sees her as 'a painter of outstanding skill and sensitivity'. Brian Fallon praises her 'perfectionist working methods'. For Fallon, she has held 'a central position in Irish painting' and he describes her vision as 'a very human and affectionate one'. Camille Souter was elected Saoi of Aosdana in 2008, the first woman painter and the second woman ever to be so honoured and when Trinity College conferred an honorary Litt.D on Camille Souter in June 2015 she was described as 'an exceptional painter' and 'one of the most revered living artists in Ireland'. Her work is held in important collections including The Hugh Lane, IMMA, Ulster Museum, Crawford Art Gallery, The Arts Council, OPW, UCD, TCD, UCC. Asked if a painting should say something she replied: 'It has to have a subject matter, otherwise it's just design. There has to be some passion behind it, a rapport between the painter and the world. A painting is pulling in so many things from light, time, subject matter'. For Souter, 'a painter is trying to grasp a vital element in almost a second of time'. And just as time is always a vital element in a novel, so too in painting. In Souter's Cycling to Chioggia, time is present . . . . In this instance, an exhilarating and happy time. Niall MacMonagle, May 2021