ART & ARTISTS: Betty Swanwick

Monday, 10 March 2025

Betty Swanwick - part 2

Betty Swanwick's long and varied career encompassed writing novelettes, painting, illustration and design. A true visionary, Swanwick's works are influenced by her own dreams and are highly spiritual. Described by Chris Beetles as a 'watercolourist of mystical symbolism enriched with a strange beauty', Swanwick's pieces use symbolism to convey an understanding of the complexity of life. This type of narrative, visionary work occurred late in the artist's career. Swanwick initially studied at Goldsmiths College of Art, and her first commissions were primarily for murals. Her mural work, such as the piece commissioned for the Rocket restaurant during the Festival of Britain in 1951, contain a sense of joy and fun that would go on to underpin Swanwick's practice for the following decades. The artist herself, however, considered her later narrative pieces to be her best work. Swanwick resigned from her teaching post at Goldsmith’s College, which was prompted by the formalisation of arts education, a change that resulted in what Swanwick described as a 'cultural narrowness'. This refusal to bow to convention is evident throughout Swanwick's career, which consistently valued eccentricity and originality over conformity.

The English pastoral landscapes that recur both in Swanwick's early work and later narrative pieces often act as the setting for myths or Biblical scenes. Pandora (lot 120), a watercolour where the Greek myth is re-imagined in a field of beehives, is a typical example of this. As a result of her use of the English pastoral, many critics have drawn a link between the artist and Stanley Spencer, whose own paintings and drawings, such as the Marriage at Cana series (lots 30 – 33), also placed Biblical events in a contemporary English context. Swanwick repeatedly refuted this link, instead listing Samuel Palmer and William Blake as her key influences. By placing herself within the context of Palmer and Blake, Swanwick was referring to, in her own words, 'a small tradition of English painting that is a bit eccentric, a little odd and a little visionary'. The following collection of works, amassed over several decades, provide a unique insight into this eccentric, odd and visionary work, that conveys life in all its complexity.

For more information and for earlier works see part 1 also.

This is part 2 of a 2-part series on the works of Betty Swanwick.

1980 The Monaghan Shroud
watercolour on paper 49 x 52 cm

1980s Study of the artist's cat Bewick
pencil on paper 12 x 17.5 cm

1981 The Walk to the Paradise Garden
pencil & watercolour on paper 43.3 x 40.6 cm

1981 The Grain of Mustard Seed
pencil & watercolour on paper 62.8 x 45.1 cm
exhibited in the Royal Academy, London 1982

1982 The Right Chair for the Occasion
pencil & watercolour on paper 60.5 x 50.2 cm

1982 Ophelia
pencil & watercolour on paper 53 x 46.5 cm

1982 Feeding the Flocks
pencil & watercolour on paper 54.5 x 71.5 cm
exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition 1983

1984 The Retreat
pencil on paper 49.5 x 52.1 cm

1984 Study for The Key of the Kingdom
pencil on paper 54.3 x 21 cm

1985 The Wine Divine
pencil on paper 50.8 x 60.9 cm
exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London 1987

1985 Preparatory sketch for The Parliament of the Yard
pencil on paper 73 x 34.5 cm
exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition, London 1987