52 / 138
52
59
Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929) The Helmet (1956)signed lower right & dated ‘56
watercolour
55 x 38.20cm (21 x 15in)
Provenance:
Collection of Gordon Lambert
Dawson Gallery, Dublin (label verso)
Private Collection
Literature:
“Helmet” 1956 Cat.29 “Camille Souter: The Mirror in the Sea” by Garrett Cormican
€3,000-5,000 (£2,343-3,906)
This early work by Camille Souter is an excellent example of mid-twentieth century European, abstract-
ed representational painting. Commentators have often assumed that they are purely abstract works but
they were never abstract in the programmatic sense that artists like Wassily Kandinsky, or Mainie Jellet
might have understood it. One might say that some of their abstract paintings were not intended to rep-
resent anything other than the paintings themselves. By contrast, Souter has always strived to represent
real experience albeit sometimes in a highly abstracted mode. She has described her early works more
as signs or symbols (i.e. for something real) rather than abstract. She dislikes the term “abstract”. She is
not interested in describing reality with the kind of verisimilitude one finds in academic art or in photo-
graphs. What interests her is how the mind interprets, re-interprets and recalls lived experience in paint.
This work has most in common with the style known as tachisme, art informel or lyrical abstraction. The
style emerged in late 1940s’ Paris and developed in Italy and Britain. The term describes a form of paint-
ing that where the physical properties of the medium, the flow of paint and gesture were particularly
important. Tachisme refers strictly to small patches of colour. At the time, this work was produced the
style would have been considered very avant-garde. The shows at one of the galleries where Souter ex-
hibited in London, for example, were described in the Guardian newspaper as ‘Fiercely non-figurative,
violently tachiste, remarkably international.’ There was nothing comparable in Ireland.
The work comprises of patches of colour overlayed with black lines akin to a stained glass window.
Only four colours are used. The overall atmosphere is warm. It is hard to be sure exactly what the motif
represents or signifies which makes it all the more intriguing. There is a simple title on the back of it,
Helmet, which may or may not be the artist’s title for the work. We do know, however, that it was painted
1956 and one suspects not long after the artist, her husband Frank and two children had moved into a
basement flat in Fitzwilliam Place. Souter painted under a barred window at the front of it. They didn’t
have a bed but someone gave them a carpet which they rolled up in every night. For a time they shared
their lodgings with Mutz, a former German soldier and painter. ‘Sometimes, in the basement, he would
imitate a German military band with the top of a bin’ the artist once recalled. Could this be the soldier’s
Helmet? We may never know for sure and on one level, it doesn’t really matter. This is a beautiful work
which can be enjoyed for its visual qualities alone.
Quote from an article by Stephen Bone The Guardian 2nd December 1957. Reproduced in New Vision
56-66 exhibition catalogue 1984, p.3 by Denis Bowen and Margaret Garlake.
Garrett Cormican February 2016