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Camille Souter HRHA (b.1929)
Blasted Ballyorney
Oil on paper, 43 x 35cm (16.9 x 13.8”)
Signed and dated 1962
Provenance: withThe Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Sir Basil Goulding
Blasted Ballyorney
features in Garrett Cormican’s biography of
Camille Souter,
The Mirror in the Sea
. He writes that her most
important collector, Sir Basil Goulding, offered her the use of a
small farmhouse at the top of the Ballyorney Road near Enn-
iskerry to work in. Every day she would take three children on
her bicycle into Enniskerry for school. After dropping them off,
she would make the arduous journey back up to the top of the
Ballyorney Road. With the constant travelling up and down the
hill, the building came to be known as ‘the little Hell studio’. Her
deep irritation and discomfort boiled to the surface in at least
one painting :
Blasted Ballyorney
. Here we see her frustration at
the constant to-ing and fro-ing on her child-laden bicycle as she
juggles career and motherhood. Not such a modern dilemma after
all !
€8,000 - 12,000