120
106. *Camille Souter RHA (b.1929)
Out of a Window
Watercolour, 37.5 x 53
Signed and dated August 1957
Provenance: From the collection of Sir Basil Goulding
Exhibited: Regularly including “Camille Souter Retrospective” Douglas Hyde Gallery,Trinity, June-July
1980, Cat. No.3
Born Betty Pamela Holmes in Northhampton in 1929, Camille Souter came to Ireland when she was
just one year old, and later excelled at art at school. During her studies as a trainee nurse in Guys
Hospital, London she contracted tuberculosis. It was this illness which led to her being called Camille.
Whilst recuperating she began to paint again and afterwards decided to give up nursing and devote
herself to painting. In 1951 she married Gordon Souter.
Largely self-taught, her earlier work shows the influence of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the
strong, emotive calligraphic styles of Klee and Pollock. However, her titles were nearly always descriptive
and indicate an intended link with some aspect of the visual world. In 1956 she had her first solo shows
in Dublin restaurants and London galleries. She won an Italian Government Scholarship in 1958 and
worked for a year in Italy.
From 1959-60 she painted in Achill, where, partly through lack of money she began to use unusual
types of paint such as aluminium bicycle paint.There, her painting moved away from the excitement
and experiments of Abstract Expressionism and resolved into a quieter quasi-Impressionist mode of
landscape painting. Her brushwork is now used to convey the dramatic activity of plant growth and
moving skies.
In 1961 she married the sculptor, Frank Morris, in London.They returned to Ireland and settled on a
farm in Calary Bog, Co.Wicklow, where she raised a family of five and in the following years painted
views of her garden and the surrounding countryside. In the same year she represented Ireland at the
Paris Biennale.
Souter’s strange poignant series of slaughter house and meat paintings were initiated after her
husband’s death in 1971. A year later she also painted the subjects of factories, docks and canals.
Following on from her abattoir pictures, she exhibited a series of fish canvases, which depict the slimy
coldness of dead fish. In these paintings, however, she achieves complete cohesion, of shape, colour and
design of pollock, cod and other varieties of fish. In 1977 she won the Grand Prix Interantional de l’Art
Contemporain de Monte Carlo.
Since the early 1880s she has worked in the Shannon Industrial Estate, using airports and flying as
a theme and has taken flying lessons.The slanted view of ploughed fields and hedges seen from an
aircraft has led to her adopting a more angular approach. She now lives and works in Dublin, but
spends much of her time on Achill Island. She has exhibited widely and has been included in many
prestigious exhibitions abroad.
