Patrick J Murphy
'Painting has never come easily to Camille Souter,' Garrett Cormican concludes in his fascinating and most welcome book on the artist, which traces her hitherto uncharted artistic career to 2006 with meticulous attention to detail. His description of her as 'a restless nomad with an all-seeing eye' is apt. In 1993, for example, she painted her self-portrait as a cod's head with an eye staring coldly back at the viewer, perhaps playing on the notion of an old cod in a profession with many participants but few enough true artists of real quality. Cormican regards her as the greatest living Irish painter, a claim with which some will not agree. Few, however, will deny her prominence and importance in contemporary Irish art.

Born Betty Holmes in England in 1929, she grew up in Dun Laoghaire in middle-class business surroundings and initially trained in London as a nurse before embarking on a self-taught artistic career. An early marriage to Gordon Souter soon failed but a bout of tuberculosis and a reading of La Dame Aux CamŽlias by Alexander Dumas led her first husband to nickname her Camille after the tubercular heroine of that novel, and the name stuck thereafter. Her first artistic efforts met with limited success, though architect Michael Scott bought some early work and encouraged others to do so, including his younger partner Ronald Tallon. An initial exhibition of small works on paper at the El Habano restaurant in Dublin in 1956 sold badly and afterwards she offered a portfolio of paintings to David Hendriks of the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery in Dublin who did not agree to exhibit them but took them into stock at five pounds each. It was the economically depressed 1950s and there were few private or corporate patrons of the arts in Ireland in those days. The Arts Council was only in its infancy at that time, and Souter was then really struggling to survive. She led a bohemian lifestyle and became the mother of three children before her first breakthrough when she was awarded an Italian Government Scholarship in 1958.

With her children in tow, she travelled to Italy and stayed awhile in the vicinity of Venice and Chioggia, making monotypes and collage paintings on local newspapers, and literally living on her wits to support her family. Cormican traces the influences of Paul Klee and Joan Mir— on her work at this stage, but there was also an undoubted influence from the American action painter Jackson Pollock whose Abstract drip paintings she would have seen or heard about in London and Paris a few years earlier.

In 1959, she returned from Italy and journeyed over to Achill Island where the living was cheap and the surroundings inspirational. There, in a rented studio, she began to paint the 'Basking Shark' series using cheap local materials such as boat enamels and bicycle aluminium paints, to considerable effect. It was at this stage also that she commenced wearing her trademark crocheted fisherman's black woollen beret. Her 'Achill' paintings were stark and original, and soon caught the attention of connoisseurs such as businessman Sir Basil Goulding and artist Patrick Hickey who began to buy her work from the Dawson Gallery where the perceptive Leo Smith had taken her on as a gallery artist. It was rumoured that the dashing Sir Basil ended up buying upwards of 150 paintings by Souter, though only thirty-seven were sold off after his death through Taylor Galleries. Whatever the case, it was difficult to acquire a Souter painting in the 1960s and 1970s because she was not prolific, and destroyed anything she considered not to be of the highest standard, and Goulding bought most of what was left as soon as it emerged. Souter also generously bought occasional works herself by Nano Reid and Grace Henry, when sources permitted.

In 1960, she married Arklow-born sculptor Frank Morris and they managed to buy White Piers, a run-down residence on Calary Bog in County Wicklow which gave her the opportunity to garden and paint the local landscape with a delicate, individual colour sense which excels. Here she produced some of her finest works including Here Comes Spring and Winter Came. She never painted by artificial light and many paintings have the admonition 'best seen in natural daylight' on the backs of the pictures. Unusually, she has also only regularly painted in oils on paper, finding canvas too coarse for her purposes. She sold her pictures quietly at modest prices through the Dawson Gallery and her green 'Canal' series followed the golden 'Calary' series until the shock of her husband Frank Morris' sudden death in 1970 drove her soon afterwards to paint her monumental raw red 'Slaughterhouse' and 'Meat' series, though she says these were not directly related. Her reputation was now increasing and her subsequent solo exhibition 'Some Irish Fish' at the Dawson Gallery in 1977 was an immediate sell-out. Afterwards she learned to fly and painted the runways and aircraft at Shannon Airport, before returning to live in Achill. A series of paintings based on the Gulf War followed in the 1990s. Souter's output seems to have reduced in recent years and only time will tell if the high quality of her earlier work has been sustained.

Today she enjoys a fine reputation. Camille Souter is a true, reclusive artist of the highest integrity and deepest humanity. When she approached Leo Smith for a loan one Christmas, he immediately handed her a few hundred pounds only to discover afterwards that she had given it to the travellers at the end of her road in Calary so that they could enjoy Christmas. When she was in line to be chosen for inclusion in the Rosc 1984 International Exhibition, she declined the honour by refusing, on principle, to admit the international jurors to her studio. Since then she has been honoured by various retrospective exhibitions and a number of prestigious awards. Garrett Cormican's wonderful account of her life and work, beautifully illustrated in many large colour plates, does her full justice, and art-lovers a considerable service. Whyte's generous sponsorship of the publication is also to be greatly commended.
This is a book to be treasured.

Patrick J Murphy is Art Adviser to the Government and an Honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.