Nude Study, Samoa

In the summer of 1923, Mary Swanzy embarked on an extraordinary voyage west, leaving Europe and travelling across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to reach Hawaii. Staying with cousins in Honolulu, she spent several months exploring the island, creating a series of vibrant compositions that capture the lush landscape, and the dynamics of life among its inhabitants. The following May, Swanzy’s adventurous spirit and insatiable curiosity drove her to venture even further, sailing 2600 miles south to reach the islands of Samoa, an intrepid move for a woman travelling on her own at this time. Though she had no family connections there, nor any knowledge of the language or local customs, the artist was drawn to the remote archipelago and its extraordinary landscape, which left her “stunned by how many greens there were in the world” (quoted in Mary Swanzy: Voyages, exh. cat., The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2018, p. 71).

Nude Study, Samoa is a rare and important work from this pioneering trip, depicting an unknown Samoan woman as she poses for the artist in what appears to be her makeshift studio. While the majority of Swanzy’s impressions of the indigenous population depict figures of all ages going about their daily lives, immersed in the jungle vegetation and bathed in the bright, warm sunlight of the tropics as they worked, here she returns to a more traditional form of artistic study, focusing on the reclining nude female figure in an interior setting. Resting on a divan filled with layers of multicoloured fabrics, the young woman appears relaxed as she gazes at something beyond the edge of the canvas, seemingly unconcerned about her state of undress—indeed, Nude Study, Samoa is the only known example from Swanzy’s Samoan paintings in which the figure appears unclothed. Here, Swanzy celebrates the inherent strength of the female body, capturing the rich nuance of her subject’s skin tone, as well as the soft curves of her body, in delicate layers of subtly variegated brushstrokes.