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拍品專文
Filled with a vivid sense of colour and drama, The Day of Judgement is an enigmatic allegorical painting from Mary Swanzy, which showcases the continual evolution of her style throughout her mature career. Swanzy was an eclectic painter, absorbing different ideas, techniques and idioms from across the history of art in her work, which she then translated through her own unique vision.
In The Day of Judgement, she appears to draw from both the example of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance and the mysterious compositions of the Symbolists, presenting the viewer with a strange, apocalyptic scene, in which a series of red-robed figures mourn the deaths of a group of men and women, as an army of angels and ethereal beings look on. While the subject and title recall religious paintings such as Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, Swanzy’s composition appears to centre on the more universal themes of grief, loss, and desperation, rather than questions of morality and condemnation. There is a sculptural solidity to the figures in the foreground, their forms described in strong, fluid contours that emphasise their corporeal presence, while the rich palette of deep reds, blues and greens are carefully arranged on the canvas in delicate, semi-transparent glazes that evoke the effects of stained glass. Together, these elements reveal Swanzy’s experimental approach to colour and line during this period of her career, as she continued to push her painterly skills in new, expressive directions.
In The Day of Judgement, she appears to draw from both the example of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance and the mysterious compositions of the Symbolists, presenting the viewer with a strange, apocalyptic scene, in which a series of red-robed figures mourn the deaths of a group of men and women, as an army of angels and ethereal beings look on. While the subject and title recall religious paintings such as Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, Swanzy’s composition appears to centre on the more universal themes of grief, loss, and desperation, rather than questions of morality and condemnation. There is a sculptural solidity to the figures in the foreground, their forms described in strong, fluid contours that emphasise their corporeal presence, while the rich palette of deep reds, blues and greens are carefully arranged on the canvas in delicate, semi-transparent glazes that evoke the effects of stained glass. Together, these elements reveal Swanzy’s experimental approach to colour and line during this period of her career, as she continued to push her painterly skills in new, expressive directions.