Works of: Adelaide Hamp Swift

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Artist Info

Adelaide Hamp Swift

Adelaide Swift was born on a trek near Beaconsfield, South Africa. Her father died shortly after, leaving her mother, Annie Swift, to extricate her and her brother and sister from the Boer War. The family settled in Beaconsfield, Bucks. Adelaide went to Oakdene School, Beaconsfield, from which she won an open scholarship to read English at St Hugh's, Oxford. She never took this up, choosing instead to attend the Central School where her fellow students included Myrtle Fasken, Mary Crookshank, Cicely Griffiths and Hilda Quick. She worked mainly in watercolour and wood engraving and linocuts. She painted, mainly in England, but also in France and Belgium.

She exchanged pictures with fellow artists including Myrtle Fasken, John Piper, Noel Rooke, and her very successful architect uncle, Stanley Hamp. She married Clifford Roy Kerwood in 1926, an administrative civil servant, and thereafter painted very little.

A reference to Mr A. Swift's work by Malcolm Salamon in "The Woodcut of Today at Home and Abroad" (Studio, 1927) refers to her work. She exhibited six prints with the Society of Wood Engravers (SWE) between 1922 and 1928.

Two engravings by Adelaide Hamp Swift, "Geese" and "Glendalough" were printed in the Penrose Annual for 1923, from blocks lent by the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

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