Swiney, Owen
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- Swiney, Owen
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(1676 - 1754) [also called Eugenio McSwiny, MacSwinny, McSwiney, Swinny] impresario; s. of the Rev. Miles Swiney of Ballyteige, Co.Wexford; Trin. Dublin 1694; came to London 1706 as manager of the Queen's Theatre, Haymarket; left London in 1713; last years spent as storekeeper at the King's Mews.
- 1715 - 32 Rome (Jul. 1715 - 1716), Padua (13 Jun. 1716); Venice (c.1720 - 13 Apr. 1731) with visits to Padua (24 Jun. 1721, Mar. 1722) [Amsterdam (Sep. 1722); Vienna (Jun. - Jul. 1724)] Bologna (Nov. 1725; Jul. 1726), Padua (Sep. 1726; Apr. 1728), Bologna (Mar. 1729; Jul. 1730), Rome (Jul. - Aug. 1730), Florence (Aug. - Sep.), Milan (Sep. 1730) [Malta, Lisbon, etc.] Venice [Paris Dec. 1732]
1733 - 8 several visits from England to Venice and Padua
Swiney left the Haymarket theatre in January 1713 after the second performance of Handel's Teseo, his company and the theatre in debt (although the debts were apparently repaid).1 He lived in France and in Italy (he had already translated libretti from both those languages), and was first noticed in Rome, 'Swinny yt was a sort of director of ye play house' in July 1715;2 at Easter 1716 'Eugenio Souini Inglese heretico' was living in the parish of S.Andrea delle Fratte. On 13 June 1716 'Eugenio Swinny' was in Padua,3 and on 14 September he was enrolled at the University; he was again in Padua on 24 June 1721, in March 1722 (when he was said to be returning to England with Thomas Bourchier4) and September 1726. By this time it would appear that Swiney had settled in Venice, where he was to operate during the next ten years as an impresario, commissioning and handling paintings for sale in England and obtaining singers and libretti for the Italian opera in London.
Sometime before 1722 he had lived in consul Joseph Smith's house in Venice where he had learned a little about accounting, and Smith evidently helped him at times in his finances.5 By 1721 he was acting in Venice as an agent for Rosalba Carriera with British travellers; he paid her for Brodrick's portrait in August 1725.6 He promoted the young Canaletto, though he was dubious of his talent and temperament: 'of Twenty pieces I see of him I don't like eighteen ... He's a covetous, greedy fellow', Swiney told a client, John Conduitt, in 1730.7 He was also collecting pictures for sale; in June and July 1724 he was in Vienna selling pictures he had collected in Italy.8 A great deal of his energy went in the commissioning of a remarkable series of large allegorical paintings by 'the most celebrated Painters in Italy', commemorating great men of recent English history.9 By 1726 fifteen such paintings had been started; each was to contain an urn 'wherein is supposed to be deposited the Remains of the deceas'd Hero', while the architectural settings alluded to 'the Virtues, to the Imployments, or to the Learning and Sciences of the Departed'. Swiney devised the subject matter, and commissioned some fifteen artists (mostly from Venice and Bologna) to contribute figures, architecture and landscape to the twenty-four subjects. Ferraiuoli, Cimaroli and Mirandolese probably received the most work, but other painters included Piazzetta, Pittoni, Canaletto, Imperiali and Sebastiano and Marco Ricci. The results were spectacular capricci whose intended purpose, however, remained obscure. The 2nd Duke of Richmond acquired at least ten for Goodwood (where Vertue saw them in 1747), and in 1729 Swiney said that Sir William Morice bought fifteen pieces for 1,500 gns.; the series is now dispersed.(10) Swiney eventually had nine of them engraved in the Tombeaux des Princes [1741], though his intention had been to print all 24 'Sepulchral Pieces'. There had also been a second comparable series of six paintings intended for Lord Cadogan, Richmond's father-in-law, celebrating the achievements of the Duke of Marlborough; these were being discussed in 1723 but nothing is heard of them thereafter.(11)
The Duke of Richmond was also much involved with Swiney's musical activities in Venice.(12) In April 1724 Nicolo Francesco Haym, secretary of the Royal Academy of Music in London, asked Swiney to keep the Academy informed concerning operatic productions in Italy, in return for a reasonable salary. Swiney agreed but, not being a friend of Haym, he chose to do so through a series of letters addressed to the Duke of Richmond (who became a deputy governor of the Academy in 1726).(13) There was also friction with the Italian singers already in London but it was through Swiney that the alto castrato Baldi and the tenor Antinori sang in London, as well as the celebrated soprano Faustina (with whom he had agreed terms in August 1725).14 He was unable to get the young Farinelli who wished to stay in Italy to study 'the Lombard manner'. Swiney also advised on libretti: Stampiglia's Partenope, for example, should not be considered: it only succeeded in Italy because of 'a depravity of taste of the audiences'. He unsuccessfully recommended the Valeriani brothers as scene painters. The Academy was dissolved in mid- 1728, and it appears unlikely that Swiney ever recovered his expenses for the copying and sending of libretti to London. In March 1729 he had met Handel in Bologna looking for a new company of singers; in October that year his corrrespondence with the Duke of Richmond comes to an end. In the summer of 1730 he was travelling in Italy with Lord Boyne and Edward Walpole; they were in Bologna in July, about to go briefly to Rome before returning to Florence.15 In September he was in Milan, writing that he had been 'out of Venice these three months'.16 In April 1731 Swiney joined Lord Boyne and others on a sea voyage from Venice to Lisbon (see Boyne). Spence saw him in Venice sometime between November 1731 and March 1732.17
He was in Paris in December 173218 and Leiden in March 1733;19 in August 1733 he was thought to be still in Ireland, having spent 'only six days' in London; he was expected back in Venice before the end of the year.20 His subsequent movements between Italy and England are not clear. He appears (as 'D. Milesius Suin anglus') in the register of Padua University in 1734 - 5 (22 July apparet), 1735 - 6 (24 November electus), 1736 - 7 (24 November electus) and 1737 - 8 (apparet; 'anglicae nationis consiliariorum is ultimus fuit').21 He was in London on 26 February 1735, when he enjoyed a benefit performance at Drury Lane; in May 1736 the directors of the Opera of the Nobility were considering sending Swiney to Italy in search of singers.22 In 1738 he sat to van Loo in London (London art market 1987).
In 1746 he introduced Canaletto in London to the Duke of Richmond.23 He was still acting on Rosalba Carriera's behalf in London at the end of his eventful life, and in his will he directed that his debts to consul Joseph Smith should be settled before the remainder of his estate passed to the actress Peg Woffington.24 His substantial collection of pictures was sold in 1755 (Langford's, 28 Feb.).
1. This entry owes much to notes by Elizabeth Gibson (and see n12). 2. Kent letters MSS (20 Jul. 1715). 3. For Swiney in Padua, see Brown 1505, 1687, and Andrich, 73, 169. 4. Rawlinson jnl.MSS (22 Mar. 1722). 5. Constable-Links, 1:16 - 17. 6. Sani 1985, 396, 788. 7. Constable-Links, 1:14 - 15. 8. SP 80/51 (Colman, 7, 22 Jun., 28 Jul. 1724). 9. See F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters, 287 - 91, and G. Knox, Arte Veneta, 37[1983]:228 - 35. 10. Vertue, 4:149. See E. Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England, 2:239 - 42, and Knox (at n9), 231 - 4. 11. Knox (at n9), 228. 12. For his musical activity, see E. Gibson, Musical Times, 125[1984]:82 - 6. 13. Dated between 1721 - 9, at Goodwood; see Knox (at n9). Constable-Links, 1:172 - 6. Gibson (at n12). 14. HMC Cowper, 3:129. 15. R.B. Peake, Memoirs of the Colman Family, 1:17. 16. King's Coll., Cambridge; Keynes lib., Newton MS K.131 (Swiney, Milan, 27 Sep. 1730). 17. Spence Letters, 419. 18. Add. 27732, f.70 (Swiney, Paris, 12 Dec. 1732). 19. Chaloner 1950, 162 - 3. 20. Add.27732, f.219 (J. Smith, 22 Aug. 1733). 21. Andrich, 76 - 7. 22. Add.27735, f.177 (Buckworth, 13 May 1736). 23. Constable-Links, 1:33. 24. Sani 1985, 730.