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106 Basil Blackshaw HRHA RUA (b.1932)
Treescape
Oil on canvas, 50 x 60cm (23½ x 19¾)
Signed
Exhibited: “Basil Blackshaw” Exhibition The Keys Gallery, Derry January 1977, where purchased by late Dr
Millen from whom acquired.
Blackshaw’s reputation as one of Ireland’s foremost painters of rural life is well documented, and well
deserved. His work until the mid 1980s was concerned with painting the world around him, from the
unsentimental images of animals whose expressions and movements he knew thoroughly, to the hills and
mountains of the Lagan Valley.
From the start of his career, Blackshaw would often paint the same landscape, that with which he was most
familiar, to enable him to express a deeper understanding of its characteristics, as they change every time.
He was concerned with the relationship of everything in the landscape from the trees and fields in the
foreground, to the equally important mountain and the sky in the distance.
Early recognition (the Ulster Museum bought ‘
The Field
’, their first painting of his, in 1955 when Black-
shaw was just 23) led to further development of the landscape as a subject. As his career progressed, specific
identification of place began to fade as a main concern, and the artist concentrated on the primary visual
encounter. In this painting, the visual qualities of the materials themselves are key - the marks made by the
artist on the canvas and the variations of colour, from swathes of grey to bright streaks of cerulean blue.
The colour blooms out from the canvas, and the artist’s brush alternates between heavier defined patches
to lighter washes of colour, at times letting the paint do his work for him and drip its way down. He nev-
er goes for an overly polished finish, instead leaving the viewer with a precarious sense that if the light
changed we could be looking at something completely different.
His blending of visual elements, lightness of touch and willingness to experiment (always with an assured
approach to his subject) proves Fionna Barber’s description of him as “a visual poet of the rural” (Black-
shaw at 80, 2012).
Claire Dalton
2014
€6,000 - 8,000