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147.
BASIL BLACKSHAW HRHA HRUA (B.1932)
Sitting Nude (1990)
Oil on paper, 61 x 51.5cm (24 x 20¼”)
Provenance: A gift from the artist to the present owners
Exhibited: “Basil Blackshaw Retrospective” Touring Exhibition ANCI 1995
“Blackshaw at 80” Exhibition, The Gordon Gallery, March 2013
Literature: “Blackshaw at 80” Exhibition”, plate 26, illustrated plate 67 p.17
“Basil Blackshaw - Painter “ by Brian Ferran illustrated p.122
Painted at the end of a turbulent but highly important decade for Blackshaw, this nude figure denoted a progression both in style and subject
for an artist already renowned and celebrated for his remarkable animal studies and landscapes. A devastating studio fire in 1983 coincided
with a period of re-assessment by the artist - ‘’About ‘81 or ‘82 I looked at the work and thought if that’s what’s going to go on, then I’m going
to pack up painting because there’s no point. I know what I’m going to paint, I know how to paint it and I know what it’s going to look like when
it’s done. There’s no exploration, no chance taken’’ (conversation with the artist Feb 2007). The fire destroyed the beginnings of a new body of
work but it also liberated him from the constraints of his artistic training and unleashed a newly exuberant, risk taking but confident, spirit. This
nude is a powerful example of his fresh treatment of a traditional subject. Meeting his model Jude Stephens in the year after the fire inspired a
significant series of nudes informed by hours of life study, works which Blackshaw often destroyed in order to build back up again, in his spirit
of retaining the painting as a purely visual experience, removed from association with the subject.
We thank Claire Dalton whose previous writings formed the basis of this note.
€10,000 - 15,000