ADAM'S - Important Irish Art Auction - 31st May 2017 (Click Lot title for more images and to Place Bid)

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Oil on canvas, 61 x 45cm (24 x 17¾’’)
Signed and dated (19)’84 verso
Provenance: From the Collection of the late Gillian Bowler.
Basil Blackshaw HRUA (1932-2016) was born in Glengormley but his family moved soon after to Boardmills, Co. Down.
He studied at Art College in Belfast in the late 1940s. In 1951 Blackshaw was awarded a scholarship by the Committee
for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, to study in Paris. It was at this time that he encountered the work of a
number of artists that were to have an enduring impact on his career. A major retrospective of Blackshaw’s work was
held in 1974 at the Arts Council Gallery in Belfast, and another in 1995 was organised by the Arts Council of Northern
Ireland. The latter was exhibited at the Ormeau Baths, Royal Hibernian Academy, Crawford Municipal Gallery, and a
selection of the works travelled to the United States for a further tour. In 2001 he was the recipient of the Glen Dimplex
Award for a Sustained Contribution to the Visual Arts. He exhibited at the Ulster Museum, Belfast in 2002 and a mono-
graph was published on the artist by Eamonn Mallie in 2003. In 2012 the Royal Hibernian Academy in conjunction with
the F.E. McWilliam Gallery organised a substantial retrospective of the artist’s work entitled ‘Blackshaw at 80’. He was a
member of Aosdana, RUA and Associate Member of the RHA.
‘Head of a Traveller ’ painted in 1984 is quite different from much of Blackshaw’s figurative work and portraiture.
This work demonstrates a relatively broad palette compared to that generally found in the artist’s practice. It is
almost as if Blackshaw has sculpted the head from earth and clay, such are the modelling marks that could have as
easily been made with the hands; fingers and thumbs, as with the brush. The subject’s visage is characterful in its
rendering; he has one blue eye, one brown, a prominent nose, dark shadowed chin and long unkempt jet-black hair.
The painting is powerful and memorable and it portrays a depth of character in the man portrayed that clearly left
an intense impression on the artist. In 1985, Mike Catto wrote; ‘The superb Heads of Travellers were far from lovely
- no stage Irish rustics these; instead the artist gave us stripped down direct faces. There was an effect almost of a
blurred out-of-focus photograph in these faces, a sensation which has echoed in many of his figures over the years.’
(Aer Lingus Cara Magazine, 1985). While Catto is certainly accurate in his description of this group of works, this
work ‘Head of a Traveller’ stands apart from the others. It gives the impression, for a number of reasons, that it was
the first portrait the artist produced on this theme; It is more detailed, expressionist, and demonstrates a broader
palette; although the man’s face is turned to the side, his eyes look directly at the viewer in a confrontational stare;
in terms of connection of expression, it is akin to Roderic O’Conor’s ‘Breton Peasant Woman Knitting ’ 1893, in the
intensity of execution and striped treatment of the corduroy jacket the traveller wears - this handling contrasts with
that of the other works in the group that feel closer to Barrie Cooke in palette and finishing. Indeed it stands apart
to such a degree that it seems closer to other works by Blackshaw than these portraits on the same subject. Dr
Fionna Barber felt that; ‘The expressionist brushstroke never totally describes the faces of his sitters; rather it sug-
gests a pictorial equivalent to their presence.’ (F.E. McWilliam Gallery, 2012, p28). When writing about an earlier work
entitled ‘The Field’ by Blackshaw, Brian Fallon commented on the ‘uninhibited brushwork and almost Expressionist
vehemence’ of the painting. (Obituary, The Irish Times, May 6, 2016). These attributes can also be seen in ‘Head of a
Traveller’ painted some thirty years later. One of the defining aspects of Blackshaw’s work is the inherent challenge
of the struggle of articulation. He was an artist who embraced this struggle as necessary and fundamental to the
process; ‘...This is a man who has learnt that he was once too close to his subject matter; a man who would love to
be an abstract painter but is not; a man who can make scale, surface and the emotional temperature of colour co-
alesce; a man who has learnt to avoid the slick or clever brushstroke, or the purely descriptive brushstroke in favour
of a painter’s marks.’ (Brian McAvera, Irish Arts Review, Winter 2002, p59). This portrait of an unnamed traveller is
the epitome of the coalescence of ‘scale surface and the emotional temperature of colour’ and it has certainly been
informed by the artist’s vision and his unique ‘painter’s marks.’
Marianne O’Kane Boal, April 2017
€ 10,000 - 15,000