Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 27 MARCH 2024

42 30 PATRICK COLLINS HRHA (1910-1994) Spring Morning (1957) Oil on board, 91 x 120cm (35¾ x 47¼) Signed Provenance: Collection of Sir Basil Goulding, thence by descent to the current owner. Exhibited: Dublin, IELA 1957, cat. no. 6; Dublin, Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, April 1959, Patrick Collins , cat. no. 18; New York, Wollman Hall, Twelve Irish Painters , Oct/Nov 1963, cat. no.18; Dublin, ROSC 1971, Irish Imagination , cat. no.18; Dublin, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Patrick Collins Retrospective , 1982, cat. no. 9, later touring to The Ulster Museum, Belfast and The Crawford Gallery, Cork. € 30,000 - 50,000 Patrick Collins is recognised as being a key figure in the semi-abstract poetic genre that characterised post-war Irish art. Spring Morning has the soft grey light, the at- mospheric quality, and the feeling of moisture that we associate with this artist and which is completely compat- ible with the Irish countryside. The painting marked a sig- nificant leap in Collins’s development—the composition is more complex, and the brushstrokes bolder and more gestural. His use of colour is also more varied, with pale lemons and creams, interspersed with slivers of pink, set against the subdued blues and greys that previous- ly dominated his work . Here he infused the surface with new found energy and liveliness. Like its companion piece, Moorland Water , Collins pushed abstraction to much greater limits than ever be- fore. Spring Morning is a buoyant, fresh, light-filled vision of spring, with gusts of wind seeming to blow through the picture, setting the forms in motion. The cottage fuses with the surrounding countryside like so many parts of a jigsaw puzzle locking together on the surface. However, the visual excitement of the piece comes with the com- position seeming to explode outwardly, threatening to break out of the rectangle. There is a dramatic U-shape which runs down the right side of the cottage, breaking out of the rectangle’s lower edge, and then bending up- ward. Although Collins has embraced abstraction, the subject of the picture remains unmistakable. The artist avoided an obviously picturesque view as he tried, instead, to get closer to capturing the sensations inspired by na- ture. Within this protective womb-like shape we find a place imbued with life. We can sense the freedom Col- lins experienced as a young boy who explored the rivers, lakes, fields and woods around Sligo. Typical of Collins, the motif doesn’t extend to the edges of the canvas but floats within a painted ‘ frame’ that deliberately separates it from the present. The artist draws on memory, where details are isolated, condensed, merged and blurred, but where the essence of the recollection is communicated. Collins’s vigorous brushwork, the deliberately flattened picture space, and his movement towards increased ab- straction suggest that he was influenced by Abstract Ex- pressionism, which dominated the international art world of the 1950s. However, like his Irish contemporaries, he was reluctant to embrace total abstraction. He loved his trees and stones, believing that you lose something im- portant if you completely let go of the seen world. He once said to Brian Lynch: “Nature…nature is an awful word but what the hell can you say?—there’s so much out- side that if you don’t use it you’re a fool.” Dr Frances Ruane HRHA February 2023