Adam's The Antoinette and Patrick J.Murphy Collection 23rd October 2019

144 132 PATRICK COLLINS HRHA (1911-1994) Ponies Running Wild on Errisbeg Oil on board, 60 x 75cm (23.6 x 29.5“) Signed Exhibited: Tom Caldwell Gallery, Dublin, solo exhibition; Arts Council of Ireland, ‘ The Delighted Eye’ , Catalogue No.13; Sligo Art Gallery, ‘Patrick Collins Retrospective’ , 1985; David Hendriks Gallery, Dublin June 1970, Catalogue No. 1; Cork Arts Society, March 1973, Catalogue No. 28; Belltable Gallery, Limerick, April 1981, Catalogue No. 36. Literature: ‘ Contemporary Irish Art ’ by Roderic Knowles, 1982, colour plate p.107; Frances Ruane, ‘ The Delighted Eye’, Arts Councils of Ireland, 1980, illustrated; Frances Ruane, ‘Patrick Collins ’, Arts Councils of Ireland, 1982, pp. 55, 57 (illus), 59, 110. € 15,000 - 20,000 Like most of his works, Ponies Running Wild on Errisbeg was painted from the artist’s memory because he wanted the physical appearance of the subject to give way to his poetic interpretation, distilled over time. The initial sub- ject is the starting point for a semi-abstract composition that is an independent entity with an internal logic and meaning all its own. Ponies, buildings, boundary walls and mountaintop are fragments of the environment that float on the surface. They are nearly abstract, crusty, staccato surface notations set against an unbounded space. Collins is drawn to subdued colours, with edges softened by the diffused light of an overcast Irish day. The domi- nant earth tones of this painting are electrified by shafts of pink and yellow-green and by a large patch of watery blue that reflects the sky. In true Collins style, light emanates from somewhere deep under the translucent sur- face. While some shapes are aligned with the perimeter, others seem to be pulled towards an imaginary central magnetic point. This opposition between edge and centre gives the composition a dynamic rotating movement. Collins is a rare artist who has combined a desire to paint something truly indigenous, romantic subjects at the very heart of rural Ireland, with a sophisticated international approach to abstract picture making. Unlike most Irish landscape painters, Collins consciously avoided depicting the picturesque. Rather than ‘land- scape’, works like this one are more about ‘the land’, with implicit references to use and ownership. Here we can see in the defined edges of the painting, the familiar boundary walls that define a rural ‘holding’. This ‘frame within a frame’ also serves to separate the scene from the observed world, reminding us that Collins has brought it into the timeless realm of poetic imagination. He takes all the intimate furniture of the landscape, all those walls and sheds, and obscures them with mist and light. They become nearly forgotten images from his memory, lost through time in a lonely and desolate landscape. Dr Frances Ruane HRHA, July 2019