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Basil Blackshaw HRHA RUA (b.1932)
THE OLD ORCHARD, 1956
oil on canvas
inscribed on Arts Council of Northern Ireland label on reverse
18½ x 28½in. (46.99 x 72.39cm)
Provenance:
de Veres, 21 November 2000, lot 302;Private collection
Exhibited:
‘Basil Blackshaw Retrospective’, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, 1995
Literature:
Ferran, Brian, Basil Blackshaw - Painter, Nicholson & Bass Ltd., Belfast, 1995, p. 44 (illustrated in colour)
The Orchard forms part of a series of intense landscapes, half way between neo-Romanticism and Expressionism, that
Basil Blackshaw painted in the mid 1950s; this series could arguably be seen as his first mature body of work after leaving
Belfast College of Art. It has a more lyrical mood than some of the darker landscapes of this time, yet remains slightly
unsettling. Many of the works of this period appear to be drawn from a specific place and motif, sometimes noted in
the title, but they create such a strong sense of mood and of powerful natural forces at work that they transcend their
particular local identity and take on a more universal quality.
It is intriguing to see in the present painting Blackshaw’s apparent awareness of a British contemporary, Alan Reynolds,
whose tensely evocative paintings of gardens and farmlands eventually moved into pure abstraction. The twisted,
interwoven branches of the trees that dominate the foreground here establish an abstract rhythm and pattern that
goes beyond description to create an almost flat, two-dimensional surface that could also be connected with post-war
gestural painting in Europe and the USA.
The buildings in the distance provide a geometric framework that is dominated by three triangles. This appears to
be the same architectural arrangement that is included in a more clearly defined form in Blackshaw’s 1957 painting
November Cottage. Buildings are often integrated within the landscapes he painted in this period, providing an
architectural structure that Blackshaw was to begin to find within the landscape itself in the long series of paintings of
Colin Mountain that he embarked on around this time.
Dickon Hall
January 2016
€15000-€20000 (£11400-£14400 approx.)
Large Image & Place Bid Lot 43