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Basil Blackshaw HRHA RUA (1932-2016)
TREES AT COGRY, COUNTY ANTRIM
oil on canvas
signed lower right; signed and titled on reverse
19.5 by 23.5in. (49.53 by 59.69cm)
Basil Blackshaw is renowned as a painter who immerses himself visually and physically in the landscapes he
paints so as to distil an effective and truthful pictorial reaction. While the paintings that emerged from his
long study of Colin Mountain were arguably more preoccupied with space, light and structure, the landscapes
on either side of this series often evoke a very expressive and instinctive recollection of the experience of
being in a specific and often familiar place.
Blackshaw’s palette is also truthful to the place, not necessarily naturalistic but strongly connected to the
mood of a landscape, as we see in Trees at Cogry. The intensity of the painting is the result of this limited and
heavy palette as much as it is of the energetic, broadly-worked passages of paint. A pathway seems to lead
between the strong forms of tree trunks in the foreground but the painting is dominated by these verticals
and the lack of a sense of space gives them even more power within the composition and creates a slightly
claustrophobic mood.
While it is perhaps unlikely to have been influential within the subject or manner of working, it is still in-
teresting to note that the name Cogry, in this case a townland close to Blackshaw’s County Antrim home,
apparently comes from the Irish word for border-land or frontier; certainly Blackshaw often gives the sense of
exploring uncertain or uneasy territories within some of his landscape paintings.
Dickon Hall,
April 2016
€10,000-€15,000 (£7,870-£11,810 approx.)
Large Image & Place Bid Lot 73