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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
18.5 by 28.5in. (46.99 by 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. 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 em-
barked on around this time.
Dickon Hall
€10000-€15000 £9100-£13650
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