Whyte's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 6 MARCH 2023 AT 6PM

93 IMPORTANT IRISH ART · 6 MARCH 2023 AT 6PM 72 Patrick Collins HRHA (1910-1994) MOONRISE ON THE LAKE oil on canvas signed lower left; titled on reverse 26 by 37in. (66 by 94cm) Frame Size: 33.5 by 44.5in. (85.1 by 113cm) Patrick Collins occupies a singular position in 20th century Irish art. On the one hand, his work is exceptionally, undeniably Irish. He was fond of using the term Celtic as a general description, without strictly defining it or getting hung up about it. On the other hand, while his paintings reflect aspects of the Irish landscape, environment and character, he was a man apart, who didn’t identify with any school or movement. But his instincts were infallibly attuned to the atmospherics of the moisture-laden Irish light, endless tracts of bogland and stony hillsides, and the stark, existential plight of those, human and animal, on rural small-holdings. What he managed to do was to paint an almost mythical Ireland, but one rooted in the real. His colours are muddied, misty, dreamy. Motifs assert themselves with a stubborn, rugged presence. A roll-call of those motifs incudes, variously, stones, pools, a bird, an animal, a cottage and, as here, the moon. Usually, compositions occupy a kind of frame with a frame, as though the painting is a vision conjured up from a primordial mist. That is subtly the case in this painting, in which the light of the rising moon has a stark, definitive clarity to it. Born in Dromore West in Sligo, Collins ran wild in nature as a child and then, in his teens, had to cope with life in an orphanage. While the regime was not, by his own account, harsh, he felt imprisoned, and remained ever after resistant to institutional authority. Working as a clerk, he lived in a tower in Howth Castle and aspired to be a writer, only gradually coming around to painting. In his later work he became increasingly interested in the use of line, largely, he explained, because of his growing respect for traditional Chinese painting. Aidan Dunne, February 2023 €12,000-€18,000 (£10,620-£15,930 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot72