IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MAY 2026

86 52 Basil Blackshaw HRHA RUA (1932-2016) THE MORNING EXERCISE oil on board signed lower left 36 by 48in. (91.4 by 121.9cm) Frame Size: 46.5 by 58.5in. (118.1 by 148.6cm) Provenance: Sotheby’s, London, 6 May 2010, lot 77; Private collection Exhibited: ‘Basil Blackshaw at 80 Retrospective Exhibition’, F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, May to October 2012; RHA Gallery, Dublin, January to February 2013 Literature: Basil Blackshaw’s work was in many ways highly autobiographical, recording the places and people who were important to him at any particular time, in addition to, perhaps most famously, the animals who were always at the centre of his life. Blackshaw’s passion for horses, and his experience and knowledge of them, informed their presence within his work, which changed dramatically from the earliest, more stylised images (which included a now-destroyed terracotta sculpture) to his later, highly abstracted paintings, which include conceptual and also deliberately childlike elements. Arguably, Blackshaw’s most iconic series of equestrian paintings is the extended group of images of racehorses exercising, which he seems to have begun around 1964, and which continued into the mid-1970s. These works were often made on a large scale, with a string of animals dominating the foreground and the middle distance. Nearly all of these paintings seem to occupy a moment on the edge of day, gently illuminated by the rising sun breaking into a misty morning, with extraneous details unnecessary; in some of the paintings, the moon is still in the sky, enhancing the sense of a moment set almost outside time. Within these paintings, Blackshaw seems to express something of the ambiguity of the power and beauty of these animals and their practical role as racehorses. The present painting has more definition and detail than some of the earlier examples in the series. The paint surface is more heavily worked, although still tonally quite muted and controlled. A horizontal pattern runs through the blankets that leads the eye into the picture space and meets the horizon line. The upwards diagonal line in the lower right corner is matched by the descending diagonal set up by the jockey’s heads, and the varying positions of each jockey, with the head of each horse also held differently, provides a sense of movement and tension within the composition. While these paintings clearly spring from Blackshaw’s own absorption in the subject, and his familiarity with the racing world, and are distinctly individual, they also place him in a lengthy and distinguished artistic tradition, running from Stubbs and Degas to Munnings, of which he was very aware. Dickon Hall, April 2026 €60,000-€80,000 (£52,170-£69,570 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot52