Basil Blackshaw
Basil Blackshaw was a painter concerned with both his immediate surroundings and the tradition of western art with which he engaged for much of his career. His celebrated concentration across decades on equestrian subjects demonstrates the manner in which he dealt with these twin stimuli, expressing his particular passion for horses and the role it played throughout his life, and also the connection it provided with artists he admired, such as Degas, Marc and Munnings, in whose work - in very different ways - horses featured prominently.
Despite some fine early works, such as a drawing of a jockey adjusting his girth which was acquired by the major Belfast collector Zoltan Lewinter-Frankl just after Blackshaw had left Belfast College of Art, it appears to have been in the mid-1960s that he embarked on the series of paintings of horses exercising that were to occupy him for over a decade and which arguably have become the defining aspect of his work at this period. These subtly evocative works, often on a large scale, rely on a strikingly thin application of paint to define the physical presence and movement of horses on a beach or in an empty landscape where there are few distracting features beyond the pale early morning mist. At times the artist almost seemed to become engrossed in certain abstract details within these works, such as the striped blankets and the hoods that set up an unexpected pattern that runs from one animal to the next. Occasionally, more specific and narrative-driven images began to emerge in contrast to these subtle and atmospheric works, culminating in the exceptionally large 1977 canvas Grand National (Foinavon's Year), which was shown at the Caldwell Gallery in that year alongside a group of smaller works concentrating on the same dramatic subject of horses falling at a fence.
[A] ...concentration on the expressiveness of paint becoming equivalent to the animal, rather than simply descriptive, becomes even more striking in the later period of Blackshaw's work. Moving away from a more traditional anatomical analysis of the animal, he attempts to summon up a pictorial expression of the physical experience of the horse through a dynamic, gestural application of paint, the impact of which is exaggerated in the present painting by the claustrophobic placing of his subject so that it occupies the entire shallow foreground of the picture space. The straightforward nature of Race Horse, 1990 (lot 73) could not be more distant from the earlier understated evocations of horses moving easily across a misty beach, but it illustrates the development of Blackshaw's fascination with the animal. The perspectives of other artists through which Blackshaw's initial approach to the equestrian subject was shaped, have slipped away over time and been replaced by a notably individual and direct response, a synthesis of memory and experience formed across a lifetime.
Dickon Hall
October 2018
[The above is an exerpt from the catalogue entry of October 2018]
Despite some fine early works, such as a drawing of a jockey adjusting his girth which was acquired by the major Belfast collector Zoltan Lewinter-Frankl just after Blackshaw had left Belfast College of Art, it appears to have been in the mid-1960s that he embarked on the series of paintings of horses exercising that were to occupy him for over a decade and which arguably have become the defining aspect of his work at this period. These subtly evocative works, often on a large scale, rely on a strikingly thin application of paint to define the physical presence and movement of horses on a beach or in an empty landscape where there are few distracting features beyond the pale early morning mist. At times the artist almost seemed to become engrossed in certain abstract details within these works, such as the striped blankets and the hoods that set up an unexpected pattern that runs from one animal to the next. Occasionally, more specific and narrative-driven images began to emerge in contrast to these subtle and atmospheric works, culminating in the exceptionally large 1977 canvas Grand National (Foinavon's Year), which was shown at the Caldwell Gallery in that year alongside a group of smaller works concentrating on the same dramatic subject of horses falling at a fence.
[A] ...concentration on the expressiveness of paint becoming equivalent to the animal, rather than simply descriptive, becomes even more striking in the later period of Blackshaw's work. Moving away from a more traditional anatomical analysis of the animal, he attempts to summon up a pictorial expression of the physical experience of the horse through a dynamic, gestural application of paint, the impact of which is exaggerated in the present painting by the claustrophobic placing of his subject so that it occupies the entire shallow foreground of the picture space. The straightforward nature of Race Horse, 1990 (lot 73) could not be more distant from the earlier understated evocations of horses moving easily across a misty beach, but it illustrates the development of Blackshaw's fascination with the animal. The perspectives of other artists through which Blackshaw's initial approach to the equestrian subject was shaped, have slipped away over time and been replaced by a notably individual and direct response, a synthesis of memory and experience formed across a lifetime.
Dickon Hall
October 2018
[The above is an exerpt from the catalogue entry of October 2018]
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'THE MORNING EXERCISE'
- Price Realised: 60,000
- Sale: 25 May 2026
- oil on board
- 36 x 48in. (91.44 x 121.92cm)
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'RACE HORSE, 1990'
- Price Realised: 40,000
- Sale: 26 November 2018
- oil on canvas
- 60 x 72in. (152.40 x 182.88cm)
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'COUNTY DOWN FARMYARD, 1952'
- Price Realised: 38,000
- Sale: 28 April 2008
- oil on board
- 76 by 112cm., 30 by 44in.
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'HORSES EXERCISING'
- Price Realised: 37,000
- Sale: 26 November 2018
- oil on canvas
- 25½ x 30in. (64.77 x 76.20cm)
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'SELF PORTRAIT AS A YOUNG MAN'
- Price Realised: 36,000
- Sale: 21 September 2004
- oil on board
- 46 by 36cm., 18 by 14in.
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'DUNADRY BANKS, FOUR VIEWS AFTER THE POEM OF THE SAME NAME BY PAUL YATES'
- Price Realised: 34,000
- Sale: 28 November 2006
- mixed media on paper
- 29 by 29cm., 11.5 by 11.5in.
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'HORSES EXERCISING'
- Price Realised: 32,000
- Sale: 27 November 2017
- oil on canvas
- 18 x 24in. (45.72 x 60.96cm)
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'HORSE AND CART'
- Price Realised: 30,000
- Sale: 26 April 2005
- oil on canvas
- 46 by 61cm., 18 by 24in.
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'HORSES AT THE START, POINT TO POINT'
- Price Realised: 28,000
- Sale: 26 November 2018
- oil on canvas
- 26 x 30in. (66.04 x 76.20cm)
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'STRIDING TO THE FINISH, POINT TO POINT'
- Price Realised: 27,000
- Sale: 26 November 2018
- oil on canvas
- 25½ x 30in. (64.77 x 76.20cm)
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'FARM AT BOARDMILLS, COUNTY DOWN'
- Price Realised: 25,000
- Sale: 16 September 2003
- oil on board
- 41 by 51cm., 16 by 20in.
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'TREE'
- Price Realised: 24,000
- Sale: 16 September 2019
- oil on canvas
- 46 x 38in. (116.84 x 96.52cm)
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'YELLOW BUILDING, 1997'
- Price Realised: 24,000
- Sale: 27 May 2019
- oil on canvas
- 36 x 40in. (91.44 x 101.60cm)
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'DOG WITH MUZZLE, 1997'
- Price Realised: 22,000
- Sale: 27 May 2019
- oil on canvas
- 42 x 36in. (106.68 x 91.44cm)
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'ORCHARD'
- Price Realised: 21,000
- Sale: 17 February 2004
- oil on canvas
- 36 by 61cm., 14 by 24in.
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'TWO TREES'
- Price Realised: 20,000
- Sale: 28 November 2016
- oil on board
- 26 x 27½in. (66.04 x 69.85cm)
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'STILL LIFE WITH FLOWERS'
- Price Realised: 18,000
- Sale: 28 November 2016
- oil on canvas
- 24 x 24in. (60.96 x 60.96cm)
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'MR PATTERSON'S SATURDAY, 2001'
- Price Realised: 18,000
- Sale: 26 November 2007
- oil on canvas
- 91 by 76cm., 36 by 30in.
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'SEATED NUDE'
- Price Realised: 18,000
- Sale: 17 February 2004
- oil on canvas board
- 76 by 51cm., 30 by 20in.
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'PENELOPE COLLINS'
- Price Realised: 17,000
- Sale: 06 June 2022
- oil on canvas
- 24 x 20in. (60.96 x 50.80cm)
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'LANDSCAPE WITH MOUNTAINS'
- Price Realised: 16,000
- Sale: 16 September 2019
- oil on canvas laid on board
- 59 x 47in. (149.86 x 119.38cm)
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'WHITE OBJECT III, 2000'
- Price Realised: 16,000
- Sale: 19 September 2006
- gouache, pencil and collage on paper
- 38 by 30cm., 15 by 12in.
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'HEAD OF A BOXER'
- Price Realised: 14,500
- Sale: 19 September 2006
- oil on canvas
- 51 by 41cm., 20 by 16in.
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'THREE GOATS'
- Price Realised: 14,000
- Sale: 30 November 2015
- oil on canvas
- 20 x 24in. (50.80 x 60.96cm)
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'SIX MILE VALLEY'
- Price Realised: 13,000
- Sale: 30 November 2015
- oil on canvas
- 30 x 34in. (76.20 x 86.36cm)
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'UNTITLED I and UNTITLED II'
- Price Realised: 12,500
- Sale: 27 May 2019
- acrylic on canvas; (diptych)
- 49 x 78in. (124.46 x 198.12cm)
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'A CHESTNUT COB'
- Price Realised: 11,500
- Sale: 18 May 2009
- oil on board
- 33 by 38cm., 13 by 15in.
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'SILVER, c.1950s'
- Price Realised: 10,000
- Sale: 24 February 2014
- oil on canvas
- 20 by 24in., 50 by 60cm.