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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'UNTITLED [FIGURE RUNNING]'
- Price Realised: 4,000
- Sale: 26 September 2016
- oil on canvas board
- 14 x 10in. (35.56 x 25.40cm)
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'LANDSCAPE COUNTY DOWN'
- Price Realised: 4,000
- Sale: 25 May 2015
- gouache on buff-coloured paper
- 15 x 21in. (38.10 x 53.34cm)
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'IRENE CALVERT MP, 1952'
- Price Realised: 3,800
- Sale: 26 September 2022
- oil on canvas
- 27 x 20in. (68.58 x 50.80cm)
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'WINDOW'
- Price Realised: 3,800
- Sale: 16 September 2019
- oil on board
- 31½ x 15½in. (80.01 x 39.37cm)
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'HOUSE WITH MOUNTAINS'
- Price Realised: 3,800
- Sale: 27 May 2019
- acrylic, pencil and charcoal on panel
- 27Ύ x 23½in. (70.49 x 59.69cm)
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'FEMALE NUDE'
- Price Realised: 3,800
- Sale: 27 May 2019
- oil on paper
- 23 x 20in. (58.42 x 50.80cm)
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'WHITE CAR'
- Price Realised: 3,800
- Sale: 02 October 2017
- oil on board
- 12Ύ x 14Ύin. (32.39 x 37.47cm)
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'THREE TREES'
- Price Realised: 3,600
- Sale: 29 May 2017
- oil on canvas
- 14 x 10in. (35.56 x 25.40cm)
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'STILL LIFE WITH VASE OF FLOWERS'
- Price Realised: 3,600
- Sale: 27 February 2017
- oil on paper
- 11Ό x 7in. (28.58 x 17.78cm)
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'POSTMAN ON A BIKE'
- Price Realised: 3,600
- Sale: 28 November 2016
- oil on board
- 10 x 8in. (25.40 x 20.32cm)
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'PINK HOUSE'
- Price Realised: 3,400
- Sale: 27 May 2019
- acrylic on canvas
- 20 x 15Ύin. (50.80 x 40.01cm)
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'STILL LIFE [YELLOW FLOWERS]'
- Price Realised: 3,400
- Sale: 26 February 2018
- oil on canvas
- 14 x 10in. (35.56 x 25.40cm)
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'GREY VAN'
- Price Realised: 3,400
- Sale: 27 November 2017
- oil on board
- 11 x 15Όin. (27.94 x 38.74cm)
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'POST BOX'
- Price Realised: 3,400
- Sale: 27 February 2017
- oil on paper
- 11Ό x 7Όin. (28.58 x 18.42cm)
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'SELF PORTRAIT'
- Price Realised: 3,200
- Sale: 07 December 2020
- oil on board
- 11Ύ x 8Ύin. (29.85 x 22.23cm)
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'SELF PORTRAIT'
- Price Realised: 3,200
- Sale: 07 December 2020
- oil on board
- 11Ύ x 8Ύin. (29.85 x 22.23cm)
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'SELF PORTRAIT'
- Price Realised: 3,200
- Sale: 07 December 2020
- oil on board
- 11Ύ x 8Ύin. (29.85 x 22.23cm)
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'SELF PORTRAIT'
- Price Realised: 3,200
- Sale: 07 December 2020
- oil on board
- 11Ύ x 8Ύin. (29.85 x 22.23cm)
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'PORTRAIT STUDY'
- Price Realised: 3,200
- Sale: 27 February 2017
- oil on board
- 25 x 17½in. (63½ x 44.45cm)
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'NUDE'
- Price Realised: 2,900
- Sale: 06 March 2023
- oil on paper
- 7 x 9Όin. (17.78 x 23½cm)
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'THREE HEADS (I), 1985'
- Price Realised: 2,800
- Sale: 14 December 2020
- oil on canvas
- 17Ύ x 13Ύin. (45.09 x 34.93cm)
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'WINDOW'
- Price Realised: 2,800
- Sale: 02 December 2019
- oil on canvas
- 19½ x 15½in. (49.53 x 39.37cm)
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'PINK DOOR'
- Price Realised: 2,700
- Sale: 11 December 2017
- oil on board
- 13Ύ x 17in. (34.93 x 43.18cm)
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'FLOWER IN A GLASS'
- Price Realised: 2,700
- Sale: 29 May 2017
- oil on board
- 7½ x 5Ύin. (19.05 x 14.61cm)
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'UNTITLED [FLOWER POT AGAINST BLUE BACKGROUND]'
- Price Realised: 2,600
- Sale: 24 October 2016
- oil on paper
- 8Ό x 6in. (20.96 x 15.24cm)
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'BERYL RESTING, 1952'
- Price Realised: 2,600
- Sale: 24 November 2014
- gouache on paper
- 15 x 9.80in. (38.10 x 24.89cm)
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'NUDE SEATED'
- Price Realised: 2,500
- Sale: 27 November 2017
- oil on board
- 18Ύ x 13Όin. (47.63 x 33.66cm)
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'LADY WITH A STICK'
- Price Realised: 2,500
- Sale: 28 November 2016
- oil on paper
- 11 x 7Όin. (27.94 x 18.42cm)