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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'PRATIE FIELD, NEAR MAGHERAFELT, COUNTY DERRY, 1953'
- Price Realised: 9,500
- Sale: 29 May 2023
- oil on board
- 22Ύ x 29in. (57.79 x 73.66cm)
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'LEITRIM LAKE'
- Price Realised: 9,500
- Sale: 28 November 2016
- oil on board
- 13½ x 11½in. (34.29 x 29.21cm)
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'AMERICAN GENT'
- Price Realised: 9,000
- Sale: 19 February 2007
- oil and collage on board
- 22 by 15cm., 8.5 by 6in.
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'BALLYGALLY HEAD, COUNTY ANTRIM'
- Price Realised: 9,000
- Sale: 21 September 2004
- oil on canvas
- 46 by 61cm., 18 by 24in.
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'WHITE MOUNTAIN'
- Price Realised: 8,500
- Sale: 14 March 2011
- oil on canvas
- 51 by 61cm., 20 by 24in.
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'YELLOW LEAVES'
- Price Realised: 7,700
- Sale: 31 May 2010
- oil on board
- 60 by 40cm., 23.7 5 by 15.7 5in.
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'GIRL ON HORSEBACK'
- Price Realised: 7,500
- Sale: 04 March 2024
- oil on canvas
- 49Ό x 43Όin. (125.10 x 109.86cm)
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'LONE BOATMAN'
- Price Realised: 7,500
- Sale: 02 December 2019
- oil on canvas
- 24 x 31½in. (60.96 x 80.01cm)
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'DUNADRY BANKS, FOUR VIEWS AFTER THE POEM OF THE SAME NAME BY PAUL YATES'
- Price Realised: 7,500
- Sale: 27 November 2017
- mixed media on paper; (4)
- 11½ x 11½in. (29.21 x 29.21cm)
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'PINK TRACTOR'
- Price Realised: 7,500
- Sale: 29 May 2017
- oil on board
- 12Ό x 16½in. (31.12 x 41.91cm)
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'SIX MILE WATER'
- Price Realised: 7,500
- Sale: 10 October 2011
- oil on canvas
- 61 by 51cm., 24 by 20in.
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'WHITE OBJECT II'
- Price Realised: 7,500
- Sale: 28 November 2006
- acrylic on paper laid on board
- 39 by 29cm., 15.5 by 11.2 5in.
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'MCMUTT'S DOGS'
- Price Realised: 7,000
- Sale: 26 February 2018
- oil and charcoal on canvas board
- 24½ x 20Ύin. (62.23 x 52.71cm)
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'COTTAGE'
- Price Realised: 7,000
- Sale: 27 February 2017
- oil on canvas
- 9Ό x 11Όin. (23½ x 28.58cm)
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'FEMALE NUDE STANDING WITH ARMS RAISED OVER HEAD'
- Price Realised: 7,000
- Sale: 19 February 2007
- oil and pencil on board
- 32 by 13cm., 12.7 5 by 5.25in.
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'LANDROVER'
- Price Realised: 6,400
- Sale: 27 February 2017
- oil on board
- 11Ύ x 14½in. (29.85 x 36.83cm)
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'BUTTERFLIES'
- Price Realised: 6,000
- Sale: 28 November 2022
- oil on canvas
- 18 x 14in. (45.72 x 35.56cm)
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'A CHESTNUT COB'
- Price Realised: 6,000
- Sale: 26 September 2022
- oil on board
- 13 x 15in. (33.02 x 38.10cm)
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'COUNTY DOWN LANDSCAPE'
- Price Realised: 6,000
- Sale: 22 February 2005
- oil on panel
- 24 by 24cm., 9.5 by 9.5in.
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'MCMUTT'S GREYHOUND'
- Price Realised: 5,500
- Sale: 02 December 2019
- oil on board
- 29½ x 24½in. (74.93 x 62.23cm)
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'IRENE CALVERT MP, 1952'
- Price Realised: 5,200
- Sale: 24 November 2014
- oil on canvas
- 27 x 20in. (68.58 x 50.80cm)
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'HORSE IN A STABLE, 1956'
- Price Realised: 5,000
- Sale: 29 May 2023
- oil on canvas laid on panel
- 10 x 12in. (25.40 x 30.48cm)
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'TRAVELLER, 'APPLEBY', 1986'
- Price Realised: 4,800
- Sale: 09 March 2020
- oil on board
- 11 x 9in. (27.94 x 22.86cm)
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'WINDOW'
- Price Realised: 4,800
- Sale: 26 February 2018
- oil and charcoal on canvas
- 29Ύ x 20in. (75.57 x 50.80cm)
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'HEAD OF MAN, c. mid 1990s'
- Price Realised: 4,800
- Sale: 30 September 2013
- oil on board
- 20 by 16in., 50 by 40cm.
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'NUDE'
- Price Realised: 4,400
- Sale: 26 February 2018
- oil and charcoal on board
- 23½ x 33Ύin. (59.69 x 85.73cm)
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'HORSES EXERCISING, 1965'
- Price Realised: 4,400
- Sale: 25 November 2013
- oil on panel
- 8 by 12.25in., 20 by 30.625cm.
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'FIGURES AND GOATS ON A COUNTRY ROAD, c.1950s'
- Price Realised: 4,200
- Sale: 02 October 2023
- oil on board
- 18 x 20in. (45.72 x 50.80cm)