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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'POND'
- Price Realised: 950
- Sale: 30 November 2015
- mixed media on paper
- 6Ό x 8Όin. (15.88 x 20.96cm)
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'GREYHOUND, 1979'
- Price Realised: 950
- Sale: 06 December 2008
- lithograph (no. 28 from an edition of 50)
- 53 by 39cm., 21 by 15.5in.
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'RUIN'
- Price Realised: 900
- Sale: 28 November 2022
- pencil and gouache
- 7Ύ x 5½in. (19.69 x 13.97cm)
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'HORSES RACING'
- Price Realised: 900
- Sale: 11 December 2017
- ink
- 5 x 8in. (12.70 x 20.32cm)
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'BLACK TRACTOR ON PINK'
- Price Realised: 850
- Sale: 02 December 2019
- acrylic, pastel and charcoal
- 7½ x 11in. (19.05 x 27.94cm)
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'TRUCK'
- Price Realised: 850
- Sale: 02 December 2019
- acrylic and pencil on board
- 8Ό x 11in. (20.96 x 27.94cm)
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'SLEEPING DOG'
- Price Realised: 800
- Sale: 23 October 2017
- pencil; (unframed)
- 8Ύ x 11Ύin. (22.23 x 29.85cm)
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw - limited edition book'
- Price Realised: 770
- Sale: 09 December 2006
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw - limited edition book'
- Price Realised: 750
- Sale: 22 February 2005
- 0 by 0cm., by in.
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'TWO TREES'
- Price Realised: 680
- Sale: 03 April 2017
- oil on paper
- 7½ x 5½in. (19.05 x 13.97cm)
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'TREE'
- Price Realised: 660
- Sale: 23 October 2017
- oil and charcoal on paper
- 9Ύ x 8Όin. (24.77 x 20.96cm)
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'TOY DOG ON WHEELS'
- Price Realised: 650
- Sale: 02 December 2019
- acrylic, charcoal and pencil on canvas
- 6 x 8½in. (15.24 x 21.59cm)
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw - limited edition book'
- Price Realised: 650
- Sale: 10 December 2005
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'GREEN HOUSE'
- Price Realised: 600
- Sale: 03 April 2017
- oil on paper
- 5Ύ x 7in. (14.61 x 17.78cm)
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'UNTITLED [STILL LIFE]'
- Price Realised: 600
- Sale: 10 December 2016
- oil on paper
- 7½ x 5½in. (19.05 x 13.97cm)
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'EAMONN MALLIE (ED.), BLACKSHAW - LIMITED EDITION BOOK'
- Price Realised: 600
- Sale: 15 December 2007
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw - limited edition book'
- Price Realised: 600
- Sale: 26 May 2007
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'Paul Yates, Mourne, with a limited edition print by Basil Blackshaw'
- Price Realised: 570
- Sale: 26 May 2007
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'EAMONN MAILLE (ED), BLACKSHAW - LIMITED EDITION BOOK'
- Price Realised: 550
- Sale: 30 November 2009
- 30 by 30cm., 12 by 12in.
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'DUNADRY BANKS (SET OF FOUR)'
- Price Realised: 480
- Sale: 05 October 2020
- print; (4); (no. 41 from an edition of 97)
- 9Ύ x 9Ύin. (24.77 x 24.77cm)
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'FIGURE AND HORSE'
- Price Realised: 480
- Sale: 09 July 2018
- pencil
- 5 x 7Όin. (12.70 x 18.42cm)
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'HOUSE'
- Price Realised: 480
- Sale: 17 July 2017
- multimedia on paper
- 5Ύ x 7Ύin. (14.61 x 19.69cm)
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'BROWN & PURPLE LANDSCAPE'
- Price Realised: 480
- Sale: 17 July 2017
- gouache and charcoal
- 7½ x 11½in. (19.05 x 29.21cm)
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw - limited edition book'
- Price Realised: 460
- Sale: 12 June 2005
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw'
- Price Realised: 450
- Sale: 10 December 2005
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'STILL LIFE'
- Price Realised: 420
- Sale: 23 October 2017
- oil, charcoal and pencil on paper
- 10½ x 8in. (26.67 x 20.32cm)
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'UNTITLED [LANDSCAPE]'
- Price Realised: 420
- Sale: 10 December 2016
- oil on paper; (irregular)
- 6Ό x 7in. (15.88 x 17.78cm)
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'Eamonn Mallie (ed.), Blackshaw - limited edition book'
- Price Realised: 420
- Sale: 27 May 2006