Basil Blackshaw HRHA RUA (1932-2016)Horse with Object IIOil on canvas, 75 x 70.2cm (29½ x 27½'')Provenance: From the collection of the late Gillian Bowler.Exhibited: 'Basil Blackshaw Exhibition', Hendriks Gallery, September 1987, where purchased; 'Basil Blackshaw Retrospective' travelling exhibition, Art Council of Northern Ireland; Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, November/December 1995; Model Art and Niland Gallery, February 1996; the RHA Gallery, January 1997; Literature: Basil Blackshaw: Painter, by Brian Ferran 1995, Full Page illustration Pg114Horse and Object I, Horse and Object II, 1987Basil Blackshaw HRUA (1932-2016) was born in Glengormley but his family moved soon after to Boardmills, Co. Down. He studied at Art College in Belfast in the late 1940s. In 1951 Blackshaw was awarded a scholarship by the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, to study in Paris. It was at this time that he encountered the work of a number of artists that were to have an enduring impact on his career. A major retrospective of Blackshaw’s work was held in 1974 at the Arts Council Gallery in Belfast, and another in 1995 was organised by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The latter was exhibited at the Ormeau Baths, Royal Hibernian Academy, Crawford Municipal Gallery, and a selection of the works travelled to the United States for a further tour. In 2001 he was the recipient of the Glen Dimplex Award for a Sustained Contribution to the Visual Arts. He exhibited at the Ulster Museum, Belfast in 2002 and a monograph was published on the artist by Eamonn Mallie in 2003. In 2012 the Royal Hibernian Academy in conjunction with the F.E. McWilliam Gallery organised a substantial retrospective of the artist’s work entitled ‘Blackshaw at 80’. He was a member of Aosdana, RUA and Associate Member of the RHA. Jude Stephens, Blackshaw’s model for his life studies commented that the artist was more than just a painter; he was a “traditional countryman who was rooted in rural life. He was someone who connected effortlessly with the natural world and he lamented the pace of change in much of rural Ireland, especially in the areas that he loved and knew best.” (The Irish Times, May 9, 2016)Denis Bradley, a close friend of the artist has remarked; “I think that nature was caught, it wasn’t just observed by you, it was in your bones, in your genes, in all of your breathing and living and being - the horses and the dogs and the fowl, everything that you painted, ultimately the human beings. It was not an observation or a study, it just came - the gift was there, you put it in the paint, you put it on the canvas. And for that thank you.” (The Irish Times, May 9, 2016)Blackshaw insisted he did not work in series and hence works that are linked have not been planned in sequence. They were often created separately with other subjects and genres intervening. ‘Horse and Object I’ and ‘Horse and Object II’ are however as close to a series as paintings can come. There is continuity in compositional structure, palette, representation, treatment and scale. They are interesting as a pair certainly but can also be appreciated individually. There is a sense of floating forms evident and a somewhat flattened canvas in both works. ‘Horse and Object I’ has a horse placed centrally in the lower ground of the canvas. He stands at ease before a square object in front of him. It is highly likely that the horse subject is Dolly (depicted in a later painting by name); one can see her chestnut hue, relatively slender form, white markings on her nose, and a sense of her white fetlocks. The artist is not aiming at an animal portrait but rather an explorative study of the two forms depicted. The surroundings to the forms are beautifully captured in pleasing pastel shades. The artist explained his compositional approach in his work to Brian McAvera; “I like…the feeling that it was a piece of work, an exploration, not a work made for exhibition.” (Irish Arts Review, Winter 2002, p67). In ‘Horse and Object II’ the compositional structure is very similar to its’ precedent yet the entire palette has been brightened and forms are now somewhat abstracted. The horse appears more grounded at the base of the canvas yet it is less life-like and more symbolic. This is due, largely, to the elongation of the horse’s face. In these works there is evidence of the artist’s method in creating his landscape compositions; ‘Blackshaw plays two and three dimensional space against each other to make a tense space like an imaginary rubber band between the foreground and background.’ (Frances Ruane, 1981). This tendency may come from the artist’s admiration of Cezanne as he ‘wanted, like him, to express the “pull and tension which is the whole life of art”. (Ruane, 1981). Mike Catto has also written about Cezanne’s influence; ‘The restraints and gradations which his palette achieved from 1967 onwards follows Cezanne’s advice to Emile Bernard “to begin lightly with almost neutral tones. Then one must proceed steadily climbing the scale and tightening the chromatics.” (Art in Ulster 2, 1977, p17). The early work of Sir Alfred Munnings his sketches and wood panels of horses were of interest to Blackshaw. Of greater importance, however, was Franz Marc’s ‘Grazing Horses IV’ (The Red Horses), 1911. It has been cited by the artist as ‘the only horse painting that had an influence on me.’ (Irish Arts Review, Winter 2002, p59). Indeed such an artist as Marc, through his expressionism, symbolism and primacy of colour, has had a clear impact on Blackshaw in these works and others where reference to the dominant colour enters the realm of the title; ‘Blue Nude’, ‘Brown Head’, ‘White Landscape’, and ‘Pink Dog’. If one were to select a painting that epitomised the closest tribute to Franz Marc it would be another horse painting entitled ‘Dolly’ 1989 which was executed a few years after the ‘Horse and Object’ works. Mercy Hunter, writing for an Arts Council exhibition catalogue in 1974 stated; ‘He especially admires Rothko because of the apparent ease of his achievement - “he has the pull and push to fill a great area; his sense of scale is everything.” However, he is not deceived by the seeming simplicity of Rothko’s works. He recognises draughtsmanship as a fundamental discipline…“you must be able to feel if a shape is right or wrong and every shape must have its own identity.” (Hunter, 1974). This sense of shapes and forms with their own inherent identity is certainly in evidence in the ‘Horse and Object’ paintings and that crafting of forms placed on the canvas is enhanced by the primacy of colour. Another definitive aspect to the works is their ability to bring a smile to the viewer’s face. They are pleasing both in terms of quirky composition and aesthetics; ‘One element is quite inescapable in many of these idiosyncratic paintings - deep and genuine humour, a quality often found in painters as private people (including, most definitely, Blackshaw himself) but surprisingly rarely in their work.’ (Brian Fallon in Blackshaw, 2003). One final observation on these works is their resistance to definitive classification in genre terms and this is in evidence throughout the artist’s oeuvre. Brian Fallon has written on Blackshaw’s unique approach and his propensity to go beyond defined genres; ‘There is also a large and very special category that stands outside all these and is entirely sui generis. It might roughly be defined as the special “Blackshaw subject,” meaning (very broadly) something quirky, unpredictable, occasionally ultra-personal or private, often based on sights that are familiar and everyday, or on quite non-descript things that just happen to have caught his eye or fancy and are re-shaped by his alert imagination. Some are almost epigrammatic in their visual wit, while others are lyrical or even poignant.’ (Blackshaw edited by Eamonn Mallie, Nicholson and Bass, Belfast, 2003) Mariann
