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Basil Blackshaw RHA RUA (b.1932) ORCHARD signed and dated [1956] lower right oil on canvas 36 by ...

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Basil Blackshaw RHA RUA (b.1932) ORCHARD signed and dated [1956] lower right oil on canvas 36 by ...
Basil Blackshaw RHA RUA (b.1932)
ORCHARD
signed and dated [1956] lower right
oil on canvas
36 by 61cm., 14 by 24in.
Provenance:
Collection of Tom Carr HRHA HRUA ARWS (1909-1999);
Private collection, Co. Donegal
Exhibited:
‘Basil Blackshaw Retrospective’, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast,
1974, catalogue no. 16 (loaned by Tom Carr, illustrated in catalogue)
Blackshaw’s work of the 1950s is typically expressionist in treatment, with dark
tones lending an air of tension to scenes which might otherwise have been
treated conventionally and prettily. Orchard is one of a series of landscapes
from this decade that were all painted around his parents’ farm at Boardmills,
near Ballynahinch, Co. Down. It is viewed from the same low vantage point as was
used in The Field, 1953 (Ulster Museum), with the dry grass stubble sweeping
directly up the picture plane, flattening and abstracting the composition. In a
written appreciation of the artist’s work printed at the front of the 1974
retrospective catalogue, Mercy Hunter commented on the significance of
Blackshaw’s early landscapes of the 1950s: “Rejecting the tamer traditions of
topographical landscape, his work up to about 1957 was strong and
expressionistic and few Ulster painters have shown with such intensity the rich
density of earth and heavy luminosity of the Northern sky”.
€15,000-€20,000 (£10,500-£14,000 sterling approx.)