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Basil Blackshaw CANAL BRIDGE, 1989
Lot 22
Price Realised: €8,000
Estimate: €8,000 - €12,000
Basil Blackshaw HRHA, RUA, 1932-2016 CANAL BRIDGE, 1989 Oil on canvas, 45" x 54 3/4" (114.2 x 139.1cm). Exhibited: The Narrow Water Gallery, 1989; Maeve Hall ran the gallery from the garden floor of the castle, situated on Carlingford L... Read more
Lot 22 - CANAL BRIDGE, 1989 by Basil Blackshaw Lot 22 Basil Blackshaw CANAL BRIDGE, 1989
Estimate: €8,000 - €12,000
Basil Blackshaw HRHA, RUA, 1932-2016
CANAL BRIDGE, 1989
Oil on canvas, 45" x 54 3/4" (114.2 x 139.1cm).

Exhibited: The Narrow Water Gallery, 1989; Maeve Hall ran the gallery from the garden floor of the castle, situated on Carlingford Lough; RHA, 1997 (Arts Council of Northern Ireland label verso). 

Who knows the mind of a painter? The whole process of making pictures is a lonely vigil with no guarantee that ultimately the painting will sell. 

Slade artist Tom Carr, one of whose works hung in the Queen Mother's collection, once told me when he returned from London to Northern Ireland at the outbreak of WW11 he found himself cut off from galleries there. Having sent a framed painting across the water for a show, it failed to sell. When it was sent back to Belfast Tom ripped the canvas from its stretcher and used it to patch the roof of a bee-hive. He told me he felt the painting, 'had not done its work', and he turned his back on it.

Blackshaw often told me of sitting in his usual chair in the drawing room week after week without any vision coming to him from which he felt he could make a painting. That said, quite often he carried an image about in his head for decades before it would see the light of day. 'Canal Bridge', I suspect is one such example. Basil didn't travel much outside Northern Ireland. He often remarked to me, "Doagh is abroad for me." Doagh is a village which is about three miles away from where Blackshaw lived. Conceivably he looked at 'Canal Bridge' hundreds of times but was it that light in the sky, or one of those Monet trees, a feature of his Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings which prompted Basil to capture the bridge. Basil was very geometric in the making of his paintings. Perhaps geometry was at play here or was it how he visualised the scene on a large canvas?

I recall his telling me he had 'knocked up' a hen run for gamecocks when suddenly he had a vision that he could use one of his constructs as a stretcher for a large horse painting. This inspired Blackshaw to execute one of largest and most famous works - Grand National (Foinavon's Year 1977). (Pl. 42 Page 122 'Blackshaw' edited by Eamonn Mallie)

Every picture tells a story.

Eamonn Mallie, March 2022
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