Red Barn

Artist Basil Blackshaw (b. 1932 - d. 2016)

Date1991

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions61 x 51 cm

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Donated by Mary McGrath in memory of Tony O'Riordan, 1996. © The Estate of Basil Blackshaw.

Object number1896

DescriptionBasil Blackshaw's rural upbringing and his lifelong dwelling in the countryside of Northern Ireland reverberate throughout his painting. From 1948-51 he attended Belfast College of Art and income from his paintings of horses contributed to the cost of his art education. In 1951 he was awarded a government scholarship enabling him to travel to Paris and London. Blackshaw has consistently painted subjects that reflect his everyday life, particularly the farming community to which he belongs. Both his father and brother worked with horses, and dogs and cockerels are also recurring themes in his art. While valid subjects in their own right, occasionally his paintings of animals or landscapes additionally express human psychological conditions. His diverse artistic influences include Edgar Degas who had a similar love of horses, Francis Bacon, Gustave Courbet and Mark Rothko.

Blackshaw's oeuvre, which encompasses portraits and figurative painting as well as illustrative work for Field Day Theatre Company, oscillates between representation and abstraction. The expressive and painterly style of Red Barn together with its richly glowing colour invests the work with remarkable vitality. The work is also typical in the way the focus is on a single motif placed against a simple, though thickly painted background.

BASIL BLACKSHAW
b. Co. Antrim 1932

Red Barn 1991

Oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cms
Presented in memory of Tony O'Riordan by Mary McGrath, 1996

Red Barn is one of a series of barn paintings from the early nineties and represents a synthesis of style which has marked Blackshaw's work since a fire in the mid-eighties destroyed the entire contents of his studio. Although initially Red Barn gives the impression of an almost entirely abstract composition, on consideration it becomes clear that the barn building, indicated by a series of lines etched into the lush colour ground and revealing the white canvas below, is in fact a central part of a very tangible landscape. The view which prompted the whole series was one glimpsed by the artist from his speeding car while en route to an equestrian point-to-point. This is borne out by the streaked rendering of light and colour and the tilted angle of the barn and neighbouring hillside.

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