Basil Blackshaw: Artist ranked high among Jack Yeats’s valid successors

Basil Blackshaw’s death, at the age of 83, was hardly a surprise – over the last few years he had painted less and less, and the recent documentary film showed a man whose physical powers were obviously waning. Still, the old sharpness and humour remained and so did the typically sly, adroit manner in which he could make a questioner or over-inquisitive person look and sound like an ass. It was a technique well developed over the years, since few artists have been more careful about guarding their privacy.

The nationwide, spontaneous reaction to his death has come as something of a revelation even to those of us who wholeheartedly admired his paintings but had regarded his late work, in particular, as being a step or two ahead of public taste.

But no, it seems we were quite wrong about this. It has become clear, almost overnight, that Blackshaw genuinely touched the pulse and reactions of the wider public, that a great many people were fully aware of his uniqueness, and that he had, in effect, entered the national pantheon even before his death.

Assuming (as I still do) that Jack Yeats remains our greatest painter, then Blackshaw stands very close to the throne and must be ranked high among the elite handful of Yeats’s valid heirs and successors.

The fact that Blackshaw is so little known abroad remains rather a mystery, even allowing for the fact that Irish painters rarely travel well. He was, after all, a UK citizen and an artist whom dealers in London, or at least galleries in Glasgow or Manchester or Bristol, would have seemed likely to take up straightaway. But they did not do so and relatively few English art critics (as I can vouch for personally) appear even to have heard of him. As for cosmopolitan New York, he found no friendly niche or crevice there. However, Blackshaw showed no obvious urge to promote himself, cared little about art reputations or movements as such, and demanded only enough sea-room to enable him to carry on painting. Belfast and Dublin were the twin hinges of his career, but in recent years he more or less abandoned one-man exhibitions and had no regular gallery in either city. The 2012 retrospective show at the RHA in Dublin – coming from Banbridge – was a landmark event which, however, stirred up curiously little public excitement, superb though it was.

Blackshaw's origins had nothing arty about them, though it seems he was precocious from his teens. Born in Glengormley, Co Antrim, in 1932, he was the son of a man who trained horses – an affinity which the son carried on in his own unorthodox way. He painted from his early years but never, by his own account, produced anything resembling child art, merely "bad grown-up pictures" – mostly of animals.

He attended the Methodist School in Belfast and studied at the Belfast College of Art 1948-51, winning a scholarship to Paris where, presumably, he got his first sight of paintings by Cezanne who greatly influenced him. (He probably also saw the work of Giacometti, another major influence.) Blackshaw told me once that this period of his life was the only prolonged one in which he lived in cities rather than in the countryside.

That sterling man and fine poet John Hewitt quickly became an admirer. Hewitt was also a respected art critic and it was almost certainly due to his influence that the Ulster Museum acquired The Field, probably the earliest of Blackshaw's works to stir public interest. Its uninhibited brushwork and almost Expressionist vehemence ran contrary to most Irish art at the time; yet, curiously, the earthy, almost muddy tones suggest little or nothing of the outstanding colourist into which he developed.

Here, perhaps, we touch on a conflict that runs right through his work until it is resolved in his "third period". Blackshaw's early paintings leave little doubt that he was, by nature and temperament, an Expressionist. However, that ran dead against the mood of the era – in England as well as Ireland, incidentally. At art college he had even boasted that he would eventually challenge Oskar Kokoschka and, in his own words, he "loved throwing the paint around". His respected teacher Romeo Toogood ( yes, that really was his name ) would generally regard the result in silence, pulling his moustache a little, or drop occasional remarks such as, "Well, just think about the edges sometimes."

But the training he underwent laid stress on “correct” drawing and was distrustful of strong or even expressive colour – as can be seen in a great deal of English art of the 1950, including Graham Sutherland’s.

Nevertheless, Blackshaw’s career continued to advance and he became a regular exhibitor both north and south of the Border. The prestige Irish Exhibition of Living Art (IELA) showed his work over several years and private galleries took him up, as collectors began to show an interest. Many or most of these have vanished – the Bell Gallery, the Ritchie Hendriks (later David Hendriks), the Tom Caldwell Gallery, among others.

He was also included in some travelling group exhibitions abroad and even had a solo exhibition at the Watergate Gallery in Washington DC, about which I have been able to discover nothing . He also got married – to an Australian painter, Anna Ritchie, who seems to have come to Ireland chiefly because she loved horses. By her he had a daughter, his only child, who became one of the props of his later years. But the marriage broke up and Anna Ritchie returned to Australia, a country that Blackshaw only visited much later.

This marital breakup struck deep psychologically and almost certainly was a big factor in Blackshaw’s temporary lapse into alcoholism, a demon that he had to fight, on and off, over the years. I have little doubt, looking back, that Blackshaw was at heart a highly-strung, emotionally vulnerable man, as well as something of a loner behind his mask of social affability and his love of leg-pulling, mystification and practical jokes.

While never a hermit, he cherished his privacy and the walls of his studio, had a strong contemplative side, and was sensitive to atmosphere and place and to the sights and sounds of the northern countryside.

The silver-grey expanse of Lough Neagh was visible from his Co Antrim studio/home and he used to say, “So long as I can see Lough Neagh, I’m all right.” While Blackshaw also had a real talent for friendship, and enjoyed male banter and “the craic”, I should say there were areas of his personality that remained sealed except, perhaps, to the very few.

Work was his lifeline, even if he emphasised that for him, art was part of life and not the whole of it. He had plenty of other interests, including sport – he was a boxing fan, for example – read a good deal, enjoyed looking at television, and generally “kept in touch”.

From first to last he was remarkably versatile, coping equally well with landscape, the human figure, still life, flower pieces, animal subjects and, of course, portraiture. He was probably the finest horse painter since Yeats, and he also painted dogs, cocks and other creatures with a unique mixture of panache and totemistic power. Though he tended to downplay it verbally, he undoubtedly had a special insight into animals, even a power over them, since he is known to have trained dogs and even horses. As for landscape, his finest works in this field mostly came later, but Cezanne was an obvious guide and example as he entered into his “middle period”.

This phase, probably, is the most contentious of Blackshaw’s career. It produced a quota of outstandingly good pictures alongside a number that now seem strangely tentative and confused – particularly some of the landscapes.

Tension between the gifted draughtsman and the natural-born handler of paint tends to pull him two ways at once. It was, in any case, a period of contrary currents in the art world as a whole, and these made themselves felt. The tensions in his private life, no doubt, accentuated this, but it was an artistic and career crisis as well as a personal one.

One aspect of his output that did not deviate, but remained consistent over the years, was his portraits – in fact, these alone would establish his reputation.

He had an inborn flair for depicting writers and fellow-artists – Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Brian Friel, Cherith McKinstry, Jennifer Johnston, etc – but he also painted the great editor of The Irish Times, Douglas Gageby, as well as the businessman Vincent Ferguson and other notables.

He also executed a small but sensitive head of his devoted partner in later life, Helen Falloon. (Luckily, Basil himself has been finely portrayed in his final years by Colin Davidson).

However, the ill-luck that dogged much of Blackshaw’s life struck again when fire gutted his studio, taking with it a stack of recent paintings as well as “four lovely easels”. Many or even most men might well have crumpled up; instead, after an intermission, a new Blackshaw emerged phoenix-like and embarked on his third and final phase.

His scale grew larger, details and incidentals are ruthlessly scrapped, the subjects become powerfully simplified and imagistic, and the colours ignite with a new luminosity. His animals no longer seem everyday creatures, instead they take on a heraldic, even epic stature.

The female body, which had played a rather minor role in his career, took on a new significance with a superb series of studio nudes. (His model, Jude Stephens, figures with her gifted husband, Graham Gingles, in the great dual portrait Graham and Jude.)

Yet Blackshaw, typically, did not stop here and his very late works include a series of slightly enigmatic paintings in a kind of “minimalist” mode, with very little imagery and dry, brittle colours. I found these difficult to grasp at first, but they grow on you.

What a career overall, and what courage – or simple stubbornness – kept it going! It is the stuff of which explorers – and great artists – are made.

He is survived by his long-term partner Helen Falloon, his daughter Anya and grandson Niall.