Project MUSE - Breaking Out of the Field: The Paintings of Basil Blackshaw (2024)

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Brian Ferran Breaking Out of the Field: The Paintings of Basil Blackshaw In February, 1955, Basil Blackshaw was invited by the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, now the Ulster Museum, to present a one-man exhibition of his paintings . He was then twenty-three years old and the youngest artist to be so recognized . The exhibition program was arranged by the poet John Hewitt, then the keeper of art and deputy director ofthe museum. Soon afterwards, Hewitt wrote what he described as "a long serious article" on Blackshaw in which he made substantial claims for the young artist. He concluded his uncharacteristically enthusiastic article by stating that "with [Blackshaw's] increased control ofmaterials and his realisation ofthe problem of.fusing representation and creation in a satisfying pictorial unity, it remains for him now to extend the range and scope ofthat intensity:' Subsequently, Hewitt wrote the first essay on Blackshaw in 1957, for the inaugural edition ofthe Belfast Lyric Players' Theatre's literary magazine Threshold. Hewitt's essay charts succinctly the evolution ofthe visual arts in the North of Ireland; it sets the historical scene and tells ofBlackshaw's early life. The chief significance ofthe Threshold article is that it identified Basil Blackshaw's talents very early in his career. Hewitt placed great emphasis on regionalism and, unfortunately , this sometimes led him to praise minor artists oflocal significance like Padraic Woods and Charlie McAuley. Padraic Woods's work he described as"a kindly unemphatic art, never dashingly adventurous nor ploddingly pedestrian , noting the red calves grazing beside the clumps of purple loosestrife, or the leisurely passage of mountain folk up the long road and between the clustered cabins of the west, quietly romantic moments, neighbourly to communicate honestly applied with a scarcely varying touch." He gave similar praise to Charles McAuley, the Antrim Glens painter of picturesque subjects. His advocacy of regionalism did not reduce his enthusiasm for the adventurous works ofthe English avant-garde artist David Bomberg when Hewitt became director of the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry, England. The influence exercised by John Hewitt through his reviews in the local press, under the pen name "MacArt," was particularly important to young artists. His style was terse and is exemplified by the comment that, "in the course of over 50 reviews of local exhibitions, I have received only 2 letters ofthanks from artists and about these NEW HIBERNIA REVIEW /IRIS EIREANNACH NUA, 3:2 (SUMMER/ SAMHRADH, 1999), 9-18 Breaking Out ofthe Field: The Paintings ofBasil Blackshaw I had been by no means fulsome." The economy ofhis praise ofmany respected artists was legendary. He was as cautious in praising popular artists ofthe nineteenth century as he was in praising talented living artists. On John Hewitt's retirement and return to Belfast in the early 1970s, the Arts Council ofNorthern Ireland, mindful ofthe need for a book on the subject and aware ofHewitt's knowledge and interest, commissioned him to write a history of local art. He worked on it for more than two years and it was published in 1977 under the title Art in Ulster 1557-1957. He drew from a lifetime of gallery work, art criticism, and friendships with many of the artists. Writing with humor, and constrained by only seventy illustrations ofpaintings, watercolors, prints, cartoons, and sculptures, he set out the growth and development of Ulster 's visual arts. Hewitt's incisive Artin Ulster placed the many artists and their work in a social, political, and economic framework with precise parallel commentary on the prevailing artistic influences of their times and the effect these had on the images produced. It is an authoritative study reflecting the author's deep involvement with the cultural life of Ulster and with the Irish landscape. In his 1957 Threshold essay, Hewitt identified William Orpen as an early Blackshaw model and compliments Orpen's "attractive draughtsmanship, his brisk pigment and his clever manipulation oflight being obviously impressive." In the 1950s and 1960s, the traditional subject matter and academic talents of John Lavery (1856-1941) and William Orpen (1878-1931) were undervalued and the critical climate of the time was frequently hostile to the values they espoused . Characteristically, John Hewitt stood against the...

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