Date: No Date
Dimensions: Unknown
Medium: Pencil
Collection: Niland Collection

Description:

Throughout the first half of the twentieth-century Irish art was dominated by landscape painting and particularly images of the western seaboard. Although the Sligo born painter Patrick Collins is best remembered for his atmospheric images of the western landscape, he also created a number of drawings and paintings of still-life subjects including Flowerpiece 1956, Predatory Fish, 1964 and Teapot and Forgotten Apples, c. 1976. This study of a fish was probably painted from life and displays how Collin’s art was inspired by everyday scenes.

Still-life has a long and celebrated history in France where artists such as Chardin revolutionised the genre. Collins first travelled to France in the late 1950s where medieval carvings that he saw in Brittany inspired his Menhir series, and later spent a period living and working in Paris. Fish are a recurring subject in the art of Chardin and the School of Paris painter Chaim Soutine whose expressionist technique is reminiscent of Collins’ work. The Irish artists Nano Reid, Gerard Dillon and William Scott also produced paintings in which fish feature prominently, some of which relate specifically to the Catholic tradition of eating fish on Friday.

Written by Riann Coulter