Basil Blackshaw

Basil Joseph Blackshaw HRUA, HRHA (July 1932 – 2 May 2016) was a Northern Irish artist specialising in animal paintings, portraits and landscapes and an Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy.

He continued to develop as an artist, becoming most highly regarded for his very loose gestural application of paint and a very distinctive and subtle use of colour.

His paintings of such sports as horse racing and boxing made him particularly popular, but Blackshaw was also a talented portrait painter.

He also produced portraits including those of the playwright Brian Friel, novelist Jennifer Johnston, Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume, and the poet Michael Longley.

[11] Blackshaw held a joint exhibition with Martin MacKeown at the Council for Encouragement of Music and the Art's Donegall Place gallery in 1952.

[15] Blackshaw's work was also shown at the inaugural show of the Association of Past Pupils and Staff at the Belfast College of Art in 1954 alongside T P Flanagan, Colin Middleton and Violet McAdoo.

[13] The Arts Council of Northern Ireland organised a major retrospective of his work in 1995, which travelled from Belfast to Dublin, Cork and many galleries in the United States.

[21] Blackshaw won the Conor prize at the Royal Ulster Academy's one-hundred and first exhibition in 1982, for a Study for a portrait of David Hammond.

[23] Blackshaw's personal art collection included work by Charles Brady, Neil Shawcross and Elizabeth Frink.

Blackshaw was buried in a wicker coffin in a humanist funeral, with the ceremony ending with the sounds of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man".

[27] The service was attended by many artists including Neil Shawcross, Jack Pakenham, David Crone, and Colin Davidson, in addition to many others from sporting life and the judiciary, as well as the actor Stephen Rea.