Beschreibung:

Artist: William Crozier HRHA (1930-2011) Title: Collins's Field (1990) Signature: signed lower left Medium: oil on canvas Size: 35.60 x 46cm (14 x 18.1in) Framed Size: 55 x 64cm (21.7 x 25.2in) Provenance: Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} 1990, the year William Crozier painted 'Collins's Field' is the point in his engagement with the West Cork landscape when topographical reference and artistic invention are held in careful balance. Crozier's West Cork subjects before 1990 emphasise the excitement of discovery, while after 1990 he en... Read more 1990, the year William Crozier painted 'Collins's Field' is the point in his engagement with the West Cork landscape when topographical reference and artistic invention are held in careful balance. Crozier's West Cork subjects before 1990 emphasise the excitement of discovery, while after 1990 he endowed the landscape with greater symbolic and metaphorical meaning. The title of the painting refers to the fields belonging to Dennis Collins, a farmer neighbour of Crozier's, whose farming methods eschewed any modern contrivance. Within the Skibbereen farming community Collins was regarded as a living anachronism but Crozier admired Collins, as the "carrier of a great tradition. His world was at once factual and imaginative" and said he learned a lot from listening to the excitable, solitary farmer, saying that he wanted his paintings to have the same quality of innocence. Crozier wrote "it's a great fortune for an artist (when) the old world is vanishing at the same time as the new world is starting. All the things I like are then present: affection, a sense of loss and longing...rural Ireland has vanished and has been replaced by a new generation and by new people fresh to the land." This counterpoise between the traditional and the contemporary is the meaning of the painting.