Peter Co l l i s

— Paintings From The Last Thirty Years

John Martin Gallery

Peter Co l l i s

— Paintings From The Last Thirty Years

2-24 March 2012

John Martin Gallery

38 Albemarle Street T +44 (0)20 7499 1314 www.jmlondon.comLondon W1S 4JG F +44 (0)20 7493 2842 info@jmlondon.com

previous page A Small Reservoir, c. 1992

oil on canvas30 x 30 ins, 75 x 75 cms

Artist’s Collection

There was not a time that I remember my Father anything but completely obsessed with art. I remember drives in the country as a child and him stopping to observe the scenery and explaining the light and colours. The magical translation of a landscape to canvas was like a tireless crusade for perfection but when the paint made contact with canvas it appeared effortless, like poetry, it was as if time had stood still and that scene captured forever. We were so lucky that he shared it with us and those precious memories remain in the beautiful work that surrounds us today. With his charm, sense of humour and his impeccable style my Father remains one-of-a-kind. He will be in my head and heart eternally, but through his painting I am glad he will also touch the lives of many more people for years to come.

Katie Collis

right Rocky Road, c. 1988

oil on canvas30 x 30 ins, 76 x 76 cms

left

Landscape Study with Blue Skypastel on paper

6 x 7 ins, 15 x 18 cms

Peter Collis has a long association with the Royal Hibernian Academy, exhibiting annu-ally since he moved to Ireland in 1969 with his Irish wife Anne, who he married in 1957. Peter has been a member of the RHA for many years and a popular figure amongst his contempo-raries and the public alike.

This charming, urbane, immaculately suited Englishman has devoted himself artistically al-most entirely to recording the landscape of his adopted home. As has been said of our earlier Norman visitors, that they became more Irish than the Irish themselves, so too with Peter.

He has become a quintessential voice for the ruggedly beautiful, dark and sublime moun-tains and valleys, fields and crooked roads of Wicklow, South Dublin and the West. With a limited palette of black, cool greys and greens, the occasional warm highlighting of spaces and details, and with a dramatic high horizon and a raking propensity in composition, Peter

left Putney Bridge, 1957

oil on board6 1/2 x 9 1/2 ins, 16 x 24 cms

right Road to Sugarloaf, c. 2005

oil on canvas 32 x 36 ins, 80 x 90 cms

has mined familiar scenes again and again for variety and essence in his favourite plac-es. Like his great influence Cézanne and his obsession with Mont St. Victoire, Peter has quarried the Irish landscape in a continual search for artistic possibilities.

We are enriched by his contribution to the art of Ireland and by his distinctive, uncompro-mising voice – never safe, never sentimental, but gutsy and painterly, confident and bold.

James Hanley, RHA

left

Landscape Studypastel on paper

6 x 7 ins, 16 x 18 cms

Peter Collis paints many subjects, but those to which he returns constantly are landscape and still life. There are many painterly allusions in his work: Morandi and Permeke among them - and of course his revered Cézanne to whom he refers most often. Peter is very much his own man and what emerges from his work is the sheer exuberance in the handling of pig-ment. His palette with its generous swirls of prussian blue and scarlet lake among others, becomes disciplined as the paint is placed on canvas. His dictum “scrape back” may well account for the sparkle of some passages of his work, as different layers of pigment are ex-posed to view. Peter Collis is undoubtedly a painter of subtlety and technical virtuosity.

John Coyle R.H.A

right

Large Still Life, 2007oil on canvas,

32 x 36 ins, 80 x 90 cms

Snow on the Mountain (Glencree), c. 1996oil on canvas 24 x 24 ins, 59 x 59 cmsArtist’s Collection

I once described Peter Collis in print as the Cézanne of County Wicklow, which still seems like a reasonable description. Ireland’s “garden county” has a fair bit of ruggedness and space alongside its more domestic aspects, and Peter has managed to encompass all sides of its character in compositions of architectonic solidity. Like Cézanne, Peter reads the landscape as a series of interlocking shapes and colours. If that makes painting sound a bit like engineering, then the engineer in Peter’s case has the eye of a poet, because he doesn’t neglect the feel of the air, the mood of the light and the atmosphere of place. Not surprisingly given its many valleys, there’s a brooding, dark quality to much of Wicklow, and it’s there in Peter’s palette, which has rightly been compared to that of Maurice de Vlaminck, and in the often high skylines of his paintings.The other main strand of his output, still life, he pursues with great rigour, building complex, fugue-like arrangements that at times are on the verge of taking flight into pure abstraction.

Aidan Dunne

Still Life with Black Jug c. 1990oil on canvas

34 x 34 inches, 86 x 86 cmsArtist’s Collection

Paintings from the last Thirty Years

In 2010 Peter Collis exhibited a small still life and a winter landscape in the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibition. These were the last paintings he was able to exhibit: their hesitant line already betraying the illness which had begun to take its grip and which, only a few months later, was to stop him painting altogether. Paintings from the Last Thirty Years is therefore offered as an affectionate tribute to a brilliant painter and great friend whose irrepressible joy of life and art I will always treasure and will always be an inspiration.

As Peter rarely dated a painting I have attempted to arrange them stylistically from the earliest paintings of the 1980’s to this last decade when his painting had taken a turn towards a softer, lyrical delicacy. This exhibition is an overview of his work and as such I hope will leave the door open for a more definitive account of his achievement in the future.

The exhibition could never have happened without the help of Katie and Mandy Collis. I am enormously grateful to them as I am to John Coyle, James Hanley and Aidan Dunne for their help and contributions.

John Martin

Cottages and Telegraph Pole, c. 1994oil on canvas18 x 18 ins, 46 x 46 cm

Still life with Pearsoil on canvas20 x 18 ins, 51 x 45 cms Artist’s Collection

Landscape with Telegraph Poles c. 1990oil on canvas

32 x 34 ins, 86 x 91 cms

Landscape with Pondoil on canvas30 x 30 ins, 76 x 76 cms Artist’s Collection

Above Glen of the Downs, c. 1996oil on panel

18 x 21 ins, 45 x 53 cms

Knockree Road, c. 1998oil on canvas17 x 19 ins, 44 x 48 cmsArtist’s Collection

The Sugarloaf, c. 2006oil on canvas

26 x 30 ins, 66 x 76 cms

The Road to Letterfrack, c. 2006oil on canvas 25 x 30 ins, 63 x 76 cms

The Sugarloaf, Co. Wicklow, c. 2006oil on canvas

26 x 36 ins, 66 x 91 cms

Still Life with Blue Jug and Fruitoil on canvas12 x 12 ins, 30.5 x 30.5 cms

The Red Bridge (Connemara), c. 2007oil on canvas24 x 30 ins, 62 x 76 cmsArtist’s Collection

Killiney Bay, c. 2005oil on canvas

25 x 30 ins, 62 x 76 cms

The Road to Lough Dan, c. 2006oil on canvas32 x 36 ins, 81 x 91 cms

Still Life in rhe Studio, c. 2006oil on canvas10 x 10 ins, 25 x 25 cms

Landscape over Annanoe, 2006oil on canvas

25 x 30 ins, 62 x 76 cms

Landscape with Wall, The Road to Glencullan, c. 2005oil on canvas13 ½ x 14 ½ ins, 34 x 37 cms

PETER COLLIS RHAborn 1929

SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1975/77 Emmet Gallery, Dublin 1979/81 Image Gallery, Dublin 1983/84 Lincoln Gallery, Dublin 1986/88 Grant Fine Art Newcastle, Co. Down 1986/89/90 Carroll Gallery, Longford 1987/88 Hendricks Gallery, Dublin 1991 Trinity Gallery, London 1992/94 Fosse Gallery, Chelteham 1993 Yeats Gallery, Sligo 1995 James Gallery Dublin 1997/99/02/06 Solomon Gallery, Dublin 2010 Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin 96/98/01/04/12 John Martin Gallery, London SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONSRoyal Academy, London; Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London; United Society of Artists, London; Royal Hibernian Academy; An Oireachtas, Independent Artists, Dublin; Ulster Arts Club; Cork Art Society; Figurative Image, Kenny Gallery, Galway; Irish Art, Concept Gallery, Pittsburgh, U.S.A; Celebration of the Bog, A Touring Exhibition to the Carroll, IMMA, Glebe & Butler Galleries; Claremorris Open Exhibition; United Arts Club Group; Taylor Galleries Dublin; Dolan Moore Gallery; Trinity Gallery, London; Contemporary Irish Artists, Austin Desmond Fine Art, London; Fosse Gallery; Narrow Water Gallery, Northern Ireland; Swift Gallery, Northern Ireland; James Gallery, Dalkey; Aer Rianta Arts Festival 1991, Claremorris Gallery, Dublin;

Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin; Boyle Arts Festival; George Moore Festival, Solomon Gallery, Dublin; Hendericks Gallery, New York, U.S.A; Contemporary Artists from Ireland (1995), Eight Painters from Ireland (1999), John Martin.

AWARDS1975 Royal Trust Co. Ltd Award1981 Oireachtas Maurice MacGonigal Landscape Prize1982,90,92 Claremorris Open Exhibition Prizes Oireachtas Irish Pensions Landscape Prize2000 James Adams Award, Royal Hibernian Acad emy.

COLLECTIONSLimerick University, National Self Portrait Collection, Irish Management Institute, Aer Rianta, Central Bank of Ireland, Jury Hotel Group, Allied Irish Bank, BP Ire-land Ltd, Commissioner of Public Works, Hambro’s Bank London, Shannon International Leasing, Stephen McKenzie & Co, AIB UK, Bank of Ireland Brussels, Uni-verisity College Dublin, Engineering Faculty, Dr Derek Hill, Mr & Mrs Patrick Murphy, Mr & Mrs Vincent Fer-guson, Mr Christy Moore, Prof Seorse Bodley, Ms Mary O’Hara, Bono and works in other private collections in France, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Holland, Ger-many, UK, USA and Canada.

Still Life with Fruit, c. 2000oil on canvas

10 x 10 ins, 25 x 25 cms