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Artist: George Campbell RHA RUA (1917-1979) Title: Fisherman Repairing Nets Signature: signed lower left Medium: oil on canvas Size: 60½ x 73½cm (23.8 x 28.9in) Framed Size: 90.5 x 103.3cm (35.6 x 40.7in) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist's wife; Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, Dublin (label verso); Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} Depicting a scene in a Spanish fishing port, like many of Campbell's paintings, this canvas hovers between representation and abstraction. Dressed in white overalls, a fisherman stands beside a beached fishing boat, repairing a net draped over a pole. Behind the fisherman, white buildings line the q... Read more George Campbell Lot 134 - 'Fisherman Repairing Nets' Estimate: €4,000 - €6,000 Depicting a scene in a Spanish fishing port, like many of Campbell's paintings, this canvas hovers between representation and abstraction. Dressed in white overalls, a fisherman stands beside a beached fishing boat, repairing a net draped over a pole. Behind the fisherman, white buildings line the quays, where fishing vessels are tied up. The boats and quayside buildings are highlighted against a dark sky, rendered in blues and greys. Campbell was an accomplished colourist, and painted with vigour and confidence. A dash of red enlivens the scene, which is otherwise rendered mainly in blues, greys, browns and white, the composition held together by the strong horizontal line of the quay, and the vertical masts of the fishing vessels, counterbalanced by the curve of a davit in the foreground, and the draped nets. Best-known for his abstract compositions based on landscapes and still lives, George Campbell was one of a group of Belfast artists who came to the fore in the Irish art world in the 1940s. He and his brother Arthur were born in Arklow, Co. Wicklow, but after their mother, the artist Gretta Bowen, was widowed, they were raised in Belfast. Largely self-taught as a painter, Campbell took up painting during WWII, and also went on painting trips to Connemara with his friend Gerard Dillon He first showed paintings at the Mol Gallery in Belfast, and in 1946 his first one-person show was held at the Waddington Gallery in Dublin. The following year, Campbell exhibited at the RHA, and over his lifetime was to show over one hundred works at the Academy. Visiting Paris in 1950, he became friendly with Ossip Zadkine before returning to Ireland where he stayed and painted in Gerard Dillon's cottage on Inishlackan Island, off Roundstone in Connemara. Although Spanish subject-matter appears in Campbell's paintings from 1947, it was not until 1951 that he actually visited Spain. He returned regularly thereafter, traveling and painting, learning Flamenco guitar, and absorbing the influence of the landscape, light, and culture of the Iberian peninsula. Over the following three decades, Campbell divided his time between Spain and Ireland, exhibiting regularly at the Waddington Gallery and also, latterly, at the Hendriks Gallery, where this present work was shown. His best paintings date from the 1960s, when his appreciation of Spanish and Irish landscapes combined with a strong Cubist sensibility and confident use of paint. As well as being a painter, Campbell was an accomplished musician, author and broadcaster, and his work was widely exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Ireland. In 1973 he was the subject of an RTE film, Things within Things. Peter Murray, March 2021