Patrick Collins

Patrick Collins (1911–1994) was one of Ireland's foremost painters of the 20th century.

He was elected HRHA (Honorary Member of the Royal Hibernian Academy) in 1980 and a member of the artists' academy Aosdána in 1981. He had a major retrospective exhibition hosted by Ireland's Arts Council (Cork, Belfast, Dublin) in 1982. Several solo exhibitions followed, including a Retrospective at Sligo Art Gallery in 1985. Two years later, Collins was the first visual artist to be honoured with the accolade Saoi by Aosdána, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Ireland. In 1988 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Trinity College, Dublin.

His paintings have been exhibited widely in Ireland and in Europe, and are held in many public and private collections of Irish painting worldwide.

"Patrick Collins has made a unique contribution to painting in our time by his power to evoke an aspect of Ireland which captures not only the primary image of the place and the people, but also its spiritual content. His grey-blue landscapes contain images of households, farms and figures, which emerge with a curious imprecise shape that is ultimately seen to be marked by folk-memory and by legend. Like a poet with words, his images penetrate areas beyond exact statement or description – they belong to the area of suggestion and imagination which cannot be identified outside the realm of his own idiom." (James White, Chairman of the Arts Council in the foreword to "Patrick Collins" by Frances Ruane

Selected group exhibitions 1950 Exhibition of Contemporary Irish Painting, North American Tour 1953 Irish Painting 1903–1953, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin Contemporary Irish Art, Aberystwyth, Wales 1958 Guggenheim Award Exhibition, New York 1963 Twelve Irish Painters, New York 1965 Paintings and Sculpture from Private Collections in Ireland, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin 1966 Modern Irish Paintings, Great Southern Hotels and Ulster Museum, Belfast 1969 Contemporary Irish Painting, Wexford Festival Exhibition of Modern Irish Painting, Northern European and Irish Tour 1970 Aspects of Landscape by Irish Artists, Irish touring exhibition. 1971 The Irish Imagination, Rosc '71, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin Paintings from the Collection of An Chomhairle Ealaion, Irish Tour 1972 The Irish Imagination, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington Exhibition by Irish Painters, Galerie Braun, Paris From Yeats to Ballagh, Kusthalle Lund The Gordon Lamberg Collection, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin Paintings by Irish Artists, Killarney 1976 Irish Art 1900–1950, Cork Rosc 1976, Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork The Gordon Lamberg Collection of Contemporary Art, Ulster Museum, Belfast 1978 Dublin Arts Festival 1979 Contemporary Irish Art, Insurance Corporation of Ireland, Dublin 1980 The Delighted Eye, Arts Councils' Exhibition, London and Irish Tour Irish Art 1943–73, Cork Rosc 1980, Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork and Ulster Museum, Belfast The College Gallery 21st Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin The Collection of Pat and Antoinette Murphy, Belltable Gallery, Limerick

Travelling Tinkers, 1968 A Place with Stones, 1979 Table with Exotic Fruit, 1976 Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) Collection Landscape with Declining Sun (1984) The Wood Pigeon's Nest (1974) Field of Old Stones (1978) Bird Against the Window (1963) Headland (1980) Landscape with Church (1956) Bank of Ireland Collection Pigeon House (mouth of the Liffey), 1978 Trout Rising, 1978