Patrick Collins (painter)

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 )

Works in collections

 * Irish National Gallery
 * Liffey Quaysides, 1957-8
 * Irish Arts Council:
 * Rising Swan
 * Small Holding on the Side of a Mountain
 * Children Playing
 * Predator Bird
 * Atlantic Window
 * Rain on the Moon
 * Oak Tree
 * Arts Council of Northern Ireland
 * AIB Collection
 * 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