Patrick Collins HRHA (1911-1994) Lake Siren Oil on board, 29.5 x 59.5cm (11½ x 23½'') Signed Provenance: The collection of the poet John Montague and his wife Evelyn Exhibited: ''Patrick...

Patrick Collins HRHA (1911-1994) Lake Siren Oil on board, 29.5 x 59.5cm (11½ x 23½'') Signed Provenance: The collection of the poet John Montague and his wife Evelyn Exhibited: ''Patrick Collins Exhibition'' David Hendriks Gallery Dublin May/June 1968 Cat. No. 22 ''Patrick Collins Exhibition'' David Hendriks at The Cork Arts Society March 1973 Cat. No. 15 Frances Ruane in her 1982 monograph on Patrick Collins described his time in Paris :- ''The familiar characterisation of an artist drinking and starving in a squalid Parisian garret was too uncomfortably true-to-life to be romantic. Collins often recalls how he lived at the point of near starvation, of having to stay in bed because he lacked the strength to walk. He frequently tells how he would walk nearly four miles across Paris to visit the poet John Montague hoping he would be home to give him a meal''. Perhaps we should leave it to Evelyn Montague to tell us of these times in her own words :- ''I believe 'Lake Siren' was painted around 1968 a date just before Patrick Collin's life and mine coincided in Paris. I was living in the latter, my native city, the enviable state of a working young woman with her own flat on the left bank; I was also at that time being courted by John Montague, my future husband, through whom I met Patrick. John wrote a poem about Patrick called ''Wind Harp''. As I gathered, Patrick was in Paris to challenge himself into becoming a hobo living penniless, surrounded by the vibrant visual art scene that Paris was still following in the release of energy from the 1968 riots. For Patrick that meant living in freezing cold maids quarters or vacated studios of other painters. Patrick and the Irish community soon found out that the garrets and the amounts of red wine he drank could only be survived with regular healthy warm food. His occasional disappearance meant we would find him in public wards of Paris hospitals. This is where I came in; back from work to my apartment on Rue Duroc, I relaxed cooking hearty dishes, in anticipation of the possible visits from Montague and our bohemian friends. To my delight Patrick became a permanent fixture and the two of us became dear friends. I enjoyed Patrick's company and his riveting tales of his childhood in Sligo as Patrick often spoke of his homesickness for Sligo and his wife Patricia. In 1972 John and I moved to Cork. With the friendship of Seamus Murphy - pivotal to the Lavitt Gallery, the first thing we did was to organize the Hendrik's Gallery to bring a one-man show of Collins' work to Cork which they did in March 1973. At this show John bought ''Lake Siren'' as a gift for me. The show was a relative success for those times with eight works selling to the likes of Richard Wood and Maurice Fridberg as well as ourselves. I have always felt ''Lake Siren'' to be unique. The theme of ''Lake Siren'' speaks of Patrick's nostalgia for the lost landscape of Sligo, a landscape he kept referring to during those Parisan evenings. It was a nostalgia which eventually brought him back to Ireland fulltime in 1976. -Evelyn Montague, April 2013

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