William Crozier HRHA (1930-2011)
Turk Head
Oil on canvas, 101.5 x 127cm (40 x 50")
Signed, Signed again verso

 

Provenance: The Eamonn Mallie Collection. Acquired through the Taylor...

William Crozier HRHA (1930-2011)
Turk Head
Oil on canvas, 101.5 x 127cm (40 x 50")
Signed, Signed again verso

 

Provenance: The Eamonn Mallie Collection. Acquired through the Taylor Galleries, Dublin

Exhibited: 'William Crozier', Taylor Galleries, March 2004, Cat No 2, where purchased

 

Literature: 'William Crozier' edited by Katharine Crouan Lund Humphries, 2007, Back Cover illustration, illustrated again p.177; 'William Crozier: The edge of the landscape' IMMA 2017, full page illustration p.128; Irish Arts Review Summer edition, 2017, illustrated p.40.

 

 

Working professionally as a journalist in Northern Ireland for over two decades in a dark world of shootings, bombings, kidnappings, killings and maimings, when I returned home nightly, it was time for escape, colour and refuge. Our paintings bear testimony to this. Among the best exponents of colour was William Crozier, the Glasgow-born artist who once told me he had relatives on both sides of Northern Ireland's paramilitary worlds. He actually captured a Crossmaglen killing in one of his paintings.

He adopted Ireland as one of his homes spending many years at Ballydehob in West Cork. My art collecting friend Dr Robin Hyndman and I spent a memorable afternoon in Ballydehob with Catherine and the man we re-christened 'The Count.' William revealed to us that he was a huge Count John McCormack fan. Crozier, a colourist, fascinated me in the way that Roderic O' Conor and other Colourists did down the decades.

Those brilliant yellows, pinks, greens and blues resulted in a massive rush of blood to my head one afternoon in Dublin when I walked into the Taylor Gallery in Kildare Street, the opening evening of a large Crozier exhibition. I immediately instructed Pat Taylor to put stickers on two large works, among them, the present work 'Turk Head'. I procured the second painting sight unseen, for Robin such was my excitement. Thank God my friend was correspondingly excited when he arrived in Dublin to view his rather expensive purchase.

Crozier was one of life's saviours for me, if not for my bank manager. I draw attention to a much loved remark about art collecting used by Vincent Ferguson when he violated a command by his wife Noleen not to bring any more art into the house, protesting she could not move with paintings stacked in every room. Vincent reminded me some time later of a "lovely little exhibition in Sligo by Cormac O' Leary". "Did you buy anything?" I asked. "I did" said Vincent. "I thought you are not supposed to be buying" I said. "You don't get cured that easily" laughed Vincent and I didn't either not even after thirty years.

Eamonn Mallie

 

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