William Crozier HRHA (b.1930) Murphy's Field Oil on canvas, 152 x 182.5cm, (59.8 x 71.8'') Signed, also signed and inscribed verso Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present...

William Crozier HRHA (b.1930) Murphy's Field Oil on canvas, 152 x 182.5cm, (59.8 x 71.8'') Signed, also signed and inscribed verso Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner The present work is quite simply one of the finest large-scale canvases by William Crozier to have ever come on the open market. Painted with his usual expressionist vigour and passionate use of colour, the work is immediate in its intensity. A new auction record was recently achieved (stg?55,200, Bonhams, London, 6 March 2007) indicating that admiration for his work shows no sign of abating. Evocatively titled Murphy's Field, the artist employs a wholly modern and individual style that is distinctly his own to depict what is essentially a traditional subject, a landscape. The artist has been hugely influenced by West Cork and Ireland as a whole in terms of the land he chooses to depict. This genre has dominated his art and he has said of it ''Landscape was a vehicle through which I could say anything. I could do it in any amount of colours, turn it upside down, make it have different moods, make it carry a different meaning. Landscape is not the subject, it is the vehicle through which I can express intangible things. Things which have no narrative. Loss, memory - all can be done through the language of landscape. The landscape almost takes a part, as if an actor'' (Irish Arts Review, Spring 2003, p.66). It is this suggestion, rather than actual representation, that makes his art so appealing. His bold colours and abstract shapes impart a different emotional experience with different viewers. It is a personal art, inviting us to arrive at our own conclusions.

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