Terence P. Flanagan, R.H.A., R.U.A.

The Artist and thence by descent to the present owner

S.B. Kennedy, T.P. Flanagan: Painter of Light and Landscape, Lund Humphries, London and Vermont, 2013, p.68, illustrated in colour, and pp.70-1

In 1964 Seamus Heaney and his family accompanied the Flanagan’s on holiday to Gortahork in County Donegal. It was a fruitful time for both TP and Heaney. Together they travelled the area in Heaney’s Volkswagen Beetle, TP making drawings for paintings and Heaney gathering ideas for poems, many of which were later published in his Door into the Dark. From the exhibition, which was subsequently arranged, the Ulster Museum purchased Gortahork 2 (1967), while Boglands (for Seamus Heaney) was already in private hands. Many of the Gortahork pictures are almost monochromatic, blacks and greys often predominating. But in 1968 Flanagan returned to County Donegal and Boglands 4 dates from his return.

Boglands 4 is more abstract than earlier works. The diptych is arranged to hang in an upright manner and its two parts represent two distinct aspects of the bog, namely its surface—its upper part—and its underlying structure. The subject, with echoes of the present and the past, of life and death, is Heaneyesque and is witness to the close association between Heaney and TP in these years. It is also similar to his Boglands (for Seamus Heaney) painting. As with many similar pictures the palette employed is light and very atmospheric. By contrast the lower panel is heavier in mood, the tones darker, the underlying structure of the bog and its ‘contents’ dominating. Structurally the two parts of the diptych are linked by the prolongation of selected forms which gives a sense of unity overall.