Slieve na Brock by Colin Middleton

Slieve na Brock by Colin Middleton
9p Stamp issued 1971 - United Kingdom

Middleton (1910-1983) trained at the Belfast Academy of Art and was heavily influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh.  His artwork was quite surreal in many respects.  In addition to being an artist, he was also a musician, theatre designer and poet.  In 1969 he was awarded an MBE and appointed an associate at the Royal Hibernian Academy, with full membership in 1970.

His work was one of three paintings in the Ulster '71 Festival stamp series:

Deer's Meadow by Thomas Carr

Deer's Meadow by Thomas Carr
7p Stamp issued 1971 United Kingdom

Carr was taught at the Slade School of Fine Art in London after selling an initial landscape painting in a local hotel during a three week holiday in Cassis, in the South of France. Commercially successful, this Northern Irish artist shunned adstractionism that was popular in the early stages of his career.  For much of his life he was a teacher and artist, living in the countryside of Northern Ireland in addition to living in Belfast from 1955.

This is one of three landscape paintings by Northern Irish artists that featured in an "Ulster '71 Festival" stamp issue:
TP Flanagan - A Mountain Road
Colin Midleton - Slieve na Brock

A Mountain Road by TP Flanagan

A Mountain Road, by TP Flanagan (1929-2011)
UK 3p Stamp issued 1971

TP Flanagan made a large contribution to the arts during his long career in Northern Ireland in the mid 20th century.  As well and being a teacher at the St Mary's Training College in Belfast until retirement in 1983, he had a parallel career as a professional artist in oils and watercolours was quietly flourishing throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with awards, exhibitions, honours, a television film (TP Flanagan: Painter).

He and his family were close friends with the famous Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, who was quoted as saying: "As an artist, Flanagan has gone his own way, explored the Irish landscape and enhanced Irish landscape painting through the discovery andelaboration of an individual style."


This stamp is one of a series of three "Ulster Paintings" from the Ulster '71 festival on 16 June 1971:
Colin Middleton
Tom Carr

Francisco Goya - The Forge

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) - The Forge (1812)
Fujeira Stamp Issued 1971
Frick Collection New York USA

Goya is considered to be one of the last Great Masters of painting.  He painted this in the latter period of his career when the Spanish were at war with the French during the Peninsula Wa, which went from 1808 to 1814.  Goya is more famous for some of his nude paintings, including the Nude Maja.  He completed another painting which depicted the same model, who was wearing clothes in the second painting.

Portrait of Lagarova by Stefan Ivanov

Stefan Ivanov by Portrait of Lagarova
Bulgaria Stamp Issued 1971

Stamp was issued within a series of 6 stamps to commemorate the opening of a new art gallery in Bulgaria in 1971.  Stefan Ivanov was born in 1875, being one of 12 siblings in a peasant family.  His early life was quite tragic as six of his brothers and sisters died.  He trained as an artist in Sofia in good art schools and he became famous for sad, melancholic works of women during a very tough time of depression and poverty in the 1920s.  He died in 1951.

Johannes Vermeer - The Lacemaker

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) - The Lacemaker
Fujeira Stamp Issued 1971
The Louvre, Paris France

Vermeer is one of the most famous Dutch genre painters from the 17th Century.  The majority of his works were completed in his two room home in Delft, as the same interiors are shown many times with different middle-class characters who were individual models for his paintings.  He is also known for his exquisite use of light and colour, which involved the use of very expensive and rare pigments.  Another of his works has been captured in a French stamp issue: Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Pine Forest in Viatka - Ivan Shishkin

Иван Шишкин. Сосновый бор. Мачтовый лес в Вятской губернииIvan Shishkin - Pine Forest in Viatka  Province (1872).
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898) composed a prolific number of oil on canvas paintings that depicted realistic impressions of forest scenes in Russia and parts of Europe, including Germany.  His paintings were all very natural and very similar, typically being composed with very large trees in natural groves, with very little human activity, if at all.   This painting depicts a scene from Viatka, which is now modern day Tatarstan in south western Russia. 


Olga's Gallery has a fantastic selection of Shishkin's work, that clearly shows his interest in trees and nature in fine detail.

Nikolai Yaroshenko - Kursistka

Nikolai Yaroshenko (1846-1898) - Kursistka (1863)

Russian USSR Stamp Issued 1971

Russian Museum in Kiev.

Yaroshenko was an artist who depicted he realism of life in the late 19th century in Russia. His paintings were often depressing in nature, with torture, struggles, gothic fashion and hardships being common in Russia at the time.  The artist also managed to maintain a very good career in the army, as he achieved the rank of Major General by the time he retired in the 1890s.

Alexey Savrasov - Country Road

Alexey Savrasov (1830-1897) - Country Road (1873). 

Russia 16K Stamp Issued 1971

Oil on canvas. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

This artist was most famous for his landscapes, having been influenced by John Constable when he traveled to Britain.  Although this stamp reproduction is quite poor, the majority ofhis works were very intricate and detailed. 

Other works by Savrasov have been depicted in Russian stamps.

Georges Rouault - The Dreamer

Georges Rouault (1871-1958) 'The Dreamer' (1946)

France Stamp issued 1971

Held at Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris. France

Rouault took up an apprenticeship as a glassmaker in his late teens - the similarity of many of his works to stained glass windows is often accredited to be due to this influence in his learly life.  He was instrumental in the Fauvism Movement. 


Fauvism, generally considered the first artistic revolution of the 20th Century, can be seen as a manifestation of the main impulses of the century: towards autonomy of colour and the intervention of the painter's emotions as a constituent part of the painting.  

- Extract from Chambers Arts Library - Modern Art by Edina Berdand

The fauves were one of the first movements in modern art, but they were less revolutionary than other movements, such as cubism and abstractionism.  Their work is mainly interested in colour, with less distortion of shapes - this is directly seen in the work depicted on this stamp.  

Rouault's work was exhibited in Australia in the 1950s, during an exhibition of modern French artists who were living at the time.  This exhibition was reviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald at the time, and it makes for interesting reading:  French Exhibition is Study in Modern Art (Links to Trove National Library of Australia Newspaper Archives).

Hosoda Eishi - Geisha in Boat

Chobunsai Eishi - Geisha in Boat

Hungary 60ft Stamp Issued 1971

Chosunsai Eishi (1756-1829) was a Japanese painter and wood block designer who depicted images of courtesans and geishas.  Although he was born into the samurai class, he left the public service to devote his time wholly to art.  

His work became prominent in the 1790s, with many artists copying his style, especially in terms of elongating the heads of the geishas.  His work was influenced by Torii Kiyonaga.