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Lot 39
Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) WEST OF IRELAND COUPLE AND HORSES oil on canvas signed lower right; with partial handwritten label on reverse detailing artist's name and address [26 Lower Clonard Street, Belfast]; also with canvas stamp verso [CH West / 115 Finchley Road / N.W.] 16½ x 21½in. (41.91 x 54.61cm) Collection of Phil Rafferty (friend of the artist);Thence by descent Roundstone and Inishlacken were recurring sources of material and inspiration for Gerard Dillon, who became preoccupied with the 'Western idyll' (1) following his first trip to the west of Ireland in 1939. The present work shows a couple taking a leisurely stroll at the days end. Ahead of them along the narrow road are two horses grazing and, their bodies coupled with the neat stone walls, invite the viewer's eye into the picture and towards the centre of the composition. The peacefulness of the rural setting is echoed in the soft rhythmic brushstrokes and gentle changing of light in the dominant sky. There is an aura of calm surrounding the scene and this is further enhanced by the horses who appear unaffected by the approaching pair. Horses appear in several examples of Dillon's west of Ireland paintings such as The Jockey and Omey Island Ponies; the latter shown at the artist's retrospective exhibition in 1972-1973. In these works the figures are also shown interacting in a very natural way with the animals, riding bareback and with minimal reins. In 1949 Eileen Philomena (Phil) Rafferty (1919-1996) - to whom the present work pertains - and Alice West, both amateur artists, accompanied Dillon to Roundstone. Dillon had met Rafferty in London where he was working on building sites and they became firm friends. Dillon's oeuvre had a significant impact on her work and she would later exhibit at the IELA in 1960. In subsequent years Dillon's pilgrimages west drew others such as artist George Campbell and his wife Madge, author Kate O'Brien, Drogheda artist Nano Reid, Dr Maura McQuaid and artist Oisín Campbell among others.Footnote:1. White, James, Gerard Dillon: An Illustrated Biography, Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1994, p.60 L
Lot 40
Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) SHAWL oil on board signed lower right; titled on label on reverse 9½ x 14in. (24.13 x 35.56cm) This painting, depicting a woman sheltering two children under a traditional shawl, is set in a landscape that has the distinctive stone walls and white cottages of Connemara. Dillon first visited the west in 1939 and continued to spend periods painting in Connemara throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s. The figure of the woman sheltering her children has echoes of Beatrice Elvery's famous image Éire (1907). That painting depicts a female figure, half Madonna, half Celtic goddess, sheltering the people of Ireland in the folds of her green cloak. Bought by Maud Gonne for St. Enda's, the school that Padraig Pearse founded in Ranelagh, Éire combines nationalism and religion to create an iconic image that helped to inspire the struggle for Irish independence. Dillon was brought up in a Catholic and nationalist family in the Falls Road area of west Belfast and although he was to lose his faith and spent most of his life in London, he remained a committed nationalist and famously withdrew his work from the Irish Exhibition of Living Art when it toured to Belfast in 1969 in protest at Civil Rights abuses in the North. Although Shawl is not an explicitly nationalist painting, both Dillon's love of Connemara, the area of Ireland least influenced by British rule, and his use of Catholic and Celtic imagery within his work, enables a reading of this painting as part of his celebration of what he considered to be the 'real' Ireland. Dr Riann CoulterApril 2016 L
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