www.flickr.com

Monday, February 27, 2006

Derek Hill





Derek was a major snob and lover of the good life, but an interesting caring godfather. My dad got to know him at the British School in Rome, where he had a years scholarship. I was christened at St Columbs in Donegal. The house is now a national museum. The following is extracted from one of the art capitalists, writing to encourage purchase of his work.

Renowned for his society portraits and arresting scenes of Co. Donegal and Tory Island, Derek Hill’s contribution to 20th century Irish Art is without dispute. His long and varied career saw him embrace stage design, appointed art director of the British School in Rome, write books on Islamic architecture and orchestrate major public exhibitions such as the Landseer show at the Royal Academy in 1961.

Hill remained so personally attached to many of his paintings that he was often loath to let them go, no matter how high the price offered. Born in Southampton, Hill (1916-2000) left school aged 16, at first pursuing a career in stage design but later rejecting this for painting. In time, he established himself as a successful portrait artist of the British establishment and fashionable society, including such notable sitters as H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, Lord Mountbatten, Cecil Beaton and Noel Coward.

Landscape painting, however, remained his first love and in 1954 he bought St Colombs – a house in Churchill, Co. Donegal. Living in the northwest of Ireland fired his imagination, as did his 'discovery' in 1956 of Tory Island, off the Donegal coast, and it was here that his landscape painting truly came into its own. Hill purchased a hut on the island and for the next 30 years, produced some of his most evocative works.

The seclusion of Tory suited Hill. He was a man who enjoyed his own company and it was arguably this factor and his measured acceptance of it, that contributed to his ability to draw on the starkness and loneliness of such places to develop his craft and produce his most striking work. Later, when Hill travelled the world – visiting Turkey, Yemen and Afghanistan – his observations recall the light, colour and structure observed on this weather-beaten island.

Hill painted H.R.H. The Prince of Wales on a several occasions, initially painting the Prince for Trinity, his former college at Cambridge. Hill once commented on his hope that his portraits conveyed the Prince’s “warm, sensitive and understanding humanity: a concern and interest in whatever he undertakes”.

I remember watching him paint a noteable and it was interesting to see him fixate on the furniture. The poor guy was probably paying a lot for the portrait and the chest of drawers were getting most of his artistic juices.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was curious if you ever thought of changing the layout of your
blog? Its very well written; I love what youve
got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could
connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only
having one or 2 images. Maybe you could space it out better?


Here is my blog post ... digital image forgery detection based on the consistency of defocus blur

Anonymous said...

I’m not that much of a internet reader to be honest but your blogs really nice,
keep it up! I'll go ahead and bookmark your site to come back in the future. All the best

Also visit my homepage - ronco Pocket fisherman

Anonymous said...

Whats up this is kinda of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors
or if you have to manually code with HTML. I'm starting a blog soon but have no coding expertise so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!

Feel free to visit my page: http://www.bipolardisorderwiki.com

Anonymous said...

Does your site have a contact page? I'm having trouble locating it but, I'd like to send you an email.
I've got some suggestions for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it grow over time.

my blog - juice diet

Anonymous said...

I believe everything published was very logical.
However, what about this? suppose you added a little content?
I am not suggesting your content isn't solid, but suppose you added something to possibly grab a person's attention?
I mean "Derek Hill" is a little vanilla. You should peek at
Yahoo's front page and see how they create news titles to get people to click. You might try adding a video or a related pic or two to get readers interested about what you've written.

In my opinion, it could make your posts a little livelier.


Also visit my site; breville juicer

Anonymous said...

I got this web page from my pal who told me on
the topic of this web site and at the moment this time I am visiting this web
site and reading very informative content at this
place.

Have a look at my website - ronco pocket fisherman

Anonymous said...

I have been surfing online greater than 3 hours
lately, but I never discovered any attention-grabbing article like yours.
It's pretty price sufficient for me. Personally, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the web will probably be a lot more useful than ever before.

Here is my web-site: jack la lane power juicer