Gerard Dillon

Adams & Bonhams, Dublin, 2 June 2010, lot 15, where purchased by the present owner

Dawson Gallery, Dublin, Gerard Dillon Early Paintings of The West of Ireland, March 1971, no.4;
Culturlann, Belfast, A Celebration of Gerard Dillon, 2011, no.48;

Dr Mary Cosgrove, A Celebration of Gerard Dillon, exh. cat., 2011, illustrated p.21

The canvas has not been lined. There are some isolated areas of minor craquelure, mainly in the upper portion of the composition, visible only on close inspection. Otherwise the work appears to be in good overall condition. UV light inspection reveals a few minor spots of retouching in the sky and possibly a small area above the ear of the central figure. Held in a painted wooden frame, ready to hang.
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We are grateful to Karen Reihill for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work. 

‘He [Dillon] became enraptured by the reality of the people, farming, fishing, drinking and dancing. He translated it all into visual image as Synge had earlier translated it into words and drama.’ (James White, Dawson Gallery, exh. cat., 1971)

The Aran Islands, dramatically located off the west coast of Ireland, have long held a fascination for Irish artists and writers. At the turn of the 19^th century, the tight-knit communities, the preservation of the Irish language and their traditional way of life intimately bound with the land and sea represented something wholly other, indeed sacred, from the modernity that was encroaching Ireland. One of the definitive accounts of this existence was recorded by John Millington Synge, the playwright and writer, who first visited the Islands in 1898 and published his book, The Aran Islands, in 1907, with illustrations by J.B. Yeats (see lot 1 as an example). Synge’s profound experiences of this community informed his greatest writing, famously his play, The Playboy of the Western World (1907).  

By the time of Gerard Dillon’s arrival forty years later in the 1940s, the nature and shape of these communities had been changing as the 20^th century advanced, yet they still preserved a magic and mystery that enthralled the artist. Life in the West of Ireland represented a new freedom – an escape from the conflicts, internal and external, that dogged Dillon’s upbringing and adult life in Belfast and London – which fed directly into his painting. Just as Synge evoked these communities with words, Dillon caught their spirit through paint. His naïve, child-like painting style imbued his work with an innocence, poetry and joy that is representative of both the Islanders way of life and Dillon’s response to them.  They are rich visual stories, in keeping with the rich story-telling tradition that was integral to the community’s culture.

Fishing was an essential part of life for the Islanders, offering an abundance of food when the land could not be relied upon. Given the tempestuous location of the Islands, it required the utmost skill since the sea often claimed the lives of the men. The mood however, is lighter in the present work, with the three fishermen taking a leisurely respite, smoking a pipe and drinking porter while mending their nets. They wear traditional dress, the colour and form of which Dillon has used to good pictorial effect. They have wide homespun trousers and wear oiled wool jerseys, which were knitted by the women in the family. Each family had their distinct decorative stitch, which was also the means by which a fisherman could be identified when accidents at sea occurred. Over their jerseys, the men are wearing waistcoats known as báinín jackets, while their shoes are made of a single piece of rawhide known as ‘Pampouties’. The colourful belts are also typical, as is the knitted cap with a woollen bob which the figure looking out to sea wears, known as a ‘bubbelín’. In the harbour below can be seen one of the distinctive wooden currachs which the fishermen used heading out to sea.

On this scale, Mending Nets, Aran is one of the largest and most impressive representations by Dillon of the Aran Islanders and their way of life. In the year in which Dillon’s centenary birth is celebrated with an exhibition at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the present work is another tour-de-force which shows us why, just as the Aran Islanders have come to occupy a special place in Irish history, Gerard Dillon in turn is remembered as one of the most unique and visionary artists in 20^th century Ireland.