a donegal retreat

Irish Arts Review

A Donegal RetreatAuthor(s): Adrian KellySource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 21, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 116-119Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503088 .

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COLLECTION

A DONEGAL RETREAT

A Donegal Retreat

1 St Columbs Glebe

House, Garton

County Donegal

2 Derek Hill Portrait

of Erskine Childers on a Tractor on Tory Island 1974 oil on

canvas 90 x 90cm

3 The drawingroom was decorated by Derek Hill's brother, John Hill who

worked with Green

& Abbot, London

4 The bold colouring of the entrance hall

of Glebe House

ADRIAN KELLY recalls the generosity of Derek Hill in gifting his impressive art collection and Bfl

richly decorated home to the Irish people ^M Derek Hill passed away on 30 July 2000 near his

London home in Hampstead. In his eighty-four

years he had come to be known as a painter, scholar,

patron, collector and traveller. He was a particular

friend to Ireland and especially to Donegal. He gave the Glebe

House and Gallery to the Irish people in 1981 and the property continues to be managed by the Office of Public Works (Fig 1).

Donegal may have seemed an unlikely corner of the world for

Derek Hill to settle back in the 1950s. Hill was thirty-seven when he bought St Columbs on the banks of Lough Gartan, and

had already accomplished much in what was to prove a lengthy

and prolific lifetime. He travelled throughout Europe and the

East to study stage design, a profession he abandoned before set

tling on painting. In many ways, the 1950s were the most impor

tant time in Derek Hill's life; he came in contact with young and

emerging Italian and British artists and intellectuals, became a

regular visitor to Bernard Berenson's Florentine villa, and?hav

ing painted earnestly for a number of years?secured the position

of Artistic Director at the British School in Rome. Although Hill

had visited Ireland before, he had not travelled as far north as

Donegal until he stayed at Glenveagh Castle as a guest of his ^^|

friend and colleague Henry Mcllhenny. He wrote: 'Henry told ^^B

me about a house nearby, St Columbs, an old rectory, for years ^^B

it had been a fishing hotel... I immediately fell in love with it; it ^^B

was on a lake, it faced south and the ground fell away from it - ^B|

it was just the right size and charming architecturally, exactly the ^Bl

sort of house I'd always wanted to live in and the countryside ^8| about it was miraculous'. Hill had, by this time, gathered an

^BR impressive art collection and was looking for a space in which to

^^fl house it: Gartan proved the perfect setting, and he bought St

^^B Columbs in 1953 for ?1000.

^B Long before the thought of donating St Columbs to the Irish

^^B people had crossed Derek Hill's mind, the man was already ^^B exhibiting his acquisitions. Having begun to collect pictures in

^^B 1940, the fifteen years that followed saw him assemble an impres- ^81 sive collection. By 1956, two years after his move to Donegal, he

^81 showed these pictures in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery and

^^B in Dublin at the Little Theatre in Brown Thomas 6k Co. This

^^B exhibition contained one hundred and nineteen pictures, amongst ^^B them works by Braque, Corot, Degas, Landseer, Moore, Picasso

^^^B

1 1 6 IRISH ARTS REVIEW AUTUMN 2004

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and Renoir. There were two ^^^Î^BBp?PS?BBbB?^ notable groupings of emerg- ^^^^^BB^^?îP^^^^ ing artists in this collection; BBBBBBBI^B&Î^

young British artists which

included John Bratby, Laurence Gowing, Joan Eardley, John

Craxton, Mary Kessell and Jack Smith and young Italians includ

ing Pietro Annigoni, Emilio Greco, Renato Guttuso, Giacomo

Manzu and Zoran Music. Hill had begun to gather Irish paintings

upon his arrival on these shores and works by Grace Henry, Evie

Hone, Nathaniel Hone and Jack B Yeats are also contained in the

exhibition. Many of these pictures remain at St Columbs today.

Hill's basic decoration of St Columbs was very carefully calculated,

the flat colours adorning the walls of each room leaving great

scope to display an eclectic assemblage of pictures, furniture and

objets d'art. An Islamic scholar (he co-authored a book entitled

Islamic Architecture and its Decoration Faber ck Faber 1964), Hill

used his studies of Islamic decoration, along with his earlier

encounter with stage design, to great effect when decorating his

new home. Adamant that the Western World?and North-Western

Europe in particular?had little experience of dealing with pattern,

Hill embraced an Eastern philosphy... If you throw masses of pat

terns into the mix, they nearly always sit very well together.

Even today, one of the most memorable things about St

Columbs is the first thing you notice upon entering the house - the

dramatic Reckett's blue hall (Fig 4). The two Chinese door guard scrolls thrown into the mix leave you in no doubt that the expe

rience ahead will be unusual. The small morningroom, situated

just off the hall, is almost entirely a stage set, offering a strong

Oriental theme. Hill's brother John helped to decorate the house;

John Hill was an interior designer based in the London firm of

Green & Abbot and balanced Derek's more theatrical approach.

Between them, they created some truly unique interiors. John dec

orated the drawingroom: his lilac walls are the most neutral sur

face in the house, almost close to grey?the result is that they will

not easily reject ornament (Fig 3). The room contains paintings by

both Derek and John Hill, Victor Passmore, Zoran Music and

Roderic O'Conor (along with an array of Oriental and Islamic tex

tiles and ceramics), but it never feels cluttered.

Elsewhere, the ukiyo-e that hang on the bamboo-effect wallpa

per in Hill's Japanese Lobby are by some of the greatest of the

19th-century Japanese woodblock artists. Works by Utamaro,

Toyokuni and Hiroshige are all present, alongside six of Hokkai's

118 j

IRISH ARTS RE V I E W A I T l M N 2004



COLLECTION

A DONEGAL RETREAT

thirty-six views of Mount Fuji. This was also the music room, and

following his death, Derek's gramophone was returned to it's

former home beneath these prints. The kitchen at St Columbs

was in constant use and the heart of the house?all Derek's visi

tors remember his housekeeper, Gracie McDermot, with great

fondness. Some of the key items in the collection are located in

this room. On the dresser, in amongst the Wemyss Ware and

Spongware sits the Bullfight, a ceramic plate by Picasso, alongside

paintings by the Tory Island painters, all combining to create an

intriguing visual dialogue.

Hill was only in Donegal a few short years when he made his

way further west to Tory Island and to what was perhaps his most

important contribution to Irish Art, his encouragement and

patronage of the Tory Island artists, in particular James Dixon. The

story that Dixon had never painted before meeting Hill is erro

neous. Dixon does appear to have claimed that he 'could do better'

after observing Derek painting on the island one morning; some of

his paintings, however, clearly predate that first meeting. What is

true is that Hill, impressed by Dixon's confidence, supplied him

with paint and paper, encouraging him at every turn. Dixon's mas

terpiece West End Village, a bird's eye view of one of the two small

villages on Tory, hangs in the kitchen at St Columbs (Fig 8).

lent his studio to fellow artists. Some came to be painted. Seamus

Heaney described this experience in his poem The Sitting

I looked through the pane

past the waving leaves of ash

and eyes looked

over the edge of the canvas

There was a scuffing and dabbing

"The mouth is not a physical feature.

it is an expression."

Therefore I came to pass

as an expression

I came out again

head-first

but gray-haired this time

and already confirmed.

No essay on Derek Hill would be complete without some ref

erence to the man's own painting. Having begun to paint seri

ously in 1938 (taking a studio in Paris), Hill swiftly made his

name as a portraitist, and as such could combine two of his key

passions, painting and travelling. Often called away to exotic

locations around the world on commission to paint the rich and

famous, he painted quickly and instinctively. Renowned as a

remarkable draftsman, his preferred approach to portraiture was

to paint his subject for a few hours each morning and leave the

canvas to dry a little overnight (Figs 2 ck 6). A passion for land

scape painting made Hill fall in love with Donegal, and it

remained a constant source of inspiration for him (Fig 5).

St Columbs has survived the years well. Derek Hill's foresight

as a collector is continually proven, as more and more of the items

in the collection come back into fashion. As the fad for minimal

ist interior design goes into decline, here is the perfect example of

how clutter can work. The collection is poorly served by pushing

its big name artists to the fore; works by Picasso and Braque aside,

I

A passion for landscape painting made Hill fall in love with

Donegal, and it remained a constant source of inspiration for him

I Upstairs, Hill converted three of the upstairs rooms into two

bathrooms and a study, leaving the four corner rooms as bed

rooms. Hill's own bedroom is directly above the drawingroom,

flanked by a study and a bathroom (Fig 7). The master bedroom

is decorated with distinctive John Aldridge wallpaper, and does

not easily accept artworks of any kind. What is there?an Oskar

Kokoshka self-portrait, a Georgio Morandi etching?are, like

many of the pictures in his collection, presents from the artists

themselves. In the adjacent study, the walls and ceiling are cov

ered with William Morris's Blackthorn wallpaper, creating a

woodland effect in which to read. Pictures in this room are by

Picasso, Yeats and Sutherland.

Hill's home at St Columbs never failed to inspire his visitors.

Some came to paint, a pursuit Derek actively encouraged and often

its greatest strength is in its entirety. The house is saturated with

pictures and this is how the collection works best. In the foreword

to the catalogue A Painters Choice: The Derek Hill Collection, 1956

Hill wrote: 'The first painting I ever bought was Boats at Shoreham

by A E Bottomley in 1940. Though I still admire in it the quali ties for which I originally bought this picture, my taste, since the

age of 23 has obviously changed and varied. It may have advanced.

Some may think it has retrogressed. I don't know. Others will

probably judge this for me'. This painting still hangs on the stairs

at St Columbs, and with 10,000 visitors each year, many still judge

Derek Hill's taste?and find it excellent.

ADRIAN KELLY is Curator of the Glebe House and Gallery, County Donegal. All photography courtesy of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and

Local Goverment.

5 Derek Hill

Tory Gully cl970

oil on canvas

92 x 60cm

6 Derek Hill

Portrait of Eddie

Moore 1972 oil on

canvas 68 x 68cm

7 The master

bedroom is

decorated with

wallpaper designed

by John Aldridge and adorned with a

self-portrait by Kokoshka and an

etching by Morandi

8 James Dixon West

End Village 1958 oil on paper 96 x 96cm

AUTUMN 2004 IRISH ARTS REVIEW |

119



a donegal retreat

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