james dixon

Irish Arts Review

James DixonAuthor(s): Derek HillSource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, Vol. 9 (1993), pp. 179-181Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492732 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

JAMES DIXON

E he story of my first meeting with James Dixon has often been told. I

was painting a harbour scene on the island one Sunday morning and, when the islanders came out of mass, several of them stopped on their way home to watch

me. 'I could do better than that', said James and rather naturally I asked him why then he didn't do it. 'No materials', he said - so I promised to provide him with paper, which he mostly liked paint ing on, and paints. He refused brushes saying he could easily make his own out of his donkey's tail. That is how it all began, though later Jimmy showed me a bird he had painted and also a Crucifixion scene he had painted with old tin left-overs of paint on top of a calendar.

As far as I know his first attempt, after our meeting, produced the remarkable Harbour Scene that Bruce Arnold repro duced in his book on Irish painting. Naturally I bought the picture, now part of the Glebe Gallery collection, and from that moment there was no holding him.

This must have been in 1956 or 1957. Tory Island, a rock three miles long and

about a quarter of a mile wide, has no trees and sits in the middle of the Atlantic. John Berger once described the in habitants as people from a wreck rowing desperately for the shore but with no hope of ever getting there. The island he felt, when he visited it with me, was about to fall over the cliff-edge of Europe. Nothing except the fabled Hy Brasil between it and the setting sun.

I don't think when James commented on my picture he meant to criticise my possible technical ability at represent ational detail. Luke Batterham wrote in a thesis on Dixon 'it was just that the studied, restrained pictorialism employed by Hill to represent the island bore little relation to the Irishman's own experience of the place on which he had spent almost his entire life'. Most of Dixon's pictures, apart from the few portraits, are related to the island and what goes on during its daily routine. Proportions, perspectives and topographical accuracy have no part in his work. Animals may appear larger than people and a rather disconcerting aerial view may suddenly be added to a normal flat landscape. He uses dark and sombre colours with white flecks applied for waves or gulls. Browns and blues are

mixed and they help to make the greys. Once, tO a local newspaper man, he said

'You don't get all that much colour here,

James Dixon, although untrained, gained recognition as a natural painter, and examples of his work are in several public

collections. Derek Hill describes the emergence of the artist.

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Derek Hill, Portrait of James Dixon Oil on canvas 74 x 89 cm.

except the blue and greys of the sky and the glistening of the sea. There is nothing romantic about little boats fighting with crashing waves and winds.' The islanders do fight hard for survival and may through the school of painting that followed Jim

my's example, have achieved this. A long struggle against governmental wishes to evacuate the island.

Shipwrecks were often chosen as sub jects by Jimmy, the most famous being the sinking of the HMS Wasp in 1884. The boat had come from Sligo it seems, to col lect island rates long overdue and the in

habitants are said to have turned a cursing stone for its demise. Whatever happened, the lighthouse is alleged not to have been functioning that night and the loss of over eighty lives was the result. There are several pictures of the sinking of the Titanic, something that had always made a great impression on Jimmy as a boy. His rival, James Rogers, one of the other island painters, depicted the HMS

California - the ship that is said to have disregarded the Titanic and its signals and that, far later, was wrecked on the island

when cruising gently out beyond the West Town harbour.

Some people talk of an early Dixon or a late one, but there's really little dif ference to be seen in technique between the dates when he was at work. The dates he often wrote, with the titles, on the cor ners of his pictures are not always ac curate. He just painted his own feelings towards a subject, and that was that.

Apart from the sea pictures and scenes of islanders herding cattle or attending dog

races - something I admit I never saw on the island - he painted birds and flowers and a very occasional portrait of them - as he imagined them. Ellen Ward was already in her late nineties and then he painted her posthumously. He also paint ed the Queen, titled To the Queen wishing you the Best of Luck, and Winston Chur chill, whom he greatly admired. His pic ture of the Queen was sent to her and a courtier replied that Her Majesty wished him many years ahead for his good work. Lady Churchill was given the picture of

Winston but its whereabouts can only be surmised, alas, after the destruction of Sutherland's magnificent portrait. He also painted myself, as a present, a Union

Jack in hand, wearing a suit and a tie -something I'd never do on the island - and beside me a landscape and a flower picture to demonstrate the things I loved. A typical Englishman! Any true likeness to the subject was not achieved. Apart from the HMS Wasp's sinking,

Jimmy painted The First Steamship - also, of course, from imaginatioin. The picture is almost entirely of the sea, with great variety of paint surface. Underneath he writes 'The first steamship that ever pass ed Tory Island Sound. The Tory islanders sent after her thinking she was on fire

when they saw the smoke of her when they were tired out they had to turn back killed out and one of them said she is as far away now as ever. by James Dixon Tory Island 1212/64.'

Dixon's brush strokes often overlap so that the sea, the land and even the boats

make an inseparable unit and each ele ment is in constant conflict with the other. To the islanders the sea is not mere ly a means of their fishing livelihood but is also often a reason of their death by drowning.

The other island painters may achieve island views and scenes but none of them - not even Alfred Wallis in Cornwall -

have ever depicted the dramatic and restless natural elements or the reality of storm conditions in the way that Dixon has.

Derek Hill Derek Hill is well-known for his portrait and

landscape paintings, many of which interpret the Donegal coastline near his home. Hill donated the

Glebe Gallery Collection, Donegal, to the nation.

As he recounts above, he encouraged James Dixon, (1887-1971) the naive painter.

ILLUSTRATIONS OVERLEAF 'DIXON ON TORY' BY PAUL MULDOON

ON PAGE 182.

-179



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james dixon

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