Important Irish Art
,
wednesday !"th May !#$% at &pm
111
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James Dixon (1887-1970)
Gut Fishing, in Camus More, Tory Island
Oil on paper, 55 x 75cm (21" x 29"”)
Signed, inscribed and dated “Gut Fishing in Camus More/Tory
Island/by James Dixon/14.10.64”
Provenance: Sold in these room, “Important Irish Art” sale,
December 2006, Cat. No. 174, where purchased by current owner
James Dixon is probably Ireland’s only true primitive painter
having very rarely ever ventured away from his native Tory Island
o) the Northwest coast of Donegal. His discovery by the painter
Derek Hill is now legend. Observing Mr Hill painting a landscape
of the West End Village on Tory he is said to have remarked ‘’I
think I could do better’’. Hill immediately encouraged him by
sending him paints. Dixon preferred to work on paper and when
o)ered paint brushes he said he would make his own out of
hair from his donkey. Hill organised exhibitions of the work
of the Tory painters, the &rst of which took place at the New
Gallery, Belfast in 1966 but following on shortly afterwards
he had exhibitions at the Dawson Gallery, Dublin, Autodidaky
Gallery, Vienna and the Portal Gallery, London. His work
entered the collections of !e Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art, !e Hugh Lane Gallery and Bournemouth Art
Gallery. His legacy lives on in what is now referred to as the
Tory Island school of painting. Homage was paid to him when
in 2000 there was a joint exhibition with that other famous
primitive painter Alfred Wallis, organised by the Irish Museum
of Modern Art and the Tate Gallery St. Ives, Cornwall
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