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Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)
In the London Flat
Oil on board, 51 x 76cm (20 x 30”)
Signed. Inscribed with title verso
Provenance: From the Collection of George and Maura McClelland and on loan from them to IMMA from 1999-2004;
Private Collection, Dublin
Exhibited:
Gerard Dillon Retrospective
, Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, Jan-Feb 2003; Art Tank Gallery, Belfast, Feb-Mar 2003,
Cat. No. 26
Northern Artists from the McClelland Collection
, IMMA, Dublin, 2004-2005 and toured afterwards to Droichead Arts
Centre, Drogheda, 2005
Ulster Artists exhibiton
Ava Gallery Clandeboye April 2010 Cat. No. 10
Gerard Dillon: Art & Friendships,
Adam’s, Dublin, July 2013 and AVA Gallery, Clandeboye, August 2013, Cat. No. 8
Literature:
Gerard Dillon Retrospective
catalogue, 2003, full page illustration
Ulster Artists exhibition
2010 Illustrated p11
Gerard Dillon: Art & Friendships
, 2013, illustrated page 6
€20,000 - 30,000
After the War, Gerard Dillon returned to London to live in his sister’s
Mollie’s house, which she leased from Camden Council. Mollie was
obliged to restore the house and Dillon spent weeks altering his base-
ment flat, which had its own independent entrance and door out to the
garden where he was able to store his materials. Many of Dillon’s friends
from the literary and musical world followed him to London and for a
time, Gerard’s flat was a center for artists, writers and musicians to ex-
change ideas and to support one another.
Leading a frugal life, Dillon became accustomed to living in small spaces.
Divided into three sections by a cupboard, Dillon gives the viewer an
insight into his flat in the mid 1950’s. On the left, a dressing area with a
radiogram, scattered records, shoes, socks, coat and hanger. In the centre,
a working area of a still life of a cupboard, painting, fruit, drapery and a
bird. To the right, a man in uniform is seated on the artist’s bed smoking
a cigarette holding a plate. The sitter is probably the artist’s friend from
Belfast, Jim Maguire in his National Service Uniform. Patrick Kelly,
known as ‘Pat’ or ‘Paddy’ Kelly introduced the artist to Maguire and his
family, who were were living in Winchester, Hampshire during this pe-
riod. Known to take in injured stray animals, especially cats, Dillon may
have asked his friend Maguire help him in the bird’s recovery by trying
to coax the bird to feed from the breadcrumbs on the plate.
InThe London Flat
belongs to a series of paintings depicting Dillon’s flat
in Abbey Road. Stylistically similar to
Self Contained Flat
(Ulster
Museum
)
Dillon employed a narrative theme to these images which
were often self-portraits. Here the artist has included his records,
clothes, working area and close friend. Also divided into three sec-
tions,
Self Contained Flat
, depicts himself as the narrative in his daily
life. In his West of Ireland images the artist’s gramophone player or
feet might appear sticking out from the foreground. These interior
images also signalled differences between Dillon’s urban and rural life.
In particular, the changes in modernization and the advancement of
technology, the juxtaposition of the radiogram in the London flat and
the gramophone player in the West of Ireland.
Two writers who often visited Dillon’s flat in the 1950’s, Aidan Hig-
gins and Gerard Keenan described Dillon’s flat in their publications.
- Higgins in
Balcony of Europe,
a novel published in 1972 and Keenan
in
Farset and Gomorrah
, which was serialized in
The Honest Ulsterman,
1977.
Michael Longley refered to this work in a review of the exhibition for
the Irish Times on the 13
th
April 1971,
The earlier oils are of consid-
erable interest. These take for their subject matter everyday life…a young
soldier in an untidy bedroom. With tact and delicacy Dillon nudges prosaic
and seemingly intractable material towards the condition of poetry. He
has, indeed, the uncanny knack of releasing the poetry which lies locked up
in such objects as socks and slippers and coat-hangers-grandchildren, these,
of Van Gogh old boots!...If the title,“The Poet of Irish Painting”means any
thing, then Gerard Dillon lays serious claim to it.”
Karen Reihill
Currently researching Gerard Dillon & friends
