Is this an answer to one of your many Christmas present problems? Admittedly, with an auction guide price of €6,000 to €8000 at Whyte's Auctioneers in Dublin next Monday, December 1st, this nautically-themed primitive work from Jim Dixon of the Tory Island school of naïve painting founded by Derek Hill would not be regarded by most of us as a cheap and cheerful solution to the Christmas challenge.
But when we remember that it might go up in value over the years, and add to that the fact that it combines so many narrative threads, then it might even qualify for the elite category of "Christmas Present for Myself".
Derek Hill (1916-2000) was, by the 1950s, an increasingly fashionable London portrait and landscape painter who was commissioned to go to Donegal to paint a portrait of American millionaire Henry McIlhenney, newly installed as monarch of all he surveyed at Glenveagh Castle.
An oasis in the heart of Donegal – Churchill with St Columb's Rectory and the Glebe Gallery.
ENRAPTURED BY DONEGAL
Donegal enraptured Hill, and in time he made his main base at Churchill, a sweet little oasis of a place at mid-county with St Columb's Rectory and the Glebe Gallery on the otherwise rugged pilgrim route from Glencolmcille to Derry and onwards towards Iona. But for contrast, he was also blown away – sometimes literally – by the sheer ruggedness of Tory Island, where the locals helped him to building a storm-resistant painting hut on the cliffs, where he could safely (well, fairly safely) record all the moods of this weird place as it interacted with the Atlantic at its wildest.
Rugged workplace – Hill's Hut on Tory Island
CONFIDENT IN THEIR OPINIONS
A community cannot survive on a place like Tory without being confident in its own opinions, and as soon as the islanders started seeing the work that Hill was creating on their island, the leading families such as the Rodgers clan and the Dixon family felt they could do every bit as well with a bit of coaching, and the availability of the right materials.
Hill promised bring all that back with him the following summer, and he was as good as his word. The Tory School was established, primitive in style but vivid and vigorous with it, although nearly always with the inevitable problems with perspective. This is so perennially intriguing that it's of interest to note that a current David Hockney exhibition features paintings by the great man attempting to reverse the laws of perspective, but I'd only give it a go if you were confident of turning your brain right way out again once the job was done.
IRISH CRUISING CLUB COMMODORE
Be that as it may, the 1967 painting on sale may be trying to do too much. But as it features ICC Commodore Wallace Clark's 36ft Wild Goose – tan-sailed at the time – entering the old harbour at Tory with almost the entire population on the quayside to greet him and his crew, Jim Dixon had to tick a lot of boxes to keep himself and everyone else happy, as the full title is: "Wild Goose (Mr Wallace Clark) Coming To Tory Island To See Some of His Friends".
Wild Goose in Wallace Clark's ownership in Mulroy Bay on Donegal's North Coast.
A more straightforward Dixon painting, of the 1963 re-creation by Wallace Clark of the 563AD currach voyage from Derry to Iona by St Columba on its 1400th Anniversary, is more successful. It was presumably taken from an aerial photo, thereby leaving the painter's mind uncluttered by personal images of what the background should contain. But nevertheless the Wild Goose arriving in Tory harbour work has so many extra links that, for some, it will have value beyond calculation.
Wallace Clark's Iona currach of 1963, recorded by Jim Dixon.
As for Wild Goose, these days she is in the conscientious ownership of Dr Robin Ruddock of Portrush. He is also noted, among many other things, for his meticulous research work on the Trondheim yawls and other traditional craft built locally by James Kelly, who went on to become a noted yacht-builder with some of the Dublin Bay 21s included in his output.
Meanwhile, in the midst of the wilds of Donegal, Churchill remains a gem, with the rectory where Derek Hill lived augmented by the Glebe Gallery nearby, for he was a ferociously discerning collector of artwork and people.
Next stop Greenland – the north coast of Tory on one of its more gentle days
One weekend he came back from London accompanied by a noted violinist whom he wanted to introduce to the best of the traditional fiddlers of Donegal. The Friday night session went so well that in the small hours anyone present with cooking abilities was delegated to rustle up a feast from everything that was in the larder and fridge.
The Man and his Minder – Derek Hill with Gracie McDermott at Churchill
Consequently when the local shop opened in the morning, Gracie McDermott – Hill's treasure of a housekeeper – was first in to buy up everything available in the way of eggs and bacon and bread. When asked who had inspired the night's prodigious consumption, she briskly replied that it was some hungry fiddler called Hughie McMenamin. Yehudi Menuhin has been Hughie McMenamin in Churchill ever since.
And Derek Hill's social ambitions could be stratospheric. On another occasion he was hosting a party in Churchill, and a mildly-exasperated guest spluttered:
"Derek, you have to be the great name-dropper in the world".
"Remarkable you should say that" twinkled Hill. "Just last week in London, exactly the same thing was said to me by the Queen Mother"
