Gerard Dillon RHA RUA (1916-1971) A Wet Day, Ireland Oil on board, 38.5 x 52.5cm (15 x 20½'') Signed. Inscribed with title verso Provenance: Sold in these rooms, Important Irish Art Sale, 5th...

Gerard Dillon RHA RUA (1916-1971) A Wet Day, Ireland Oil on board, 38.5 x 52.5cm (15 x 20½'') Signed. Inscribed with title verso Provenance: Sold in these rooms, Important Irish Art Sale, 5th December 2006, Lot 64 In the late 1940's Gerard Dillon entered into a stipend arrangement with Victor Waddington, which allowed him to spend more time in Connemara. Recognising the broad appeal of Dillon's narrative images, Waddington encouraged the artist to return to Connemara in preparation for his first solo exhibition with him in November 1950. Dillon rented a cottage in Moyard located between Clifden and Letterfrack, visiting the surrounding area recording local events of pony races, tinkers and religious processions or depicting the local people in their cottages and carrying out their daily chores of thatching, harvesting, cutting and collecting turf. Born in Belfast, Dillon admired both William Conor for his portrayal of working class people in Belfast and Seán Keating's illustrations of J.M. Synge's Playboy of The Western World. Both artists recorded and highlighted the harshness of people's lives in an urban environment and in the West of Ireland. It is hardly surprising, therefore when Dillon first visited the west on a cycling trip in 1939 that he should have responded to the people and the landscape as he did. He was immediately enthralled by the landscape of misty hills, spongy bogs, lakes, streams, and a patchwork design of tiny plots protected by ancient dry stonewalls over carpets of stony land. Living among the people on these frequent visits evoked strong feelings for the artist, which he expressed throughout his life. Following his exhibition at Waddington's, one reviewer commented, ''In his paintings of the people of Connemara, Gerard Dillon is deliberately, but not self-consciously naïve and such canvasses ?have a simple, kindly humour.'' A Wet Day, Ireland, was executed on one of these visits to Connemara when he invited friends, George Campbell, Arthur Armstrong, Nano Reid, and Mollie Dillon to stay with him. In August 1950 Dillon invited other friends he met at the Abbey Arts Centre outside London. The visitors Bernard Smith, Leonard French and Arthur Rose were Australians belonging to the London artists' colony, which served as a temporary home for a range of artists trying to get a foothold in London's contemporary art industry. The composition depicts a mother protecting her bare footed children with a homespun shawl from rain as they walk on a bog road close to ponies. The dyed red wide skirt, the dark cloak, mountains, blanket bogs and grey and brown ponies point to Connemara. During the turf-cutting season, woman and children helped to spread out the turf after the men had cut the sods and thrown them up onto the heather to dry. With no shelter on the bog roads, woman and children would have often got caught in showers of rain. Woman would have worn the generous shawl or cóta to keep warm from the prevailing winds and its oiled wool would have acted as a barrier from the rain. After Bernard Smith departed Moyard, Dillon wrote to him describing the success of his sketching trips with Leonard French due to good weather but was unable to get out when Arthur Rose stayed, ''It pissed the whole time, so he must think Connemara is hell''. Dillon also gave a description of a pony show in Clifden remarking on the ponies, ''such unusual colours-smoky grey as you get out of a chimney -the oaken meal colour?it was wonderful'' Karen Reihill is currently researching the life and work of Gerard Dillon

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